AcuraX2

Hello all. I am brand new to this forum. My wife and I just got a 2000 TL and love it. We now have the TL and a 2001 MDX. That is where the AcuraX2 comes in. Anyway, now to the questions.

I am going to replace the stereo and I want to do it a little at a time. I have done the research on removing the factory head so, I think I have that down.

1) I am installing an Alpine 7893. Can I buy a wiring harness that plugs into the factory harness?

2) Can I just install the head unit and use the factory speakers for now?

I am not new to installs but, a few things I have read had me worried about the Bose stereo. In the MDX, I removed the factory head, used a Honda wiring harness and wired in an Eclipse 7002 indash screen. It was pretty easy.

Thanks for any advice.

AcuraX2

In case anyone is interested, this is my newest install.


http://www.acuramdx.org/forums/showt...&threadid=6795

magiviper

wow you bought all that at once? not poor are you? haha.. umm installing the head unit and using factory speakers won't work I'm pretty sure because the speakers have the amp behind them instead of in the original head

magiviper

I'm not sure about wiring harnesses because I have a 1st gen tl and don't know a TON about the 2nd gens you could ask best buy or your local sound shop if it exists I think (although if you go to best buy it will depend on whether or not the guy knows what hes doing)

shawhite

ok i am not sure what car you are planning to install the headunit in but i am pretty sure that the same will apply to both cars...

1. yes there is a wiring harness that will allow you to hook up a aftermarket headunit to the stock wiring harness.... the 98 and up honda wiring harness from metra will do the trick....

2. and yes you can keep the stock bose speakers for now until you are ready to upgrade them.... but if you are installing the deck in the tl then you will loose the stock sub when you use the 98 and up honda wiring harness .... you will have to do a little splicing to get this to work...

hey magiviper i dont know how the 1st gen tl works but the 2nd gen does not have an amp... the headunit actually powers the speakers... now the stock sub has an amp.... but i must say that the stock speakers and an aftermarket headunit actually sounds worse than the stock system....

AcuraX2

magiviper...."wow you bought all that at once? not poor are you? haha.".

Not poor, but not rich. This has been a steady project of trading and buying. Plus the Eclipse 7002, I bought from a person who was desperate for cash. Picked it up for a fraction of new cost and he had never used it.

magiviper and shawhite...
This is the question I am trying to answer. I have seen all this talk about bypassing eq's and stock amps. I am not worried about the stock sub. A 10" L7 is going in the trunk. And I know the stock speakers will sound like crap. I just want to know if I buy the Honda adapter, can I use the factory speakers? Will the my new Alpine's speaker outs be hooked directy to the stock speakers or are there things hidden inbetween the factory harness and the factory speakers that will screw it up? Will I need to run new speaker wire at the same time I install the head unit?

Here is my plan if it will work.

1) Install new head unit
2) Install component speakers in doors
3) Add amp to power door speakers
4) Add sub and amp

Can I do this in small increments?

Thanks for the help.

magiviper

oh.. see I thought that was the problem with the bose system.. that the head unit didn't have an amp and the speakers had amps attached to them individually oh well I dunno

shawhite

yes you can certianly do that... right now i have the stock speakers in the doors being ran by my pioneer avx-p7300dvd (which i am trying to sell at the moment).... and they dont sound the best but they work perfectly fine.... and basiclly you are doing what i just did... i installed the pioneer headunit leaving the rest of the system stock, then i installed a sub and now i am in the progress of upgrading the stock door speakers with jl audio and while im at it i am upgrading the sub with 1 jl 12w7.... but yes the alpine deck will wire directly to the 98 and up honda wiring harness... and everything will play except the stock sub... no big lose there....

hey magiviper dont feel bad i thought the same thing until i saw the schematic and then i realized that the signal leaves the headunit where it passes thru a eq then comes back thru the headunit to get amplified and then leaves once again to the speakers... except for the sub which leaves directly from the eq and goes to its own seperate amp.... if you would like i can send you the schematic so you can look at it your self....

AcuraX2

shawhite...thanks for answering what I needed. could you send me that schematic pic? I would love to see it.

shawhite

here is a link to the schematics courtesy of IGGY...

http://users.adelphia.net/~krisnlore...o/spkframe.htm

click on schematics in the bottom left....

AcuraX2

So if I am reading the schematic correctly, I can use the Metra harness with the 20 pin stock harness and bypass the eq all together? The only thing I will loose is the stock sub? Does that sound right? That would work great for me.

shawhite

that is correct...

oVerBoost

hmm i wanted to do my system in slow increments too. i even actually already bought the Alpine unit you have. when i took it to a shop to get it in the guy told me that if i install the unit without replacing my speaker then the stock speakers will eventually blow out in a couple of months or so. HMMMM. so yea i don't know. something to do with the different ohms that the stock unit amp puts out than teh aftermarket ones. i dono.