Reversing a hackjob - RMT 200 DIY - the stereo portion of my E30 M3 restoration

[CurrusDei]

1989, June build date. Here are the pics I have on me. If you need a different angle let me know and I'll take it tonight




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[StereoInstaller1]

How about a pic of the harness?

What year is it again?

[CurrusDei]

Reversing a hackjob - the stereo portion of my E30 M3 restoration

Spent some time with the ETM tonight. A few observations.

I don't think my car had a fader. There isn't one in the dash, so unless the previous owner took the trouble to remove it AND source a cover for the dash opening there never was one. based on his other work on the car he would have just left the fader in or electrical taped over the opening.

My car being an M3 doesn't have a power raise antenna. Does this mean I will have one less white wire? I can only see one.

It looks like the two YL/BR and two BL/BR wires go to the case ground (assuming mine follows the early production model. However, I also have two Brown wires that go nowhere AND we're being used as the case ground on the old radio. So I guess I'm still confused here. Do I need to strip back further on the harness to look for the orange and brown wires? I feel like the harness is already stripped back pretty far.




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[CurrusDei]

Post holiday bump! What do you guys think?


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[CurrusDei]

So my RMT 200 is sitting in my office but I'm on vacation so i cant get to it until next week.

In the mean time, here is a color key for the Metra 71-1784 harness i have, and a listing of the wire colors coming out of my dash. I have tried my best to gather the necessary information from threads on this forum (from Luke, Geno, etc) to match up the two, but would appreciate if the experts here could confirm or correct my diagram below.

Also Luke I saw you posted the Metra flush mount frame. Going to order one of those. Geno, did you have a specific set of ABS rectangles that you used to sink the flush mount further behind the faceplate? Any pictures of the fabrication process you did? If not I'll take some.

EDIT*Removed wiring diagram, was incorrect

[Nick_S]

Reminds me of mine when I first got it. The speaker wires were just run to whatever wire on the harness they felt like. Nasty twists with electrical tape and some without. Took me a while to sort it all out.

[StereoInstaller1]

and I can help you make the remote wire work properly too, its 5V so you have to use a small relay or reed switch to get 12V to run your antenna or amp turn on.

[BlackSpeed66]

Awesome. I've ordered the harness already and ecs has good prices on tesa tape. It looks like the harness only plugs in to the bottom two receptacles on the deck. Is the larger top one just left empty or is it for VW specific use?

The set of connectors on top are for "options" depending on the stereo. Initially I was hopeful with the RMT200 as one of the connectors looked to be wired up for a set of pre-amp outs, which would have been fantastic. Unfortunately, as I found out - the connector is there but the internals do not appear to be hooked up, so that's a no-go. The center connector with 8 pins will be brown and that will be for your speakers. The bottom connector will be black and that will be for your power, ground, antenna, etc. The RMT200 also appears to have some sort of "SAFE" feature built in that I had to figure out by trial and error. I think it has something to do with the factory anti-theft on the newer VAG products which doesn't apply in this case if one is performing a retro-fit. You'll have to connect a small "jumper" on two of the power wires to bypass it. PM me if you get to this point and I can get a pic for you to show what I did...

[CurrusDei]

Nice. Mine's coming apart this winter. Want to keep it driveable for the summer

[glucklich21]

Go big or go home:



You would be amazed what's lurking in a harness that's over 20 years old that looked just fine. There were tons of soon to be shorts, piss poor aftermarket installs, alarms, etc that I found.

[jhaurimn]

I appreciate you documenting this as you are. Im about to start ripping all the aftermarket crap out of mine, so this should help.

[Liquidity]

That radio is amazing I just looked it up and only $250!

[CurrusDei]

Awesome. I've ordered the harness already and ecs has good prices on tesa tape. It looks like the harness only plugs in to the bottom two receptacles on the deck. Is the larger top one just left empty or is it for VW specific use?


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[dwvw]

Look at TESA tape for wrapping your new harness. It's the proper cloth type tape for European car harnesses.

http://www.tesatape.com/meta/search?x=-952&y=-103&q=automotive+harness

You can buy reverse harnesses for most factory vehicles. VW used a couple harnesses over the years. For example this is the one for mKIII cars.

http://www.metraonline.com/part/71-1784

The wire colours are standard aftermarket colours, so they are easy to figure out. From there you would use the electrical manual to match up to what you need.

[CurrusDei]

Reversing a hackjob - the stereo portion of my E30 M3 restoration

If you're talking about the RMT 200 I'll take it! Not looking for a full system here and would love to get one with connectors wired for a bmw

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