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I received my Kenwood head unit and Scosche harness today. All of the wires on the scosche harness have been used but I am still on the fence about the Illumination wire. The scosche harness has both the orange (illumination) and orange/white (dimmer). The Kenwood harness has only the orange/white. People have been talking about how connecting the wires improperly will try the dash lights on the HVAC cluster. I would prefer to be able to have my deck dim automatically when I put my headlights on but do not want to risk damaging the other stock illumination stuff. Is it safe to connect the "ILLUMINATION" wire on the scosche harness to the orange/white ILL wire on the Kenwood deck? I've capped off the orange/white on the scosche harness as I know dimmer does nothing for the Kenwood deck. I do not want to plug it in until I am sure. The scosche instructions say both orange AND orange/white are "illumination/dimmer" but I have read the solid orange is illumination when coming from the stock harness.

Is there any safe way to connect the illumination wires or should I just cap both off and live without a auto-dim stereo. Reading all the posts about dash/rear lights not working makes me want to just cap off the orange and orange/white wires. From what I understand, the orange wire is 12V when the lights are switched on and the orange/white is variable (dimmer).

2nd Question: The head-unit's black (ground) wire is longer than the rest. Should I connect it to the black wire on the scosche harness or should I manually ground the long black wire from the HU to somewhere in the back of the dash?

 
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100 views and no one can help me with a deck install?

 
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Look at the Red/black wire that is on the stock radio harness. What color wire does that go to on the scosche harness. The red/black is the illumination wire or the stock radio.

As for grounding you can solder the 2 blacks together and leave as is but it would be best to do that and bolt them to a ground on the car.

 
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According to the pin-out chart here the ILLUMINATION pin (#2) corresponds to a solid orange wire on my Scosche harness while the DIMMER (#12) is an orange with white stripe wire. The Kenwood only has one ILLUMINATION wire (orange with white stripe). I'd expect the solid orange (scosche) would go to the orange/white (Kenwood). I am just worried about what people are saying about how they used/did something with either the ILLUMINATION or DIMMER wires which caused their dash lights to short out/get damaged. What did they do that caused the cluster/dash lights to get fried? I want to be 100% sure before I plug anything into the car.

Regarding the ground, I haven't seen the stock(honda) harness but I assume it is already pre-grounded. I just thought I might have to ground the stereo manually (to a screw or something) rather than use the original grounding pin.

 
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I only remember using one or the other when I did mine but I can't remember which one. If the Scoshche plugs into the Honda harness what color on the Honda harness goes to the orange wire and the orange/white wire?

 
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ORANGE (Scosche) Pin 2 (Red/Black according to the pin-out site)
ORANGE/WHITE (Scosche) Pin 12 (Red according to pin-out site)

http://crutchfield.custhelp.com/app/...20illumination

 
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If it was me I would hook orange/white to orange/white. Since the headunit only had the dimmer and not illumination it must get that signal for the illumination from another source so I would hook the dimmer from the Scoshche to the Kenwood headunit. As long as the Kenwood's orange/white is the dimmer wire. You won't fry anything if everything matches up. As long as the connection from the Kenwood to the car is the same then nothing will get damaged (Kenwood dimmer wire to Scoshche dimmer wire to Honda dimmer wire).

 
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AFAIK, the stereo receives the signal to dim the lights based on the Illumination input (kenwood's wire is orange/white) (orange on the scosche harness and black/red on the honda harness). The actually "dimmer" wire (orange/black from scosche and red on the honda harness) is for dimming the dash lights (it's a potentomer). The Kenwood stereo as far as I know uses it's harness' orange/white wire to determine if the headlights are on or off. For that purpose I'd assume I need to hook up the car's own BLACK/RED wire (indicated as solid orange on the scosche harness) to the Kenwood's orange/white wire.