I realised today that tomorrows 7 hour drive in a polo with original radio and no aux is going to suck major balls especially at jeremy vine time.

Got the relevant harness got the correct aerial its all going well. Old one out new one in sorted.

But it wont switch on!

What have i missed?

Earth.

Some VWs need a couple of leads form the harness swapped with one another.  Constant and switched live.

There’s probably a wire you need to connect to something that switches on when the ignition’s on.

Twenty years ago when I was last fitting aftermarket stereos into cars there were two +ve connections; a permanent live for things like the clock and a switched live from the ignition to turn it on and off.

Umm… you’ve turned on the ignition, right?

Oh shitting arse.

That’ll be the long red wire i was hoping to ignore.

Where chuff to i send that to?

Hands up who thinks i can steal juice from the aerial feed?

Thats a yes and its got full key out switch off functionality.

**** you Jeremy Vine i wont be listening to you.

Errm, Jeremy is away this week.

But today he was replaced by Michael Howard. Be very pleased you got your radio sorted…

For future reference, if it’s a relatively modern car (10 years or so) you can get a kit for £20 or so that plugs into the original radio connector and decodes the canbus signals so it knows when the car’s off or on, when the headlights are on and for satnav units how fast it’s going etc.  I had one for the Passat that had the VW connector on one side and the standard radio connector on the other.

When I borrow a car with an old stereo I just bring my bluetooth speaker with me and a battery pack.

Music or podcasts etc for hours then!

when I installed one in an old Bora, i had to swap round the yellow and red cables, i seem to remember they were attached to plugs, so it was very easy.

So, red to yellow, yellow to red……I phoned Halfords about this at the time and the very nice (obviously pissed off charging people for nothing) radio specialist said they were charging people 35 quid for a radio fitment and this was all that was causing the issue

edit: ignore me, i didn’t read the whole thread

Radio worked all day. Memory not working though think i need to seap the red and yellows back when i get home.

Niw the other car.

Is there any reason to not just splice the wires together its a little ticht back there and a bunch of bullet connectors cost heehaw!