squablow

I'm pulling my hair out here, my wagon (90 300TE) has been on the road over a year, at least 10K miles I've put on it and all I can listen to is a little battery radio on the seat next to me.

I have a code for my Becker tape deck but the radio never says "CODE", just clicks when I hit the ON button. I've had the deck out of the dash and the fuse is not blown. There are also some dash lights in my car that are wonky and I wonder if it's related.

I'm at my wit's end. I've read all the radio related threads but I'm still not sure what to do. I've got a few aftermarket CD players laying around but I can't find a wiring harness adapter to hook it up in the dash. Do I have to cut and splice? Is there a fix for the stock radio? Should I set the car on fire and dance around it while it burns?

Please, if anyone has some help for me, I need your guidance. I'd like to buy some different wheels for this car and paint the bottom half white, but I just can't get into it with the radio not working.

(And just because everyone loves pictures, here's one of the wagon I'm talking about and a couple of the 220D I just finished painting. At least that one has a radio that works!)

CDP

dude just get an aftermarket radio and yes you have to cut and splice and match up the wiring. It's easy.

sinyo1

similar problem with my 190e i have.. just get after market.. man.. easier...like chris said..

i love your classic benzo you have... nice..

Saijin_Naib

I'd get a new Becker radio from the Becker website or Ebay. They run expensive but they don't look ****ty in the w124 like every aftermarket one does.

squablow

OK, I'm fully willing to do that, in fact I've got a deck on my shelf I can use and I'm really not concerned about cutting up the wiring in the car.

Is there any way to tell what wires do what? A guide somewhere or a color chart? I could have this knocked out this afternoon if I knew what wire goes where.

I think I may put the Becker deck in my press and crush it flat just out of spite.

childofjuly

or you can send it to Becker. I know they do repair services..

ZedStyle

is there an external amp you have to bypass?
otherwise take a pic of your wiring harness and let's have a look, could probably tell you most of the wires looking at it

squablow

I can take more pics if necessary, I just walked outside and pulled it out for this picture.

I assume the blue and brown striped one on the bottom is a ground since the tab it attatches to is just screwed to the back of the case. I've got a bunch of different antenna adapters laying around here so that should be no problem.

I've read in another thread this "on a w124 Power is Grey, Remote is red, and Ground is brown, Power antenna is blue. To wire up the speakers i suggest you use your original head unit and unplug all the connections to the speakers and test one by one and lable them like FRD,FR,FLD,LF,RR,RL...etc or how ever you want. "

But without a functioning head unit I still don't know what speakers are what, plus it looks like some of these colors are used multiple times. I don't know if I have an amp or a fader and if I do I'm not sure how to bypass it. Would I have to bypass them? I just want the radio to work, I'm not that concerned with sound quality or anything else.

squablow

Took another picture to get a clearer look at the wires in the upper right.



Then I read this in another thread

"If so, once you pull the becker out you will see a 4 wire connector which incorporates the following wires -

brown - ground
black with yellow stripe - 12v (switched)
red with white stripe - 12v constant
gray with blue stripe - illumination

The blue wire that is terminated with the spade connector is the antenna wire."

So that makes sense. Now there are only 7 wires unaccounted for.

There's a round, white plug in with a red and a black, a black round plug in with a green and a black, and a third, flat plug in with a green, a brown, and a brown/blue stripe. If I can figure out where those go, I'm set.

Right? Or do I have to bypass a fader and an amp first to make it work? Someone here must have been through this before.

ZedStyle

wow, that looks completely different from mine... i think the round plugs are probably going straight to the speakers though, i would venture that you might not have an external amp... how many speakers do you have in your car?
when i get home i'll see if i can find the paper where i wrote down what my wires were, but i'm sure someone will be able to help before then...

squablow

I know, my car defies all logic sometimes. Not sure how many speakers it has, not sure how to figure that out. Where are they usually mounted in a wagon? I can check.

I would hope it does not have an external amp, because that's just more stuff to go wrong. I've done quite a few stereo installs in the past, but this M-B just doesn't make any sense to me. Any help is greatly appreciated.

amdeutsch

The round white and black ones are your speakers.

squablow

So the car only has 2 speakers? What do the other 3 wires do? If the black and white round plug ins are indeed direct leads to speakers, can I just wire them up and ignore the other 3 unidentified wires? How would I connect the two current speaker plugins to a deck designed for a left front, right front, left rear, and right rear configuration?

rivcal4life

Ok, it looks like youve got the unit powering situation all figured out so I wont go into that. I really would like to help, but our wires are just so different. All I can do is post you some pictures of mine and tell you what they are. Sorry for the crappy quality iphone pics.


Below is a photo of the right and left dash speakers respectively:



Brown/grey - and brown/green + to your driver dash speaker.

Brown/black - and brown/red + to your passenger dashspeaker

These are the wires that would normally be the rear deck speakers in a sedan, had the moron that installed my system not bypassed them completely and ruined my carpet in the process.



I believe I see them running off the top in your photos. They are connected to an amp, which on my sedan is located in the trunk just behind and to the right of the rear seat. If I were in your position, I would splice my headunit into those wires so I did not have to run more. Then splice from the factory amp to the rear speakers. However,Im not sure of their location in a TE.

The two round plugs, Im quite sure are your drive and passenger door speakers. They also run to the rear amp before being redirected back to the doors. Just get a AA battery and touch each set of wires to be certain where the noise is coming from. I really do hope Ive been of some help.

Oh and to anyone who thinks all non-OEM units are ugly, there are some exceptions:

squablow

Thanks for the pictures. I'm going to test out my speakers individually using a differnet radio hooked up to a separate power supply to see which one is what, and I'll look for the amp and try to bypass it. Hopefully I can make this work.

Thanks again, and if anyone has any wagon-specific advice I'd love to hear it. I'll post my progress if I get it to work.

124 forlife

Hello everyone I am new kid in the neighborhood.ey budy,there is a tumbler button in between window switches.Here is the story.Every mercedes radio wires from radio goes to tumbler between window switches (you could see a little speaker picture)and from that goes to amplifier which is located in the trunk on the right side.Good idea with AA battery to find what wire goes to wich speaker,no fear to burn it,but dont panic if you dont have any signal (tone) since those wires goes from little tumbler to amplifier (both could be in defect).If you allready installed a new radio(honestly looks good)the best painless solution is to run new wires from radio to spikers.It is time consuming going under a carpet with wires but it is 100% guarantie. Than if you still like your Becker it could be something done before you throw it away.athose radios are really expensive for reason.They are good quality radios,really.IF any of yours speaker falls off (burn) your factory amplifier goes into protection mode and can not listen to radio.So before you do anything check your speakers one by one.Front speaker grille is easy to pry off with little screwdriver,and make sure you throw away that roten protection spunge away.Rear one you can acces fron trunk, but only to test tham,If you would like to remove it you should go from inside the car .Hope it helps

124 forlife

and in the future, there is a company called "Crutchfield".you can find tham on an internet easy.They make any possible hookup from any car to any radio.

ds190

Old thread, but I hope he figured it out. Connections in back of Becker 1480 radio are listed on beckerautosound dot com web site. From home page select Service, Mercedes Benz, year/model, and on the 1480 radio page, select back panel connections.

The Becker 1480 has an internal amp (25 watt) so the white and black plugs are L and R high signal out. The green/black and red/black wires go to the fader and are split front dash and rear shelf speakers. The front speaker wires come right back to just behind the radio where they connect with plugs to the wires to L and R dash speakers.

The amp in the trunk or in the right wheel well (TE) powers the woofer door speakers. It gets its signal from the rear speaker signal.

There have been five different Becker radios (754, 780, 1480, 1432, & 1492) in our 124 cars. The 1492 does not have the console mounted fader.

I just pulled the 1480 out of my TE, and am planning to replace it with a newer radio