PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum - View Single Post - 91 300D Stereo Upgrade..What do I have from factory?

JamesDean · #14 11-09-2012, 12:09 AM

Alrighty,

So I unintentionally dug into this project tonight and I found out. That the deck in fact was not original to the car. I took out the deck and the antenna wire was just cut and hanging out.

There was two speaker couplers just hanging there, disconnected. Testing them revealed they were connected to rear speakers. They seemed to pass through the fader as it had influence on them but not the fronts.

There was a thick white cable disconnected as well. Presumably this connected to the Tuner/Amp unit in the trunk.

After battery testing all four of the speaker couplers and getting a response from each speaker (except the doors) I decided to go-ahead with installing my new Kenwood deck. I attached the deck's speaker outputs to the ones in the console and fired it up.

It worked. I cranked up the music, nothing from the active bass speakers. I kept climbing in volume and then the deck cut out and something in the trunk clicked.

Originally I had thought the previous owner had ran or somehow directly accessed each speaker because with the battery test each buzzed.

But now I think that the factory amp/tuner module is still in tact.

So tomorrow, the plan is to remove the tuner/amp module and patch my Kenwood directly to the speakers as best as I can. Then see if I can figure out a way to patch the active bass amplifier into the system as well. If I understand how it works, it should be as simple as coupling the active bass to the rear speaker line and powering up the active bass amp..There was two wires in the center console I could not account for though. One I believe was for illumination and the other was unknown. It might have been for "antenna control" which also powers up the active bass amp.

Ultimately, perhaps next year, I'll drop in a normal 50x4 amplifier and run that instead of the head unit. I might also replace the speakers depending on how I feel about them. But for now, my main listening is audio books and this should suffice.