another radio swap thread
 

forgive me if this has been re-hashed 100x...

i need to swap out my radio. It died and so i'm interested in putting a decent Kenwood unit. I *do* have the Bose amp and speakers. The local "high end" shop here suggested that i just bypass the amp entirely ...thus no need to spend 700 on the ITNAV system. So if i go down this path i'd be driving all the speakers from the head unit.

question - is this a mistake? that is, do you think the sound will be worse than driving the sound thru the Bose Amp.

question 2 - if i need an amp to drive the various speakers i would think it would be cheaper to install a new amp and remove the Bose amp. I would think for the price of the ITNAV you could buy a decent amp. Am i missing something?

question 3 - does anyone has a layout of the what speakers are where? for example i don't think there's a sub in this car nor do i really know how many speakers there are and if each one is driven directly from Bose Amp or is there some external cross over somewhere.

I'm curious to hear someone that knows the answers to all your questions. I swapped my OEM head unit out and no longer have rear speakers. Not a real big deal in the small cab but just like everything to work. It seems that all that needs to be done would be to change out the amp but have no idea where it is located. Does anyone have a schematic of the sound system. I've used search but couldn't find one.

Here's what I did. I chose NOT to replace the Bose amp. I'm sure if you went to the effort of replacing/bypassing the amp and replacing the speakers, you can realize an audio quality improvement but to me, the 997 in motion isn't that great a listening environment anyways so I decided the Bose was more than satisfactory. PLEASE DOUBLE CHECK EVERYTHING with test lights or multimeter or whatever because some radios and some wiring harnesses are probably different. I don't want to be responsible for anything you do.

I have a 2006 997S. There are plenty of videos on how to remove the radio on youtube. that was easy. Be careful with the screws that are in the middle of the small panel under the dash that exposes the two screws that hold the larger panels. you'll know what I'm talking about when you watch the video. They strip easily and mine were fastened pretty tightly. In fact, I'm going to buy new screws to replace the old ones I have.

Before I began disassembly I bought a couple things:

the radio- I bought a Pioneer AVH-1330NEX from Crutchfield. it came with a mounting bracket, a face plate, a (wannabe-)Metra wiring harness, and a antenna adapter.

The mounting bracket and face plate were fine. mostly. it is a pain to remove after it's been installed.

I threw the antenna adapter away- it didn't support the diversity antenna.

I bought a powered antenna adapter

and a fuse tap

and I bought this because I'm too cheap to pay $700 for a FO to RCA bridge. This works just as well for $100.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/RCA-...311.0.0.Uimkoo
Note it takes several weeks to get here from China.

If I remember correctly, the wiring harness was miswired.

first problem is 997s don't have a switched 12V although the Metra wiring harness has leads for both 12V and switched 12V. I ran one from the fuse box. use red wire because that seems to be the universal color for switched 12V in cars. there are several videos and forum threads on how to do this. Use the fuse tap and connect the wire to it. I drilled a hole to get behind the fusebox and run the wire under the carpet to the center console and up to the radio area.

next, the harness switches the 12V and the switched 12V. on the harness, I had to connect the red wire from the Metra harness to the yellow wire on the radio's harness. then the switched 12V from the fuse box connected to the red wire on the radio's harness. again, double check this with a test light or multimeter.

Attach the amazon antenna adapter to the two antenna leads from the car (yellow and black on my car) and the other end, a motorola antenna connector, goes into the radio. Now here's the trick- the blue antenna turn on lead from the radio, connects to BOTH the little blue lead from the antenna adapter and ALSO to the white wire on the cars wire harness. That white wire turns on the car's powered antenna. I used a 24ga wire tap similar to this
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Ginsco-67pcs-24-10-AWG-Quick-Splice-Solderless-Wire-and-T-Tap-Electrical-Connect/263437118527?epid=1592824492&hash=item3d56136c3f:g :XakAAOSwoPpaXAJO

after that, it was just reassembly of the radio and interior bits, and then cross your fingers everything works perfectly. Note that FM reception was never that great even with the factory radio, at least for me, so don't expect it to be great after the upgrade.

HTH.

Don't do it! I have Bose and did the double din keeping bose amp and all that, sure the new technology is great, but you definitely lose the quality of the BOSE sound..it does NOT sound the same as with factory PCM..for $2,000 i think i made a bad decision..should have just found some kind of AUX input solution instead through PCM

Listen to bliq above.

IMO the bose amp and speakers sound pretty decent with an aftermarket HU and all you need is the MOST HUR adapter that you can get for $90 on ebay and then a $20 faceplate kit from Metra.

Its a really cheap and simple swap that takes a couple hours at most.

Mike

I am at the point where I would like to replace the HU, to get the new features. IE, backup camera, app control, streaming, etc.

However, I dont want to loose all the PCM features. I know I can get to them from the stalk.

For those of you that have replaced the HU, did you miss any of the features of the PCM? Was the loss of PCM features from the HU worth the gained features for you?

looking at amazon and ebay and the HUR units are selling for around $600-$650.00. If I knew for sure it would get my rear speaker back I would buy one. Then have to find someone to install it. I'm no good at that work.

Why not try one of the eBay Most boxes for $80? They are reported to work exactly the same as the $600 version. I'm thinking of doing the same when the Sony XAV-AX5000 comes out.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Car-radio-S...BaQJfL&vxp=mtr

might be worth a try. beats hell out of $600.00. if you do it let us know how it worked out.

yeah there are a couple of us in this thread already who mentioned that that is the way to do it. I don't see any difference at all between the eBay box and the $600 boxes. I wouldn't be shocked if they're made in the exact same Factory over in China

https://rennlist.com/forums/997-forum/1026488-bose-head-unit-replacement-in-a-997s-for-under-150-and-in-30-minutes-or-less.html

I've bought the MOST ebay box and so far it's been great. I have a friend with the $600 module and I don't hear a difference. I added a subwoofer/amp and kept the Bose front/rear setup for now. I do eventually plan to change all the speakers.

And there shouldn't really be a difference in sound quality- it's all digital. either its perfect or it doesn't work. The difference might just be build quality but if you're just looking for good enough, the $80-100 units probably are that.

I generally care about 2 things from the PCM - range and mpg. I don't care about avg speed or any of that stuff. The stalk gives me what I need. And my head unit gives me a far better navigation system than the PCM 2.1 I had before, among all the other things you mentioned.

Well, I did it. I made the buy for one of the China HUR devices. I went for the $99 one instead of one of the two on eBay for $79. The cheaper ones only had Cheyenne on the list of compatible cars. They are probably the same, but I dont want to deal with the hassle if SOMETHING is different then I have to deal with them saying that it was not for my car. So, in this case $20 insurance.

The new NEX8200 looks like a great contender for the replacement deck. Either that or hold off and wait for a new deck with wireless android auto. But, I can at least test this out with one of the decks that I have to hear sound quality. Seems that many get a really bad whine/hiss from the needed gain adjustment? Lets see.

I have to disagree. In my opinion, Bose is not quality. I have been in the audio field for 30 years. Bose is marketing, like Monster cables.