I am posting this because I have time on my hands and thought this might be a fun story for some.

I thinned out the herd and no longer want to build from scratch. Mind says yes, body says no. Wife said I had better get something before I drive her crazy!! So I picked up a pretty nice, numbers matching, unmolested 1974, LS4 454 earlier this year.

Clock and radio didn't work. Car is for me to work on as I want without crawling underneath or pulling engines and such. I decided to start with the top of the motor and sent the Q jet off to lars.

In the meantime, Clock seemed like a pretty easy replacement and I could take a look at the radio. Well, as we all know, one thing led to another to another and so forth.

BUT, the radio turned out to be one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen. As stated above, it did not work. And it was not hard to figure out why.

First of all, what type of radio is it? I contacted Retro Radio for help. The model and serial number do not match the radio I have! Serial number says MOT1. After two days with RR on the phone and chat, we figured out it is a MOT 2B Hermosa from 2015 and now discontinued. Still, it is a NICE radio! Has built in blue tooth, mic input, 4 channel , two aux inputs, USB input. Really pretty good for my needs. RR said that they have attached the serial number on the radio to me for future reference and repair parts. Pretty good service in my opinion.

It also came with a 400 watt FosGate amplifier and speakers tucked in the back. looks to me like the Fosgate was installed by a professional. Heavy duty wiring and stout, correct, routing of the speakers.

Here is where it really gets weird. The power connections to the radio itself are completely and totally baffling. There are three simple wires to hook up the radio, a yellow wire for constant power memory that goes to the BAT terminal, a red switched wire for the ACC terminal, and a ground.

The PO bundled the red and yellow wires together to make the harness you see in the pic. Four fuses, the double fuse holder is particularly interesting. It has 2, 20 v fuses and the yellow wire, for the BAT terminal running to it. The PO also connected, for some inexplicable reason, the power window wire through a 20v fuse to this connection.

The power window wire is normally connected to the IGN connection. Interestingly, the double fuse is marked HAZ, and RAD MEM.

The red switched wire is then wired through another 20 v fuse and all these were connected and plugged into the IGN terminal.

The radio and amp would not come on. The radio has a switched wire to the amp to turn it on. The windows did work.

All this wiring was black taped together in a big ball and taped up above the steering column. I'm guessng the PO didn't want channel, time or BT memory that is why everything is wired together, or just didn't understand.

Took me longer to take everything apart and get the ball out. I then simply cut out that makeshift harness, and put the constant wire on BAT, Windows on IGN, and switched to ACC. The radio already has 15 amp fuses.

Everything works great.

 

I believe you. You put your finger on it! Sketchy radio harness wiring was de-rigor back in the day. No other wiring seemed to get butchered more than radio/stereo wiring. Esp in the old days during the aftermarket car stereo craze in the late 70's - 80's when every couple years owners were doing their own garage-upgrading to a newer/better stereos. There were dozens of stereo mgrs & almost none come with any quick connectors. Adapter harnesses didn't readily exist in the early days. Yep, cut the OEM wiring. Shrink tubing didn't exist, it was all gummy black tape!

Then the owner had to tie in an equalizer and wire up the CB (and PA horn, maybe an external CB speaker), and a CB scanner, while he was at it. Before that there might have been an underdash Cassette player installed. Oh, and don't forget, ....eventually you needed a noise filter under the dash and cut into the existing power wire down under the dash. Maybe two noise filters if one wasn't enough. You had to wire in a pr of amber fog lights too! Then new speakers. A guy had to run new wiring to each car corner in classic cars that didn't have 4 speaker wiring. Maybe the next guy added new speaker wires of a bigger gauge, but left the old stuff in place. Then, the amp which meant more wires usually re-routed to the *back* under-seat area! After a few different owners & different stereos, throw in an alarm system of the early 90's ...sometimes there would be lots of unused wiring (from previous installs) ...and the main power wiring would be cut back pretty close to the main harness!

You definitely expected there to be a ball of wire and wad of electrical tape as you pulled out a car stereo. And on reinstall, you stufffed the wiring wad back in the hole gently and slid the radio in *very carefully!* ...and didn't touch it again lest you screw that mess up. Eventually most car stereo mfgrs standardized on their own connectors (to a certain degree) and adapters became avail at Crutchfield, and car audio shops (pretty much non-existant now), Ebay or Amazon. But to do it right a guy would ultimately need to pull all the old wire out, & build back the short factory power wiring and make the wiring 'right'. ...just like you say

 

That harness makes sense to me! Triple fuse protection. Joking, lol.

 

At least they did it somewhat 'right'. Shrink tubing? Now THAT'S high-tech!
In the old days ya used black tape which would get gummy and slide off the wire joint