Okay time to do a little car audio upgrade. I have the stock Bose system in my 97.

I bought a nice Clarion HU already. I will be going with Infinity Kappas all around, components in front and coaxials in rear.

The search function seems to be broken right now, otherwise I wouldn't be asking this, but...what size speaker drops in the stock front speaker location (5.25")? I know the rears are 6.5" for sure.

 

6.5 for all, but you can fit an 8 in the door with minimal work.

 

I did some reading and it appears the fronts are oversized 6.5" which amounts to ~6.75" I guess I will need to rig up an adapter plate so it'll screw in.

Anyway, my setup will be as follows:

Clarion DXZ655MP
Infinity Reference 6010cs 6.5" component front
Infinity Reference 6012i 6.5" 2-way rear

Which harness adapter will I need to plug in an aftermarker HU to the stock BOSE harness?
I know I need a Nissan Diversity antenna adapter for the antenna.

 

Make a ring out of 3/4" MDF as your baffle. Makes it easy to mount, and will sound better than a bare speaker mounted to resonating metal.

edit: you can use your old speaker baffle as a template for that MDF ring.

 

Cool thanks, I will do that. Any ideas regarding the harness?

Basically I want to remove the Bose HU/speakers and put in my own HU and speakers. What will I need?

 

Are you amplifying the speakers? If you are just run new speaker wire.

 

No I'm running the speakers off my headunit and I would like to just use the stock wiring if possible.

 

I was able to fit Kenwood 6.5" with 4 screws that screwed right up to the factory mounts in the front door.

For the hookup, I kept the factory speaker wire but cut off the factory harness coming from the Bose amp (I removed the amp of course). After that, I just spliced in speaker wire going from the cut to the speaker. It was just a matter of looking at the color and wire diagram coming from the HU and using the same color wire to run to the speaker.

I will post pics when I get off work if you're interested, as the inside of my door is still off.

 

Hit it on the head. Bit of a PIA matching up colors but I guess it's the same amount of time as just running new wire.

 

If you could post some pics that would be very helpful. I've never done car audio before, but I am pretty familiar with home audio. I'm assuming it's the same thing, just connect two wires, power/signal and ground, lol.

If I ran new wire, wouldn't I have to cut off the stock HU harness and splice all new wires? That seems like too much unnecessary work since I'm not looking for a bazillion watt sound setup....Unless....what gauge is the stock speaker wire?

 

Somewhere around 20awg I believe.

You don't have to CUT off the harness, you could just tap into it.

 

I decided to just cut mine off.

I took some pictures below of the install I am working on now.

These are the wires that used to go to the Bose amp, which was in that black box. I don't think you have Bose so don't worry about that.


I matched them up with the color on the stock HU harness. My new Pioneer HU was connected to the other side. In this case, I bought a harness and all the wires were labeled which made it easy.


The new speaker bolted up pretty straight forward. I made sure not to poke a whole in the speaker like I did a few years ago.


Nevermind, I saw you DO have Bose.

 

Thanks for the pics, matude. I installed everything yesterday. The 6.5" speakers drop right into the stock Bose locations. I had a Haynes manual that told me the correct (Bose) wire colors for each speaker location so I only cut off the 2 speaker leads that I needed. I stuck the crossovers in the doors and ziptied them so they wouldn't flop around. For the tweeters, I had to enlarge the tweeter openings in the door panel in order to fit the flush mounts. The headunit was a piece of cake. I had the Metra harness diagram and the Clarion HU diagram and they both used the same colors for every wire, so that made it easy to wire everything up. The rear speakers were a pain in the **** though. I broke both the rear plastic quarter panels trying to get it off (the one where the seatbelts slide through).

 

Lol you broke your rear quarter panels?

Do you mean your C-pillar trims?

Good job though, glad it all worked out.

(All harnesses and HU's use standard colors.)

 

Yeah lol, the c-pillars. They look like crap now cause I mangled them trying to pry them off, and in the end I didn't even take them off. I just lifted up the rear deck as high as I could and installed the speakers.

 

I'm impressed that you took off the rear deck without taking off the C pillars. How's your rear deck look? Equally as mangled?

 

Nah, the rear deck is in perfect shape. It's secured in with a few of those annoying plastic trim fasteners that I just popped out. I didn't take the deck out, I just lifted it up a bit.