New Radios

[Davies]

#20678

I need new speakers all around, and could invest in getting the old stereo refurbished but really you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken sh*t!

So, I’m thinking of just pulling the whole OEM stereo out of my 1991 780.

While I have swapped out head units before, this is a bigger project.  Are there any gotchas I should be considering?  I intend to pull the amps, CD changer to clean things up and have found what seems to be a decent Alpine head unit that supports Apple CarPlay.

It does bother me that I’ll lose the OEM look, but honestly I need to get practical here because I have nothing really usable now.

Appreciate any thoughts/suggestions.

thanks!

[dn010]

#20783

The only suggestion I can give you is be very gentle while removing the original radio. By now, the plastic used in these cars are brittle and can stress crack or break easily, more so if the car stood in the heat a while. My first 780 I bought used, came with a single DIN stereo installed. It used one of those “Stereo Installation kits” that are common now whenever you want to change a newer vehicle’s radio to a single/double DIN. Quite nice because it had the storage space under the stereo and looked great. I highly doubt you’ll be able to find one of those kits today so you’ll have to get creative.

The amps are pretty straight forward to remove. The wiring you can either bundle up and cable tie in place or you can deal with removing it which means you’ll be pulling some interior trim to get it out. OR, if you don’t care about it, you can clip the wiring down and out of sight. I removed the wiring from both my 780s so you know there is at least someone has a spare sitting around. At the same time, neither of my 780s had CD changers so I’m useless with advice there.

 

Cheers.

[Davies]

#20800

Great info, thank you.

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