My right side front speaker has white with light green stripe and green with orange stripe

My left side front speaker has light blue with white stripe and orange with light green stripe

I need to know for each side what wire is positive and negitive

 

For the '89 model year - the handy-dandy Chilton's manual is showing wire 805 white with light green stripe, and wire 804 orange with light green stripe as the right and left front 'coil feeds', respectively. Both speakers show wire 287 black with white stripe as the speaker voice coil return. The wire size is shown to be #18.

This color code seems to be consistent for the '90 and '91 models years also.

 

Cut the wire about an inch from the speaker. Take a 9v battery and touch it to the wires attached to the speaker. If the speaker pushes out then which ever wire was touching the positive side of the battery is the positive wire. If the speaker pushes in then that means you touched the negative to the positive on the battery. It's called checking the polarity.

 

I wouldn't advocate intentionally destroying or shortening the harness. Its really not that critical because it's a speaker wire but none the less, these kinds of troubleshooting/wiring techniques eventually will lead to the complete demise of a good truck. The previous owners of my truck have done this kind of hack work all over it and very nearly sent it to the junk yard. 6 months into the restoration and I"m still cleaning up hacked wiring, system by system.

The best way is to use a wire diagram, widely available in Haynes or from the gurus around here. Additionally, if no other way can be found and as a last resort, speaker polarity can easily be checked if unknown by just powering up the stereo, turning the volume up and making temporary connection to the speaker terminals to see which combination powers it.

 

http://www.the12volt.com/

 

NICE!!

 

I'm not sure if he is using the original plugs but if he isn't you only need to cut about 1/2 inch of wire a do it the way I said. Now if he is trying to use the original plug and speaker then unplug the speaker and and attach clip leads to the speaker terminals and touch the other end of the clip lead to the battery and get the same result. And unless you want it to be all original wiring you can always add more wire. It is not "hack" work by any means. If you are putting in after market speakers and want to use factory plugs you can buy the adapter at crutchfield.com with the positive and negative side identified for $20. I have done it both ways.

 

Jeff, you're entitled to your opinion and methods. If you consider this method quality troubleshooting, then by all means cut away and get your 9v battery out there. As for me I prefer wire diagrams and wouldn't do what you suggest to my mother in-laws car.

 

I also had a test CD that would clean the lens and also had a track that would tell you if your speakers were hooked up correctly. It checked for left right front back and polarity. It was a great tool to have when I was big into car audio, but many times I would button everything back up, listen to the test track and have to rip it all apart because of polarity.