Hello, as the title states - I have a 1971 Buick Skylark. I have removed the old radio and now I am ready to put in my new radio. The only problem is the wiring. In the original radio there is a green, black and green, and yellow wire. In the aftermarket radio there is a black and yellow, orange and white, 2 green, black and green, black, red, yellow, blue and white, gray, gray and black, white and black, 2 purple, and a white wire.
Which three am I supposed to match to get this radio working or am I supposed to purchase an adapter of some sort. I have never been so confused in my life. My instincts are telling me to just match the 3 colors from the original with the ones that go into the back of my radio but cutting the original then tying the wires together with a connector, am I correct? Please shed some light folks.

 

Is this radio you plan to install a "new " or new to you radio?
A new one would normally come with some instructions otherwise you will need to play with the wires and see which ones will power a speaker when certain settings are selected. Depending on where the radio came from one of the wires could actually be for a power antenna.

 

It's not new, I took it off of my 77 Monte Carlo. It's a pioneer radio, on the Monte it was easier because there were a lot more wires so I literally got it to work my first try by more or less matching up the colors. With the Skylark there's only 3 wires and as you can see from my first post it's near impossible to find which out of the many wires from the pioneer radio would be the proper combination.
I have resorted to exposing all of the ones on the pioneer and literally guessing and mix matching different combinations. I just hope that eventually one works out because it's so frustrating to not have any music playing from my car. I can't even seem to get a combination going that gives my radio power.

 

Usually,,,,,,,,,,
Yellow goes to constant power for clock and radio station memory.
Red goes to ignition switch powered wire
Black goes to ground.
green and blue could be for speakers.
If you take a flashlite battery and touch two of the speaker wires to the battery that should give some static from the speaker those wires control.
How many speakers are you planning to have ?
2 front , 2 rear ? Depending on what kind of set up was there previously, if you have a total of 4 speakers , with all those wires from the replacement radio you should be able to select front, rear, left, right in varying outputs.