1973/ Dodge Dart Swinger/ installing a new radio

ok, the dart swinger came with an AM radio and a monaural speaker. I'm trying to connect a newer radio into the car, but the wires on the car are EXTREMELY confusing, and the maintenance manual says nothing. i'll give more details if you think you can help me out. if you think you can be of any help at all, PLEASE REPLY! Don't have access to a wiring diagram, so can't help with the specifics....but.....basically, the oem wiring should have a power wire(that gets hot in on/acc)......a ground wire, possibly....although with all the "metal" in the dash, back then, guess its possible the radio itself was grounded to the body?.....maybe the speakers too?.....then it should have a "light" feed, when the park/headlights are turned on.....you may need to run some more wiring for your newer radio...(if you could use/keep the oem, power and light feeds, you'd keep the original curcuit protection intact).....might need = a separate ground wire.....new speaker wires....better antenna? This is probably not the info you're looking for but may give you some ideas? Well to start, i'm pretty sure that you're right about the ground wiring. It was grounded to the metal instead of wiring. See though, we're not sure what wires go where. i know the light feed was orange, but the strange thing is that the orange wiring eventually splits into two orange wires. i don't exactly need the orange wiring, but i am still a little confused about that. here is the weird part though. there are four wires coming from the older radio. a red wire and an orange wire have a single plug-like connector at the end. The plug it connects to, however, has four wires coming out instead of two. there is one red/white wire, one white wire, and two orange wires. Then there are the other two wires protruding from the old radio. a green wire and a black wire. so which wires go where or do what? I'm thinking the green and black are the speakers wires....the reason there might be four wires/or two pairs on one side of those other connectors....is...they're continuing that wire on to another accessory....like another power feed and another light feed.....without a wiring diagram though, its hard to tell, what else may be on this curcuit?....I think the orange is the light feed.....red should be the power feed......a way you can check is with a 12 volt test light.....first see if any are "hot at all times"....shouldn't be....but check anyway.....then see which one gets "hot" with the key in on/acc....that should be your power feed......then see if any wire gets "hot" with the parking lights turned on....that should be the light feed.....if they don't get power to at least 2 of them.....check the fuses...good luck...tell us what you find thanks a million! it's funny, cause we have a basic wiring diagram for dodge cars that year, but it says almost nothing... well anyway, i'm going to invest in a 12 volt tester, but i think you may be right anyway. again, thanks so much! i'll let you know more once i try things out I would ignore the old wiring and run new wires.

You know the old red is ignition hot. You will also need a battery hot for the stereo's memory. You can get this from the fuse panel or tap into the cigarette lighter wire.
Run you a new ground to the chassis. Anywhere under the dash is fine. Use an existing screw that touches metal. When it comes to radio's, black is always ground.

Then run new speaker wire. Your old mono-speaker is probably old, dry rotted and cracked anyways.

Newer stereo's have a blue wire for it's dash lights. You can hook that old orange wire to it so you have dimmer capabilities. Yep....like Grease said.....may need some "keep alive memory", for the newer style radio.....which may require a "hot at all times" feed......just make sure it has curcuit protection(fused)....as close to the power source as possible.....if there's ever a problem......you don't want these add on "hot" wires, .......to burn for long distances! Seen lots of poorly designed radio/amp wiring...that shorted and burned 10 gage wire.....from the battery.....thru door jams...up thru the dash.......very ugly ok, so the black wire and green wire were indeed speaker wiring to a crappy monaural speaker (leaving that alone). the red/white wire turned out to be absolutely nothing as it went to an auxiliary plug with nothing attached to it. what's weird is the orange wires (both of them) are acting as accessory/on wires. the white wire has no power, even when the car is turned on (why?). i bought a multimeter, since i heard it works better than a test light. there is a black/white wire, and now i'm unsure what that is. it's hot, and it's not a ground wire (the radio was grounded to the dashboard). HELP! You're doing good though....you found out a lot....have you checked all the fuses, just for the heck of it? How bout when the lights are turned on" yeah we've checked the fuses, although we don't know where the fuse for the white wire is.... i'm going to check out the lighting real quick... i have a suspicion that we accidentally cut the panel lighting XD Have you got wiring instructions there, for the new radio?....If yes....how do they want you, to install it? Maybe the white wire is for illumination when you turn on the headlamps. Oops...Los got that one already

Optional 8 track player? ok, on the new radio there are four wires coming out. one is black and for ground. one is yellow for the battery (constant power). one is blue for power antenna/amplifier (not needed). one is red for accessory/on. that's really it even if the white was for the lights, this radio doesn't need it since it has an LCD screen.

what do you, mean optional 8 track? LoL....I put a pioneer am/fm/8 track in my old car.....back in the early 70's......thought that was the awesomest thing ever, lol......cruisin...listening to Jimi Hendrix...kickin back a cold one.....smokin a big fat reef....oooops......never mind...forget the last 2 things...that would be illegal Car Repair Talk's forum.