So I went and upgraded my headunit in my 99 A4 1.8L with an ALPINE iDA-X303 and I love the radio but I have two problems right now:

1. I decided that I wanted it to be like the stock radio and run when the key was not in the ignition,(It obviously does not work currently without the key otherwise I wouldn't be doing this) which is a lot easier if I need the driver's door open cause if you run it with the key in with the aftermarket headunit that dinging just goes on and on and on... Well anyways I took a YELLOW wire and connected it to the other YELLOWS that were connected with my wiring harness. I ran it through the firewall, disconnected the battery and connected it to a fitting and attached it to a bolt that was connected to the POSITIVE terminal on the battery and bolted everything up and whatnot. No dice. I put the keys in and it started up and worked fine. Now I do not have the BLACK ground wire attached to where the stock headunit's ground was for some stupid reason. It's currently hooked up to the back of the unit. I was wondering if that could have something to do with it or does my RED ignition wire have something to do with it working?

2. When I first installed it, like a lot of other A4 users have had, the rear deck did not work. I fiddled with it for a good while and switched it so that the sound was based out of the back. I think I had to go a -8 or -9 on it for it to sound evenly distributed throughout the car. Now my question is, is there another known fix for this problem without running wire directly? I don't feel like running the wire just for that.

If someone responds I can take pictures of it.

 

Be careful with Yellow wires, they are used for the SRS aka as the airbags. If you don't know what the yellow wire is for, I would not be splicing or using them to power the radio.

 

My Avant has an Alpine radio in it and the the HU was wired with a wiring harness that allows it to be connected to the factory harness in the dash. The only other item added was a converter to lower the voltage from the speaker wire from the HU to the existing Bose power amp. And yes the radio continue to play if the ignition is switch off and the key is still in the ignition.

 

well I use the key in the ignition to run it when I do not have the engine on and I feel that its running down my battery and wanna try and conserve it. plus it makes everything else electronic run. I didn't splice into the yellows. I had them connected with wire nuts to begin with so i conjoined it with it and put it through the firewall and I connected to the battery but no dice. I think I may have not had it connected right but oh well for right now.

P.S. I covered the dash piece for that with DiNoc from ECS and it looks awesome. I'm gonna finish it up within the next day or so and install it and post some pictures of it.