Most of the new receivers have all the same color coded wires, but they
all have a manual in the box that calls out what they are, and all the
ones I have gotten lately have little tabs on the wires too that say,
e.g., LSPKR, PWR, etc. So that part is easy.
I put one in the 300TD, had to splice some wire to the rear speakers at
the fader (you have to bypass it and hook the rear wires to the rear
wire outputs on the rcvr, so you might want to pull up the shifter boot
to make that part easier, or do some fishing if not. You will need to
find some always-on power somewhere to keep your settings going, I
forgot where I got that -- cig lighter splice maybe? You can use some
of the other existing radio wires but you have to figure out which is
which. I forget now what they are, but someone in the past posted that
info. I recall it was fairly apparent what was what.
A trick to determine which of those spkr wires is which is to touch a
pair to a 9V battery and you will hear the spkr click. They have some
color code, but I don't remember it. You might want to buy some
crimpers and in-line crimp connectors and a bit of spkr wire if you
don't have that, to do the hook-ups. Or if you have a soldering iron
that works better, with some heat shrink tubing over the joints. You
can also get those little squeeze connectors that fit over the wires and
have little pins that penetrate and connect them.
The new unit slides right into the DIN mount, and latches in there, then
pop the surround cover on and you're all set. When I did Brunnhilde's
system, it was like an hour job.
My suggestion, for whatever it is worth, is to buy a relatively
inexpensive unit (there are units available for less than $100 that work
fine -- most all of them have the same guts, but the more expensive ones
have flashy displays and more buttons and such) and put some money into
some relatively decent speakers as that is what makes the sound good
(most anything will sound lots better that what is there now). I put a
pair of $50 somethings into the wagon in back (I think they were 4
inchers, they just about fit the metric holes), they put out some decent
sound. The fronts are hard to change if I recall others' comments, so I
left them in. Remember you will be competing with the klattaklatta so
more than that is not much better sound. Get one that does MP3 and has
an aux input for your music player -- most all do these days -- so you
can burn CDs with lots of tunes, and use your portable too.
Have fun!
--R
Zoltan Finks wrote:
We need to finally install a radio to fill that rectangular hole in our
dash.
Oh, also, do car stereos come with sufficient instructions to facilitate
installation?
Brian
83 240D
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