How hard is it to wire a new deck into an 83 280zx? Do I have to get a wiring harness, or can I use existing wiring? Any help would be appreciated.

 

you can tap in to the origional wire harner... all you need is the cont. power (+), Acc or ignittion power (=) the ground, powere antena and the illumination wire... if your planning on getting an amp and speakers then you need to run the remohte turn on wire from your head unit to your amp.. and also run your RCA cords to your amp too....

 

alright, thanks. Would the power antena always come up when I turn the deck on? Or just with the radio?

 

I found using a new harness was much easier to use. However I had no choice because my old harness wires were basically dead. Anyway, if you use a new harness, all you need is a direct line to your battery and accesory wires from your original harness, all the other can be taped off or torn out. Plus if you got a big system you would probably want new wiring, like 16 or 14 gauge wiring compared to the stock 18. Just my 5 cents.
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R100RS

 

The antenna will go up whenever the deck tells it to. I had a Kenwood that would have the antenna go up only when the radio was on but not when a CD was playing. Now I have a much more expensive JVC unit and they took a shortcut and made an antenna/amp output so the power antenna goes up whenever the deck is on at all! I think that's cheap.

You can also make a little toggle switch in between that wire so that it will always go down when the car is off but when it is on you have the choice to also keep the antenna up or down....