New Radio Install.......HELP ??????????

[spiderman2000]

Does anyone have pics of their radio install ?????? Looking for wiring pics..... I just bought a new radio and its looking for 3 hot leads and I'm not sure how to handle this..... It wants 2 hot non switched sources and one source hooked to dash lights. What I did was hook the dash source wire (orange on radio)to the cigarette lighter light controlled by the dimmer, one constant hot lead to the lighter itself (red wire on lighter and red wire on radio) and the third (yellow wire on radio) I hooked to the brown that originally was hooked to the old radio. Radio only works when the key is on, and that's ok except it resets each time the ignition is turned off.... What the heck am I doing wrong ????
If there is one thing that I know very little about it's wiring.

(BTW the radio hot leads are yellow, red, and orange. The red and orange wires are about 16 gauge and the yellow is about 12 gauge)

Guess it might also help to tell you I have a '79.

Can anyone provide any suggestions ?

[SLOSpider]

Sounds like you dont have a constant supply of 12volts to the right wire if its resetting itself. I would make sure your hot all the time wire, probably the cig lighter connection is hot when key is off and use that to which ever color it wants 12v all the time. The others can be placed on any switched key on 12 volt connection.

[manoa matt]

Look for some purple or purple/white wires that are not hooked up to anything. Those are for the power antenna switch (dealer option) One of the purple wires should be hot all the time.

[danaspider]

Spidy, Manoa is correct in looking for the wire for the antenna. First understand why you have 3 power wires. The one wire is to keep the memory when the key is off. This needs 12 V all of the time. The second power wire is providing 12 volts only when the car is running, actually turning the radio on. The 3rd wire is tied to your light switches, so that when the lights are on the display is dimmed. Really not that important, as on my old VW bus I left it off as it needs all of the glow it can get.

So that is the theory of the 3 wires. You will also find a wire from the radio for the antenna. Don't worry about that one, as it is just used to tell the antenna to go up or down, probably not on your spider.

On the last radio I put in I went to the fuse block and with a volt meter found the points I needed and just added new wires from that point. So that would be my way.

Oh yea, when you get the radio working correctly and you find that the radio turns off momentarily when you turn on the lights, or flash the high beams, do the brown wire surgery and check your grounds?

Hope that helps.

[Fiat88]

When I did mine I had to run a new wire from the fuse block to get the constant 12v power, if you see a blue/white wire that's the power antenna wire(optional), I put a power antenna in my '79.

The brown wire I believe is switched power that works only when you have the key turned.

[amsiegel]

What I did was use the wire going to the courtesy light for the radio. Then I spliced a wire into the lighter light ring to use for poer to the courtesy light. Or something like that.

[htchevyii]

My '82 was prewired for a radio, it even had wires running into the doors allready for the speakers, (there was an unused connector behind the console). I think that I did have to run a constant 12v wire though. The wires and colors were in the factory diaghram. Too bad the P.O. didn't know that and hacked in a bunch of junk.
Here's a link to Brad Atrigue's wiring diagrams:
http://www.mirafiori.com/faq/content/69_73_COMPLETE.pdf
http://www.mirafiori.com/faq/content/81_82_COMPLETE.pdf