Radio Questions for 1992 244

Ok, my oem tape deck just died. It endlessly auto-reverses now
so I think it's high time to pop in a cd/mp3 player.

I have purchased a DIN bezel kit and a wiring harness kit for
my vehicle. Mine apparently has the amplifier also, which seems
to be broken as well, because when I turn the fader to the back
all I get is very shoddy sound from one rear speaker.

I read in an earlier post that I should bypass or remove the
amplifier. Is it only active for the rear speakers then? I don't
have a problem with this as my new headunit should be plenty loud
enough for my aging ears. Whats the best way to proceed?

I'm pretty skillful with wiring and such so I'm mainly looking
out for potential problem areas and things to watch out for.

 

Yes, remove the existing amplifier as well. Not only is it relatively
poor quality, you'll spend too much time trying to figure out how to
drive it with your new radio. You'll be able to figure out which
speakers are driven by the amp when you remove it by the number of wires
connected.

--
Mike F.
Thornhill (near Toronto), Ont.

NOTE: new address!!
Replace tt with t (twice!) and remove parentheses to email me directly.
(But I check the newsgroup more often than this email address.)

 

Ok, the radio just got here. Its a brand new Jensen MP7720 headunit with
motorized face and cd/mp3 capability. I picked it because:

(1) Pretty inexpensive
(2) Shouldn't get stolen (See [1])
(3) Trim matches 240 interior fairly well

I'm concerned. Jensen stuff is bottom shelf. I'm hoping this thing will
last me a couple years at least before the laser burns out. I'll probably
make a cdr with 100 or so mp3's, pop it in, hit shuffle, and forget it.

On the bright side, it has aux in, so I am planning on plumbing a little
wiring into the glovebox so I can plug my PDA in with its Ogg/Vorbis
player. The little Linux Zaurus PDA can store a bunch of oggs on its
little SD card and its solid state If the cd laser craps out I'll
still be able to use the PDA to play music on the radio!

I'm going to tackle the amp tomorrow. I am tempted to use 3M connectors to
jump around the harness, but experience with stereos tells me to get out
the soldering iron and shrink tubing. Nothing worse than hitting a bump
and your crummy wiring job blinks out leaving you beating on the panels
trying to make it work again.

How about those expensive liquid filled telephone crimp connector things?
Anybody ever use those on a car stereo?