Replacing factory speakers on '97 - what wire is what???

gone postal said:

I want to replace my front door and rear overhead speakers in my '97 Classic. Easy enough to do, but how do I go about figuring which wire is + and which is -?? This issue didn't even dawn on me till I removed the first speaker and was getting ready to cut off the harness. I looked in my Chiltons and no schematic for stereo and I know the wiring colors usually vary year to year and sometimes Jeep to Jeep depending on what is available. Any way to test this other than just wire it up and watch the speaker to make sure that it pushes out rather than pull in? (which I've found difficult to differentiate at times).

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5-90 said:

Typically, automotive speaker leads are the same colour, with the negative-polarity wire having a black tracer (if there's a white tracer, I've often found it to be the positive-polarity wire.)

There's usually only one wire in a pair with a tracer - the other one will be "solid-coloured."

At least, that's been my experience...

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gone postal said:

White/Black makes sense. What threw me off though was the speaker I removed was two blue wires - one w/ white tracer and the other had orange. I'll go w/ the white as positive and just look closely after installed to see if I can tell that they're operating correctly. Thanks for the tip!

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