Hey guys & gals,

I bought my daughter a stereo for Christmas, and today was "install day".. Well, I got the new speakers installed without too much trouble (once I removed the GLUE that the PO has used to attach the speaker grills… grrr!)

It had a Blaupunkt aftermarket radio, and to my horror it had been installed by a hack that cut all the speaker leads down inside the center console and ran his/her own harness up to the head unit. I patched all that back up and removed the hack harness, returning everything back to stock and pulling the Blaupunkt radio to make room for the new Sony.

Then the problems started.. The Metra harness I received looks like it is supposed to bypass an amp that is "located under the steering column". Well, there is no such harness under the steering column that I can find. I'm getting all the power and ground leads to the head unit through the stock plug, but I cannot figure out where the speaker leads terminate. (the Metra harness appears to be a jumper for the speaker wires).

Can someone tell me either (1) that there is an amp harness somewhere and I'm just not looking in the right place or (2) they sent me the wrong adapter because there is no amp "under the steering column", but I can find the speaker connecter located ____ (fill in the blank).

Hope this makes sense!

 

some cars had the amps, some didn't.

our 1987 240 was only wired for front door speakers, and the factory radio harness was basically useless, so I had to run my own rear channel wires. I think that car is on its 3rd or 4th stereo in 25 years, hah.

my 1992 740 wagon had a amp under the driver side dash near the steering column, and all speaker positions were wired even if they weren't all there, so I used that harness to wire my ssytem, although I did it somewhat creatively, with crossovers under the dash, tweeters mounted in the dash speaker spots, and 6.5" woofers in the front doors.

 

Thanks pierce. As I discovered today, the "amp" in my daughter's car is actually located immediately behind the ashtray, and of course the plug I needed to access was plugged directly into the top of it. This necessitated removing both side panels as well as the entire console face (being careful not to break any of the wires). I was then able to use very long screwdrivers on each side to pry the connector loose and push it down over to the driver's side where I was then able to attach the harness that Crutchfield supplied with the radio. One of the things I'm noticing about this car is that almost ALL the screws holding all the trim in place are GONE. No wonder the thing rattles like a tin can full of rocks when it rolls down the road! Is there an easy source for an assortment of the various trim screws, or does one have to go to the Volvo dealer and get them one-by-one?