I just inherited my Dad's 89 Maxima (SE/89,000miles) and wanted to change the tape deck. I went to BestBuy last night and purchased a Pioneer car stereo, since they had a sale going on with free installation. Well I dropped off the car and 1/2 hour later the technician calls me to tell me that he is unable to install it because the car has Bose speakers and that if the stereo was installed, there would be an issue of the unit shutting down because of the voltage coming from the speaker .

The technician verified that if I wanted to still replace the stereo, then I will also need to replace the speaker and the wires. Is this guy for real??? My friend had a '91 maxima and he did not have this issue when his stereo was replaced.

Let me know what you guys think.


BidaBear

 

He's full of bull for sure. You just need to get a regulator box (for a lack of better words, I forget what it's called) You can pick it up at crutchfield I know because that's where I got mine as well as my harness. There are supposedly amps on the speakers (of this I am not 100% sure) and you need to regulate that from a box that you mount between the connection of the stereo and speakers. Then you adjust the volume for the speaker individually from the box so that you don't blow them.

 

when I replaced my head unit I bypassed all my bose amps and ran them directly off the head unit amp. But I did it because my amps were going bad. Yes each speaker has its own amp built in to it.

 

I got mine from Crutchfield too -- I just call it a wiring harness adapter. It's ~$50 though.

 

I just replaced the speakers and HU, left the wires
did bypass the amps

 

Is there a DIY thread on this so I don't have to go through the same issue. Let me know if there is one available.

Thanks in advance!!

 

Internetautomart probably has the most logical solution. You can put in new speakers and bypass the wiring. Stock sizes are 4" in the front and 6x9s in the back.

If you buy the adapter (it does cost around $50) it will work, but within a year or two your amps and speakers will go bad. I had one in my car and the line level inputs, even set at the lowest levels are considerably higher than the stock ones. It will sound great at first, but will go to crap. IIRC, on the adapter, it says to not use a HU that exceeds 30 (or 35?) watts per channel max. Virtually every HU out makes more power than that. I had a Peripheral adapter, BTW. You can check soundomain.com and they sell them there. The actual wiring harness adapter from Crutchfield is different. That just allows you to plug in the new HU to the existing wires in the dash (power, speaker, remote, ground, etc) without having to splice anything.

If you want better sound out of the front speakers, buy speaker pods from James92SE and then put in some 6.5" speakers.

On my car, I rewired the fronts and used the existing wires in the rear, bypassing the Bose amp. I have an Alpine HU with 6.5s in front and 6x9s in the rear. I also have an amp and a sub, but that's not a reference for you at this time.

 

Now you've got me wondering. Randomly my speakers will die out, but if I hit a bump or if I raise the volume over 20 on my kenwood excelon they come back. Think that is the individual amps or my headunit?

 

I had a front speaker that I thought had a short in it (bose). I took the door pannel off and the speaker fell out of the housing! I screwed it back in and it worked great!

 

I guess that is the next step to take, thanks for the advice

 

give it a shot it can't hurt. You could have a wiring problem or a bad amp if you haven't already bypassed your bose amps

 

Thanks for all the advice. I think the most feasible solution is to simply changeout the speakers in the car. My last question would be if I can still use the existing speaker wires in during install?

 

yeah, you have to find the diagram for the wires since you need to bypass the amps. I think there might be one buried in the stickies somewhere, but I can't remember. Either that or ask some guru like Craig...

You might even try a stereo shop. Most of them have computer programs and books with diagrams of your whole car's electrical system.

 

just cut the red and black wires from the back of the amp and run the 2 wires off the speaker directly to the stereo. It has been a long time since I did this but as long as you know how to operate a pair of wire cutters and a soldering gun you can do this job.

 

that's basically what I did without the soldering gun