Hello. Once I move the mute wire over one hole and tie it to the parking brake wire, can I tie both of those to the ground wire coming off the pioneer to the ground wire on my metra wire harness? Or does the the radio need to be grounded seperate from the bypass and I should tie the ground wire from the pioneer to the groung wire on the metra harness and tie the mute and parking brake wire to seprate ground wire and ground that directly to the vehicle chassis?

Thanks

Hello. Once I move the mute wire over one hole and tie it to the parking brake wire, can I tie both of those to the ground wire coming off the pioneer to the ground wire on my metra wire harness? Or does the the radio need to be grounded seperate from the bypass and I should tie the ground wire from the pioneer to the groung wire on the metra harness and tie the mute and parking brake wire to seprate ground wire and ground that directly to the vehicle chassis?

 

Thanks

It would seem that a ground ...is a ground. However, it better be a damn good ground with all that going through it. I'd use the harness ground for the radio only, and tie the PB/Mute to a good, clean, chassis ground - so you know it is always grounded and won't cause any interference with the radio. That seems better to me.

Most people will use the ground in the metra harness, it's that simple, no need to go and do the extra work unless you run into an issue.

As always, remember you are grounding the brake lead FROM the AVIC only, don't ground anything from the car side of the harness.

The ideal scenario is that you tie the bypass grounds (mute and parking break) to the same location as the headunit ground. You don't want to have any potential (ie voltage) difference between them, although i do believe there is some tolerance allowed before it would become an issue.

Now it is up to you whether you use the vehicle's factory ground at the metra harness, or use a bolt to the frame. If you are going to use a seperate amp to power your speakers, you most definetly want to use a bolt on the frame.

The factory headunit ground that goes through your metra harness can be long in length, and consist of several connectors, that will result in a voltage drop and place your headunit at some potential above true ground. Any potential difference between your headunit and a seperate amplifier will result in alternator whine.

Thanks for the replys. I will be hooking up 1 amp now and another one in the future so just to be safe I will tie the ground from the radio to the PB wire and mute wire and grounding it directly to the chassis, and cap off the ground coming from the metra harness. What gauge ground wire should I use?

I think something from 16 to 20 AWG should be fine. If you plan on using the internal amplifiers inside the headunit then I would lean towards the larger wire (ie smaller AWG).

Hey guys. I have the hack completed and everything works great except that my parking break light is always on. Can I go ahead and detach the green parking break grounding wire from the parking break? I have the mute wire, parking break wire (green) and the harness ground all tied together now. But the green wire still is grounded to the parking break which is how the installer did this intially.

Thanks!

Nothing is suppose to be connected to the parking brake of the car when performing the bypass. Your installer should know this and should not be installing if he makes this kind of mistake. The bypass instructions on this site are very clear. Take it back with the instructions on this site and have them fix it.