2010 Nissan Versa Stereo Wiring

My fiancé has a base model Nissan Versa, and she spends a lot of time on the road with it for work. I wanted to give her the gift of hands-free calling too. I am not a fan of the user interface on my own Sony receiver, so I decided to mix it up a little. Here's what I bought:


This car doesn't have a standard barrel-style antenna connector, so you need an adapter. You will notice the antenna adapter cable also has a fun blue wire of ambiguous purpose. It's actually super important - it's used to turn on the car's antenna amplifier. Apparently without it you will get garbage reception.

The other note is that the harness wasn't a perfect pin-match for the cabling. I took out the thicker brown wire on the one side (as it wasn't going to connect to anything in the car) and I moved/re-purposed the useless blue/white wire on the harness (antenna amp trigger - which in this situation is provided by the antenna adapter) to be the ground wire (black wire from the car, which had no wire connected on the harness. I could have just grounded the stereo on the chassis, but I discovered this dashboard has a ton of plastic, and not a lot of reachable chassis connections.

The receiver comes with it's own cable, and you can either choose to snip off the existing connector in the car, or you can buy a car-specific cable harness. I decided I really did not want to jam my hands into the dashboard, stripping and soldering cables in a confined space. I also liked the idea of being able to swap the stock stereo back in later. 

Some investigation online, followed by careful testing, yielded the following wire mapping:

Connection
Car
Harness
Receiver
Car Radio Battery Constant 12v+ WireBrownYellowYellow
Car Radio Accessory Switched 12v+ WireLight GreenRedRed
Car Radio Ground WireBlackBlue/White (Repurposed)Black
Car Radio Illumination WireOrangeOrangeOrange/White
Left Front Speaker Positive Wire (+)WhiteWhiteWhite
Left Front Speaker Negative Wire (-)BrownWhite/BlackWhite/Black
Right Front Speaker Positive Wire (+)GreenGreyGrey
Right Front Speaker Negative Wire (-)Light BlueGrey/BlackGrey/Black
Left Rear Speaker Positive Wire (+)VioletGreenGreen
Left Rear Speaker Negative Wire (-)RedGreen/BlackGreen/Black
Right Rear Speaker Positive Wire (+)Light GreenVioletViolet
Right Rear Speaker Negative Wire (-)GrayViolet/BlackViolet/Black
Antenna AmpBlueBlue/White

It is super easy to access the stereo in the Versa (compared to my Sonata). It's also way easier to find instructions!



Here are some photos I grabbed to verify the wire mapping





Testing out the wire-mapping

I immediately noticed the sound was phenomenally better with this unit. The stock stereo must not be very good (I noticed a bit of an improvement with my stereo upgrade, but nothing like this).

To test that you have the right speakers wired, you can just start playing the radio, and in the stereo settings play with the fader and balance to force sound to the front/rear and left/right.

My final cable


All done!

Hope this is useful to someone out there!

Comments

  1. Hi, thank you for providing, I was curious about the 3rd picture shown, the thicker and thinner black wires with the grayish plug, what were those for?

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    Replies
    1. Hi! Those are the antenna connections for radio.

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  2. Hey thanks for taking the time to write this up, helped a lot.

    Couple questions: I did not connect my antenna to my new head unit (ordered adapter) initially, and I am not getting any audio from the speakers. I ohmed the speakers and it's showing the load, but no sound. I am curious if there is some non-obvious preamp, or if the antenna amp also plays a role in the speakers functioning.

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  3. Muchas gracias por la información

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  4. On my harness, I have an "Amp turn on" (blue/white) wire which you indicated was the antenna amp so I connected that to the blue wire on the receiver side. So I'm left wondering what the blue wire on the antenna harness connects to? It's supposed to be the Antenna Amp too, right? Also, in your completed project I don't see where your ground is. Did you connect the two black wires on the receiver side and the wire harness? Or do I run a separate wire to the chassis?

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    Replies
    1. Ok I figured it out. My harness (which i special ordered specifically for my car) has a ground wire, but as far as I've read nissan versas don't have a ground wire so I guess I will have to test it out.

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    2. Nice! Regarding the antenna amp, it sounds like you might have a different model. I can't say for sure what the right thing to do is - I wouldn't recommend connecting those 2 blue wires together though without knowing "for sure" they're the same. I'd suggest following my "investigation online" link above and trying to find a similar page for your exact car. This one was the base model.

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  5. Thnx this helped me as well

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  6. Hi Jon, I Have a 2010 Versa and I bought the Metra harness and hoping this will match up with the after market head unit I purchased, it's not a well know brand just a generic Asian one, I also have the dash kit, do you any tips or insights for connecting the antenna?

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    Replies
    1. Sorry, not beyond what I shared here. Google and YouTube are your friends! Good luck :)

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