I need some help with getting a radio installed. The previous owner had put in a super cheap single din cd player and I wanted to go back to a period correct Mitsubishi radio. I had a hard time finding the dual single DIN radio and EQ unit that came with a lot of monteros but I did find a double DIN AM/FM/Cassette with Equalizer that was standard in a lot of mitsubishis at the time. Specifically Model # MB649778 (1st photo)
So when I pulled out the aftermarket CD player, I saw that the original 2 montero clips were going to a single adapter harness to go to the aftermarket player, which makes sense because the mitsubishi radio has two harness inputs which match the two harnesses that my montero has. (photos 2 & 3) .

I've got two problems though:
1. The smaller of the two montero harnesses (photo 3) is missing the middle wire on the lower plug. I see that there is a blue wire with red strip that was pulled off at some point and just taped up to the big harness wire (photo 4) - can anyone confirm if this is supposed to go into that middle spot on the lower row of the small harness? what is it?
I do see that there is a black wire that they installed on the aftermarket radio to ground that radio to the metal frame of the radio mount - i'm guessing maybe this was the original ground and for whatever reason they did a new one when they put that cheap aftermarket cd player in?!? (that cd player didn't work very well btw - it kept turning off every 30 seconds or so so I just took the faceplate off of it on day 1 since I owned it until today)


2. The new old stock radio I purchased (photo 1 - MB649778) is missing a pin on plug in spot for the larger montero harness. You can see it in the second photo - it's the furthest pin on the right on the lower row for the larger harness spot. The guy I bought it from on ebay had photos of the unit allegedly working - he showed it powering on and had a photo of the S/N of the unit - but not sure what this PIN is supposed to be and I can't find any wiring documents for this model. It correlates to the lower most rand hand pin on the larger montero harness. If it's something that's needed, what can I do here?

I'll keep researching but hopefully someone here can help. If i find an answer I'll make sure to update.
Thank you all

I can't get the photos to preview in the thread - but the links work, I promise.
[img]https://ibb.co/fx74YJK[/img]
[img]https://ibb.co/SntymTx[/img]

[img]https://ibb.co/BjH7sG8[/img]
[img]https://ibb.co/BtfhCJx[/img]

I have not been in the audio harness in awhile but have swapped around many factory stereo units. The wiring will change with different generations, not much but it is not guaranteed that later or earlier unit will function 100% without repining a wire or two.
That loose wire with the insulated terminal is not to be in a gang connector. Without checking the books that might be the wire that commands the antenna operation.
The service manuals will have all the pinouts and diagrams for each radio should be available still with searching their PN.

I had a feeling that extra blue wire might be for the antenna - the pin diagram I found for the montero shows an extra antenna wire but what threw me off is that it is bundled with the group that all goes to that smaller harness and that the harness has an open spot.
The only pinout diagram I could find was for the same 9 and 5 pin connectors but it basically was just "pre 98" and "after 98" - but as you mentioned, there must be some differences just between the years or even models otherwise the 1991 factory radio from a 3000gt would plug into my 1991 harness for the montero and work just fine. The plugs do match but it doesn't work, so i'm guessing at the very least the positive power is in a different pin location.


*Edit*
I think I may have made a little bit of progress in figuring out the wiring - I still haven't found a specific pinout diagram for the 91 Montero or the Model MB649778, but from what the internet says is standard wiring on older mitsubishi models it looks like they're supposed to have BOTH positive and negative speakers wires on the 9 pin connector and then the power wires and any accessories on the 5 pin. But the diagrams I've found for the radios that would have come in stealths and 3000gts (which is what mine is from) show only the positive speaker wires on the 9 pin along with the battery and ignition wire and then only the negative speaker wires are on the 5 pin.

But I'm still left scratching my head Here's what I've got on the CAR SIDE of my harnesses:

5 Pin Harness: Black wire with Blue stripe x2
Black wire with red strip x2
nothing in the lower middle spot

9 Pin Harness: Yellow wire w/green stripe
yellow wire w/red stripe
red wire w/white stripe
white wire w/red stripe
white wire w/blue stripe
Green wire w/white stripe
Blue wire w/white stripe
Black wire w/yellow stripe
black wire

And there's gonna be one connection on the 9 pin on the RADIO side that won't be needed according to the diagrams I found - which i want to believe are correct because it would explain the missing terminal on my radio in that connection slot.

Read all your angst above. You may find additional resource viewing some 3000-specific data obtained from folks at MitsuNation on FB (MitsuNation). Sorry to make this suggestion, but there is a large contingent of folk there who work on and drive these cars. Missing pin data could include subwoofers and power antennae.

Good luck,
Russell

Thanks - I sent a request to join. I'm at the point right now where I'm fairly confident I've got a correct diagram for the head unit and I'm going to test the wires on the montero 5 pin harness today and see if I can verify the battery constant and ignition wires are on it and if so, that'll basically tell me that all the speaker wires are for sure on the 9 pin and we can figure those out once it's running, which will leave me with the two mystery black wires on the 5 pin and an additional wire on the 9 pin that will need to be moved to the 5 pin, which I'm guessing would be Illumination, factory ground for the montero side and dimmer. If anyone has suggestions how to differentiate these from the switched power ignition line or if there is another wire type on the montero side i'm missing let me know.

If you are Jay, then you didn't answer the questions and I added you anyway.

Oh thank you. That's strange, I was given the option to answer what kind of mitsubishi vehicle I own, which I answered and the I was prompted with an agreement to abide by the sticky and checkmark three other rules of the page. I submitted those and was given a prompt that my request was awaiting approval.

Okay - thank you everyone here and on the mistunation group, I got it installed and working. Long story short, I validated the harness pinout by checking each pin for the always hot battery wire, then verified the front pos and neg speaker wires. From there I found there was a factory ground on the Montero 9 pin harness that was mating to an unused pin on the radio, I need to add a ground from the radio chassis to the metal mounting brackets of the Montero and then everything worked.

For the sake of documentation, the factory gen 1 mitsubishi radio harness (at least for '91) is as follows:

5 Pin connector (viewing the mating holes straight on, with clip on top)
Top left pin: Black and blue wire = left rear speaker neg
Bottom left pin: Black and red wire = right rear speaker neg
Top right pin: Black and blue wire = left front speaker neg
Bottom Right pin: Black and red wire = right front speaker neg
Middle bottom pin: blank or blue power antenna wire

9 Pin connector (viewing the mating holes straight on, with clip on top)
Top row furthest left: white and red wire = right front speaker pos
Top row 2nd from left: Yellow and red wire = right rear speaker pos
top row 2nd from right : Black and yellow wire = dimmer
top row furthest right: Green and white wire = Illumination (tied to taillight)
Bottom row furthest left: BLACK GROUND (this was not used in my Mitsu Stealth radio as well as the aftermarket cd player that I removed)
Bottom row 2nd from left: white and blue wire = left front speaker pos
Bottom row middle: yellow and blue wire = left rear speaker pos
bottom row 2nd from right: red and white wire = Battery lead - always hot
Bottom row furthest right: Blue and white wire = ignition lead - hot @ "ACC"