Has anyone upgraded their speakers and/or amplifier and kept the factory stereo?

I'm planning on replacing the radio later (since I have a CD player wired to it already and an 8-band* factory equalizer) but I just want to replace the speakers and add a new amplifier to the existing setup.

Is their anything I need to worry about, like connecting the radio to the amp? I'm trying not to take apart what's there before I get everything, but from what I saw while searching around on the net, it looked like the factory setup has a unique plug. Am I seeing things or will I need to do some rewiring?




[*If I remember correctly]

EDIT:

Is it possible to hook up 6 speakers to one [4-channel] amp? As in 2 channels for the rear door speakers, and the other 2 channels for the front door and dash speakers?

 

Well...i've never tried hooking up an aftermarket amp to a factory head unit before but the weak link in the chain i see is the remote wire that is supposed to turn the amp on. The way it works is the minute the sterio powers up it sends a power signal to the amp turning it on as well. You could try to find out which wire hooked up to the factory amp was in charge of turning it on, cut it out of that plug and use it for your remote wire. Maybe it would work for an aftermarket too? If it doesn't send enough of a signal (stock stuff usually works at a lower voltage) then canabalize your cigarette lighter and throw in a switch so you can turn the sucker off. The rest of the wires in that plug wouldn't get used. You would need to run a power line (with a fuse) straight from you battery like every other aftermarket amp senario. And find a different grounding point too.

Regarding the remote wire: I wouldn't recomend using any of the wires from your sterio except for that one that that was in charge of the amp in the first place. When i put in an EQ i tried piggy backing the accessory power to the sterio (the red wire)....and blew three fuses in the process. Moral of the story? Don't double up 12 volt signals for sterio equipement.

As to your last question....depends. Are the dash speakers component or just small speakers. Components have their own amp strickly for crossover purposes...I'm not sure what would happen to those amps if you pushed even more power through them....remember, you'd be putting an aftermarket part before a factory one....that usually blows things out. I suppose you could just cut the cross over amp out of the loop. On the other hand, if the dash speakers are are just that....small speakers directly pluged into your factory deck....then there's no problem doubling them up with the front door speakers. However, if you actually have 6 channels coming out of your factory deck i'd leave the dash ones alone. You can't push two signals into one channel...but you can split one channel to two speakers.

the real question is....will it all sound ok? Sure it's posible but you could very well be better off waiting until you replace the head unit to do all this. That's what i'd do. Then you can use the parts that were designed specifically for aftermarket sterios.

 

Hmm, I might wait like you said and just replace my rear speakers for now.

However I have another question--where the hell is the amp? Is it just really small or am I not seeing this thing? I took apart the bottom part of the driver's side console and I didn't see anything that struck me as being an amp.

ALL THAT SAID:

The dash speakers are just regular speakers unless I'm missing something. They're factory speakers, where the 740 (I have) only has those two and two rear door speakers.

I was looking in the store and it showed that I could use an "output converter" to get up to 80W per channel (4) and I'm wondering if anyone's done that before. I don't know if that's a good or bad idea yet. I am definitely going to get a new stereo head unit--but the question is do I need to do that at the same time if I want to use a new amp.

 

I don't know where the amp is in the 740. There's a chance your car may not have one. You should be able to follow the wireing harness into the bowls of your car. It should be pretty close to the surface/radio if it exists at all. I STRONGLY recomend buying the wire harness adapter....looks like this.

Not only will it make things easier for you but it'll tell you whether or not you have an amp. If the two plugs match up...no amp. If they don't....you have an amp that needs unpluging. In which case the plug on the bottom of the amp would fit into your wire harness.

So there are currently only 4 speakers in your car? Is there some kind of fit kit for the front doors that you're going to use to get 6 speakers? or is there already a place for them but no speaker? You'll have to excuse me, i'm not all that familiar with 740 speaker placement. I do know that those dash speakers aren't going to handle an aftermarket amp very well on their own. They aren't very strong (OEM speakers never are) and can't handle that many watts. An Aftermarket deck with 45 to 55 watts per channel will be more than enough to blow those little guys out. Same with any aftermarket speaker you throw into your doors. They'll sound ok with the factory head and even better with an aftermarket deck.

In any case, you won't need an output converter unless you plan to keep the factory deck and get really big new speakers (like 8" or bigger). It's a neat concept but not really aplicable for the speakers you're dealing with. What is it you hope to accomplish with introducing the amp or converter? Are you worried the factory deck won't push the new speakers?

 

I'm not necessarily worried about the power of the factory system

I'm more conserned if it's possible to do what I propose--add a new amp (if it already has one) and new speakers to the existing setup.

[In the 740 there are already cut-outs covered by vinyl or faux-leather for 6.5" speakers in the front doors btw.]

This is only in the planning stage but I'm thinking of adding four 130W [max] speakers and most-likely a 100W per channel [four-channel] amplifier. I just wanted to check if anyone's done a similar setup. I don't really care about the dashboard speakers--but if I can "salvage" them, that would be nice [for lack of a better word].



EDIT: Your link is for installing a new stereo...

That's good advice, and I've seen it before, it just doesn't apply to what I'm asking.

 

"Nobody knows"...

 

Yeah, i know it was...that was my suggestion if you choise to wait till you got a new head unit.

I see....well that'll sound pretty good. I guess i'd still buy that wire harness though to avoid having to put it in later....as long as you're in there you know what i mean? You could just connect the wire harness speaker leads to the amp output and leave everything else dangling.....or whatever. I'd kind of like to hear how this idea turns out so i say go for it! Like the post downstairs says....all you really need to do is find a 12 volt signal to plug into the remote input on the amp and you're set (oh....and that switch).

 

alpine HU in mine, top quality baby with stock speakers that still sound good, and a bazooka sub

 

Quick question with that signature [photo]...

Are those rims on the 740 and older model rim, or something that was optional? [for later years 91/92]

 

Yeah second post but I just wanted to seperate this to make it clearer. I don't have a camera on me--and my phone takes horrible pictures--but I finished this around the first week of September or so.


The only problem I had was I was trying to work in such a small space and didn't try to remove the large knee panel that I didn't realize was removable until a week or so after starting the project.

Come to find out I'm trying to splice the completely wrong wires. I found the actual wires coming from the factory amp/subwoofer "THING" and I had to do some guesswork with many of the wires because they didn't match any diagrams or descriptions. What I was previously splicing into was some starter/ignition/or-something-like-that wires. In fact there were many wires, like black or green-and-some-color that were identical.

I ended up cutting tons of wires (I had a bunch of twistie connectors) and finding out they didn't do jack ####. I mean I cut down to like 7 wires or so and the illumination, antenna, power, and front dash speakers were still working. After some guesswork there, I found out which wires controlled the back and spliced those for the new front door speakers.

Right now my setup is the two back speakers replaced using the factory amp, and the two front speakers using the new amp and spliced from the back speakers' connection to the amp (each side is seperate). More-to-the point, each the left back signal is split so it's going to the left back door and left front door and vice-versa on the right side.

The back sounds pretty good so I haven't seen a point in changing it around right now. (My amp is a 4 channel amp and I was setting it up for all of that. So right now I just have the wires for the back doors speakers to the amp unconnected.)



The front speakers sound really good too, but I can't put on my speaker covers--these speakers stick out further than I anticipated. All four new speakers are Kenwood--the backs are similar to the stock Volvo speakers, the front ones have an extended tweeter in the middle, or whatever you want to call it.

[Edited to clear up grammar--typed it all pretty quickly the first time]

 

glad it's working out for you....if you ever find out which wires back there do what, post it. It always drives me crazy and it's been a LONG *** time since I tried to figure it out

 

Ha, if I find the paper I wrote them down on, I'll post the info.