In general, pink is an ignition-switched hot circuit, so if that was his amplifier power supply, it would come on whenever the car was on. Are you referring to a specific pink wire at the back of the stereo? If I'm following this at all, the idea is to find the output wire at the stereo that goes hot when the stereo is switched on, and that would then... I dunno, close a relay to switch on the amplifier...? (Or maybe the amplifier has its own internal relay and separate power supply, and just needs to monitor that wire to determine when to switch itself on...?)

Guess what? In the 94 manual, the wire is actually dark green. It comes from pin No. 8 on the back of the radio, and goes to the power antenna relay on the antenna. Glad you told me the year.

You guys are great. Can't wait for my 2004 manual to arrive. I ordered it from Helm last week.

Yeah, your guys know your stuff! Thanks for the info.... I'll play with it this weekend. 8)

Huh. Those blankety-blanks went and changed the color coding after '93, then, because I just got through checking the '93 manual.

For '93, the antenna signal wire coming out of the stereo is indeed pink. It leads to the antenna relay, which is mounted on the antenna shaft in the trunk. That relay has an orange always-hot power supply to feed the antenna motor, the pink signal wire coming from the stereo, and a ground.

There are three wires leading to the antenna motor: as you noted, they're white, green and dark gray. The gray wire powers the antenna up; the white powers it down; the green is a common return (but technically not a ground as I believe it leads back to the relay, not to the body).

So anyway, your pink wire can signal the amplifier to switch on (i.e. close a relay to switch on its main power), and your orange wire can power it if it won't suck too much juice; run your own power circuit to the amplifier otherwise.

Yes, they changed it! :o

The pink wire is now dark green starting in 1994. I would have to assume they did not change it again in 1995, but I have looked in both the 93 and 94 service manuals at this point.

Maybe it's better that they did, because pink was already used for ignition-switched circuits (and had been for literally decades). Using it _again_ for the circuit between the radio and the power antenna relay was kind of naughty.

I've only seen one other re-use of a wiring color like that: on our '96 Trans Sport, one of the two outputs at the power-lock switch on the doors (I forget whether it's the Lock or Unlock wire) is black, just like common ground wires. (The other wire was light blue, I think.)

That strikes me as kind of dumb, since you can't use that black wire as a ground point, and if you do tie it to ground, you'll blow a fuse.

just did this so i thought id share

95=3 dark green wires

the power antenna lead is the green wire in the row of 5 leads