I recently puchased a 1993 Dakota 3.9L automatic.
The speakers in the doors were blown so I was going to replace them.When I removed them I noticed the wires connected to the speakers were a much heavier gauge than the ones coming out of the back of the radio. When I connected a meter to each end of the wire there was no reading on the meter yet the radio and speakers work fine. I tried to trace the wires from the back of the radio to the speakers but they dissappear in to the harness. This is my question: Is this the radio that originally came with the truck? The radio is set up for 4 speakers yet the truck appears to be wired for only 2(in the doors) Why are the wires coming out of the back of the radio a different gauge than the ones that connect to the speakers? The color codes seem to match. Is there some kind of amp or relay hidden under the dash somewere?

 

Chances are that the guy who you bought the truck from may have had a custom head unit in the truck and then replaced it with the stock one when you bought the truck. That would explain why the wiring was messed up, because he may not have known what he was doing.

 

my guess would be there is a factory amp, that would explain both the different gauge wire and not getting a reading between the the end by the dash and the end by the speaker, my 2000 dakota is the same way, on mine the factory amp is located beind the pasenger kick panel, not sure if it would be in the same place on a 93 dakota though.

 

If your going to add or rewire, make it a good job, because you would not like to run into a fire on the dashboard. It happen to me once. I had to actually dime stop on the road ran out and practicaly throw sand and dirt to put out the fire in my dash board, lol

Was my first experience. But i didn't wire the thing so it was not my fault (Shop's Fault) Had to rewire everything.
The sub had, car alarm, radio amplafier, roof lights, speakers, it had many things. Probably it was to loaded[8D]