Hi,
I'm changing the speakers in my little sister's Ford Ka. Obviously I want to ensure that I connect the correct terminals.

Unfortunately the cables are not marked +tve and -tve. Aha I thought, I'll simply ensure that I match the pattern on both sides when connecting the speakers.

Nope. The LHD and RHD have different coloured wires! So I have 4 different coloured wires with no indication of +tve and -tve.

Does anyone have a Ka Haynes manual that says which colour is which? Or is there a way of determining them by way of a voltmeter etc.

Cheers for any help!
Regards
James

it shouldnt really matter if you misconnect the + and – round the wong way on the speaker, as long as you get the L and R correct. If you get the polarity wrong then your speakers may be out of phase which will effect bass response, but this will depend on the distance the speakers are apart and they can work better out of phase.

it's a ford Ka, if you get them the wrong way round it's likely the whole car will just fall apart

get the speaker as close together as possible (extend the wires) then listen to something mono (AM radio). you should be able to tell if they are out of phase by moving your head from side to side when listening

If you get the polarity wrong then your speakers may be out of phase which will effect bass response, but this will depend on the distance the speakers are apart and they can work better out of phase.

Not true, it sounds bloody awful when you get two speakers out of phase. Works well in a sub, but for mid/high end it can give really odd audio effects.

So I presume they dont have different size connectors then?

Connect one up then try the other both ways, one way should sound better. If you cant tell the difference, well there's no problem then! 😉

New speakers have spade connectors whereas the existing speakers have a 'Ford' connection head.

OK, so trial and error it is. If it sounds good then I'm ok!

Cheers

Well if there's a ford connector it'll be polarity conscious surely – i.e. it'll have a tab on one end, or only go in to the old speakers one way?

it will only go onto the speaker one way, so I'm assuming that they are polarity conscious – what ever that means!

At an educated guess the wire with the black tracer on it is the negative. There is usually two wires the same colour, four colours for each car corner, one of which has a thin black line on it = negative.