Went Back to Stock Radio

[digitalrelay]

I thought I'd pass along my experience here in case anyone is considering going back to a stock radio.

As a recent new owner of a 1989 convertible, I have been very disappointed with the aftermarket CD player head unit that was in my car. It's a Sony unit that was installed in 1991 or so (I have the receipt). So, I decided to buy a used cassette with sliders head unit from a member here.

To start, I found the Premium Sound amp in my trunk and discovered the harness had been cut. Evidently, when the aftermarket unit was installed, they ran new speaker wire from the deck back to the trunk, where they spliced into the speaker wires.

I got some crimp connectors and re-spliced everything in the trunk harness back to stock. Then I pulled the deck and cut the speaker wires that had been added. After I removed the deck and harness that came with it, I went about matching up the stock wires to the stock head unit. I got it all hooked up and turned it on. It immediately sounded better than the aftermarket unit, but I realized I only had front speakers working. I looked around and found two wires attached to a connector that was similar in layout to the speaker connectors I had attached to the head unit. I made an educated guess that the connector was probably used for the older style fader, since the wire colors were the same as the front speaker wires, but these also had stripes. I spliced these two wires into the corresponding front speaker wires and the rear speakers worked perfectly!

The sound of this setup is a huge step up from the aftermarket unit. I'm very happy with the results.

As far as drawbacks, I don't have a fader, so I cannot adjust, but I have always run my car stereos flat EQ, center balance and fader.

I tried to solder in an 1/8" cable to use with my iPhone, but it did not work. The sound of the cassette cut out when I plugged the cable into my iPhone, but the iPhone would not pass sound properly. I could barely hear it come through. I figured it was a bad solder job or crossed wires. I took a look inside, but I didn't want to mess with it anymore and decided I'll go with a cassette adapter, or FM transmitter/charger.

Also, the AM band did not work. I suspect my digging around inside to install the 1/8" cable may have something to do with that problem.

[redsubdivisions]

A while back a lot of people thought that you absolutely HAD to run new wires when installing an aftermarket unit. This is not the case anymore as all you have to do is find the common ground point where the speakers meet up and separate it (it is generally concealed behind a rubber green cover). I did this with my head unit and it works 100% fine with the stock radio wires. The previous owner of my car initially ran new wires and I tore them out because they were actually crammed behind my dash to the point the head unit would not stay all the way flush with the dash.

If you want to upgrade to an aftermarket unit, do it (unless you have major OCD about keeping everything original).

[dwvw]

It sounds like the previous owner had some polarity problems when wiring it up. The head unit should have very little effect on the SQ of a system like yours. As for soldering in a 1/8 cable, how did you do this? You cannot just solder onto the existing speaker wires while they are connected to a head unit. The two amplifiers (one in the Iphone/one in the head unit) will see each other. Best case scenario is what you described, worst case scenario is blowing the amplifier portions of each unit.

[digitalrelay]

I'd agree that the previous install probably had polarity problems. That is what it sounded like the first time I turned it on. Being that it was such and old deck and I prefer the look and function of the stock radios, I decided to go that route. I have a CD player in my other car, and it is almost never used. I listen to FM or iPhone via FM transmitter in that car.

The 1/8" wire was solder inside the radio to what I thought was the line connections for the cassette player. I used the following link as my guide:

http://www.e30tech.com/forum/showthread.php?t=26218&highlight=cassette+wire

I may take another shot at it in the future, but since I'm used to using the transmitter, and it also serves to charge, I'm pretty happy with that setup. Losing AM is kind of a bummer, but I can stream all of those stations via iPhone apps anyway.