I replaced my Bose head unit with a Clarion one. I hadn't put a radio in a car for 20 yrs. haha

Anyways, the wiring harness on my Nissan has illumination and dimmer. My Clarion radio only has an illumination wire. Right now I have it wired illumination to illumination. Can I hook the dimmer wire from my car to the illumination on the Clarion unit and get the dimming function?

No.

Negative, if you do that the dimmer and illum. Will feed into each other. You'll either blow fuses, or your dash will just black out.

Did you run a bypass of the headunit amp? I'm not familiar with your car's Bose system, but in both of my cars that have had Bose systems, each speaker was equipped with it's ppm amp, and bypassing the headunit internal amp was far more effective.

Notthat it's related to your question or anything

I wasn't going to hook all three up. I was just going to hook up the car's dimmer (orange/white) to the radio's illumination (orange) and leave the illumination line from my vehicle unused.

Still the same answer?

MrFord: I used the preamp outputs to run to my bose system. It worked great. I heard that you need more than 2 volts per RCA to work well with the bose system, so the headunit I bought had 4v's.

Bose usually does have a stock amp. The standard aftermarket wattage output is usually way more then then enough to run the speakers. You probably would get more clarity by bypassing the stock amp and running soaker wire direct from the head unit.

My 04 ram 2500 laramie had the stock bose 6 disc in dash.

Pioneer avic-z120bt head unit
2 3k watt peak amps both capped.
Amp output controllers up front
1 run 4 channel 2 5x7 with onboard tweeters and 2 5" 500w rms per door 750peak
1 run 2 channel 2 10s 1500 watt rms each stealth box under the rear bench. Complete pb bass system, the equivalent pioneer system was 10k$ and pb offered a 3yr warrantee,compared to pioneers 1. It is VERY loud, and crystal clear.

Now I just need to add a second alternator or possibly a second yellowtop accessory battery.

And to answer your question, I dunno if its different on model basis, but I hooked up a friends ford lightning that way, dash blacked out until I disconnected the illumination. Outside of the harness I wouldn't add/remove wiring. Most of the cheaper headunits don't have illum/dimmer capability.

I found an auto dimming function on my receiver. Now the lights dim when I turn on my lights. That's good enough for me.

https://www.youtube.com/...ture=youtube_gdata_player

Light function on my head unit
Theres also a dimmer function that I have disabled. The night/day mode works good, and I know its dirty, this one is in my tow truck