Hello All,

Wondering if anyone can give me some insight into this or point me in the right direction.

I'm trying to replace the stereo in my Volvo and I'm running into difficulties.

The stereo that was there, albeit ancient, is not an original factory Volvo stereo (bottom mount). Not sure if there ever was a factory stereo although there was a factory harness/plug for hookup. Whomever installed the previous stereo connected the wires from the harness the stereo came with individually into the factory plug and rear speakers were spliced in.

I cut the factory plug, stripped the wires, and connected them to the harness the new stereo came with and initially it worked (although the new stereo does not "remember" the time or radio station presets for some reason) I bolted the stereo in and then tried it again. It was getting power but not producing any sound (I checked the obvious such as mute button, balance/fade ). Fiddled around with it a bit and now noticed that sometimes it works, sometimes not. Seems like if I press the drivers door around where the door speaker is, sound flickers on and off although it stopped doing this and now only seems to work randomly.

I went back to the place I bought the stereo and had them check it out and they indicated it works fine. The guy asked me if I had bypassed the factory amp that most Volvo's came with, which I hadn't, and didn't know if there was one there or not. He wouldn't tell me what it looks like or where it is located (I guess for liability reasons) so I checked back through previous posts on the board and still can't find the thing. I also tried tracing the speaker wires and the farthest I could get to was from the radio to the driver side, under the dash, close to the door.

Does anyone know if this particular model had a factory amp? If so, what does it look like (is there a picture somewhere of these things?) and where would it be located? Previous posts show locations such as behind the glovebox, under the steering column, behind the hole the radio mounts into etc but I don't see anything that would resemble it in any of these places.

If there is no amp or already bypassed/removed, does anyone have any ideas on what the problem could be?

The car wires were black, black (ground), green & the yellow and grey speaker wires.

Thanks much in advance for any insight.