Nick Posted December 15, 2003 Share Posted December 15, 2003 I have read many users posts about stereo problems with the Pathfinder. So this topic is for you. The Nissan Pathfinder came stock from the factory with 2 amps located in the rear of the vehicle on the right side behind a panel. These amps supply power to the speakers (ie: one amp for fronts, one amp for backs). Installing an aftermarket deck. If you have recently bought an aftermarket deck and you would like to install it yourself there are two options that you have. 1. You can install the deck without installing new speakers and hope that it gets power to the amps. For this you just need to go and purchase an install kit (can be purchased at any stereo store or even Wal-Mart) for your year Pathfinder. The plugs should hook straight into your existing ones, then connect all the wires. If you are not running new speakers this means that you will probably have to get power to the amps. But first once you get every wire hooked up lets check and see what we have going. Go ahead and turn on the stereo and turn up the volume. If you do not hear anything than this means that either you have it hooked up incorrectly, or that your amps do not have any power. So to correct this you will need to get power to the amps. You can either run a wire from the battery to the wire for the amps which is in the existing wire loom (mine is a pink wire) and it will always have power going to the amps. Another choice is to run a wire from the battery to a switch inside your vehicle and then to the amp wire which will then make it to where you can manually turn the amps on and off (this is what I did before I installed speakers). Now after you have done one of these methods check again and see if you have sound. If you do, then congratulations you have installed your stereo successfully. If not, than this probably means that you have something not hooked up right. 2. You can install the deck and also install new speakers. If you choose this way then I recommend to just bypass the amps (ie: removing them from the vehicle). Install your new deck and you will have to either run a new hot wire to the batter and a remote wire to the battery or you can find out which wires in the existing wire loom are the hot and remote and splice into them. After that you will need to run a short ground wire to any peice of metal that will do. Now installing the speakers. You have a choice of 4x6's in the front and 5x7's in the back although with minor cutting you can fit 6x9's in the back. You just need to pry the screens of the stock speakers, and then remove them. Now before you install your new speakers you first need to run new wires from the deck, to your new speakers, as you recall for this step we are bypassing the amp therefore you cannot use the existing wires. After you have installed all of your new wires you may now install your new speakers and put everything back together. Now turn on your stereo and listen to the great sounds of a job well done! I hope that this has helped a little and if you are still stuck then please feel free to post a topic in the Garage section and someone would be glad to help you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ernestevard Posted December 18, 2003 Share Posted December 18, 2003 i need help nick. your post is very helpful but i need some clarification. im not to much of an audio expert however i was able to install a new deck and 4 new speakers but i didnt bypass the factory amps. this is where i get confused. the system sounds pretty nice so i was wondering what was the puropse of bypassing these amps? will it cause damage to the speakers? please clarify this for me. btw i plan on adding a new pioneer amplifier and subwoofer. how should i approach to install it. ive never installed those componenets, installing a deck and speakers was pretty easy for me, just plug with the appropriate adapters. but please shed some expertise and reccomendations. thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted December 18, 2003 Share Posted December 18, 2003 The amp and sub is where your problem will be. Because you're running through the stock amps, you don't have to turn your volume up on your deck very high, to have it fairly loud in your truck. When you wire up your sub, you won't have a high enough signal from your deck to your amp to make the sub loud enough. The only way, that I can think of, to remedy that, is to bypass the stock amps, and run using your decks amplifiers, then the signal to your Subwoofer's amp will be as it should be. I was going to leave mine wired through the stock amps, until I ran into the same problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Posted December 18, 2003 Author Share Posted December 18, 2003 Well Simon is pretty right. But to answer your question, we bypass the amps because thats A LOT of power going to our speakers. See with only the speakers, and no sub you can have it to the factory amps and when you listen to the stereo you could have it on volume 3 whereas without the amps it would be volume 17. Then when you install your new sub and amp, it won't be thru the factory amps. The sub/amp need a volume of much higher than 3 to get that sub kickin pretty good. So with the factory amps still hooked up inorder to get the sub kickin you have to turn it up higher, and once you get the sub kickin you find out that your speakers are blown out because there was too much power going to them. What I suggest doing is running all new wires, run a new hot wire from the battery, a new accessory wire from the battery, a new ground wire, and new wires from the deck to each individual speaker. By doing this you have just bypassed the amps. Therefore you can take the amps out. Then you can run your sub, and amp, and it will all work fine. If you see this as a problem then I would suggest just taking it to a professional. The most it could be is $45 Hope this helps a little. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonMiller Posted December 18, 2003 Share Posted December 18, 2003 I am in the process of installing an aftermarket deck, but am not receiving power. I went out and bought a wiring harness adapter and then an express adapter to hook into that then into deck. So, everything is definately hooked up right, and I have installed many stereos. I tried pressing the reset button on the deck and then seeing if that turned it on, and it didn't. I then replaced the amplifier fuses and the radio fuses in the fuse box and this didn't help any. There was an aftermarket deck already in there, but I wasn't satisfied with it. It worked fine and everything, but I can't get power to either one now (the one that was in there and the one I want to put in). I can't figure it out, so any help would be greatly appreciated. I just hope my deck isn't fried. I was also thinking that I might need to replace more fuses, because the the radio does effect many other things in the truck(clock etc.). I tried hooking up the harness adapter from the other deck which is not the same. The plug is the same, but the wiring is different, that's how I blew a fuse initially. The power and everything is not located in the same terminals in the plug, oops. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Posted December 18, 2003 Author Share Posted December 18, 2003 Well my first guess would be to try and see if you have power to the hot wire with a test lamp. If not, then i would disconnect all your "quick connect" harness and check and see if power is getting to the stock hot wire (car must be in acc position for this) If not then, i would check all the fuses, and check your wiring up to the battery, sometimes there will be an inline fuse, but Im not sure on these. If you do however have power then i would check to make sure the power wire is indeed going to the power wire on the deck. If it is, then I would take the deck to a professional to make sure a fuse didn't blow inside. Hope that this helps a little. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonMiller Posted December 21, 2003 Share Posted December 21, 2003 Well, I got the deck working just fine. This may sound a little silly, but I hadn't hooked up the cigarette lighter prior to testing. I plugged it in and everything was good. I also replaced the 'room lamp' fuse before figuring out I had to plug the cig lighter in. As soon as I did this(replaced the fuse), I started having problems with the alarm. Everytime I turn the ignition on and off the status indicator goes on constant glow and the error sound beeps once. All of the doors lock as well, and I have no clue how to fix this. Any help would be appreciated, thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Posted December 21, 2003 Author Share Posted December 21, 2003 That is really odd because to be honest my cigarette lighter isn't hooked up right now and nothing does that in my pathy.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonMiller Posted December 21, 2003 Share Posted December 21, 2003 It is very odd....... When I first powered the stereo up, my alarm box (under drivers seat) started making radio static or modem type noises. Then the alarm horn/siren started making weird noises, and my doors kept locking and unlocking repeatedly. Also, when I started up my truck the alarm stayed on, in fact it made the truck almost stop running. The truck starts up and runs fine now, the only problem I have is what I described in my last post. When I say my cigarette lighter was unlplugged, I mean from the wiring harness. I think it's possessed! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Posted December 22, 2003 Author Share Posted December 22, 2003 Well today I found something out. My friend payed me to install an aftermarket stereo in his pathy so I did. But he wanted it to be through the stock amps. I had him buy a wiring harness and some little crimper things. Well I decided to do something different on his and that was change on of the wires around so it matched up with the amp wire in the wiring harness and the stock harness. I then installed everything like it supposed to be except I took the remote antenna/amp wire on his deck, and plugged it to the amp wire on the harness. Turned her on, and it worked! He was very happy although I wasn't. For some reason (i blame it on the amps) it makes the noise of the cd spinning in between songs in the speakers. But he was happy with the results and I made 30$ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tackerman Posted December 29, 2003 Share Posted December 29, 2003 I have the wiring harness diagram on how to bypass the factory amps. It does require cutting of the factory harness at the stock amp locations though. If anyone is interested, email me at tackerman@msvonline.com. It takes about twenty minutes for each amp to be bypassed. It is a bit easier than running new wires to each speaker location. Plus the stock front amp is in the back passenger side wall. This is very close to where most people will be putting aftermarket amps anyway. It allows for separate hook ups of the tweeters also. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
87mudfinder Posted December 30, 2003 Share Posted December 30, 2003 Just wondering in the 87 Pathfinder where the heck the rear speaker wires run? Dunno if they changed from the manual but i cannot find them???? Having a real pain for they not hooked up and don't really want to bust the inide apart just of yet to find these 2 wires.... I need xray goggles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tif22 Posted January 7, 2004 Share Posted January 7, 2004 OK, so on top of what's been discussed here already, I have a couple of additional questions. Firstly, regarding the amps. I bought an adapter, and got the pin-outs from the stock harness to the one for my stereo. I have a wire on the stereo for 'remote' at a maximum of 200mA. So my question is this, the wire in the stock harness that comes from the stereo, is it a TURN-ON wire (ie. it trips a relay), or is it the actual power supply to the amps? If it's just a relay, then my 200mA remote line should be just fine, if it's the power supply to the amps, then I'll have to wire it some other way as suggested here. Seems to me this is what Nick ended up doing above. My second question is about the orange wire (pin H, next to the red accessory power wire) in the stock harness. The pin-out I have says 'do not use', but I'm guessing that this is the wire required for connecting the illumination? Thanks for any help on this one. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sw Posted January 7, 2004 Share Posted January 7, 2004 remote wire just turns amps on, NOT powers them up Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Posted January 7, 2004 Author Share Posted January 7, 2004 Well tif22, Im not sure I understood most of what you said but here it goes . Coming out of your stereo you have a wire (usually purple) called the remote wire. What this does is either send power to the antenna, to make it go up if you choose to do that. Or you can do what I did on my friends pathy and hook this to the wire on the wiring harness for your amps. Then your amps will turn on when you turn the deck on. As for the illumination wire, Im not to sure what that is for. In the 10 stereos I have installed I have never used it so I can't really help you there. If you have any more questions or if I didn't answer the remote one clear enough please feel free to ask. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tif22 Posted January 7, 2004 Share Posted January 7, 2004 Well tif22, Im not sure I understood most of what you said but here it goes . Coming out of your stereo you have a wire (usually purple) called the remote wire. What this does is either send power to the antenna, to make it go up if you choose to do that. Or you can do what I did on my friends pathy and hook this to the wire on the wiring harness for your amps. Then your amps will turn on when you turn the deck on. As for the illumination wire, Im not to sure what that is for. In the 10 stereos I have installed I have never used it so I can't really help you there. If you have any more questions or if I didn't answer the remote one clear enough please feel free to ask. Yeah, that's basically what I figured, thanks for the confirmation! I'll probably just leave the illumination wire unterminated to be safe, it just means that the stereo face won't dim with the dash, not a big deal. When I've had this stereo in other cars (wow...this is the fourth car it will be in), I've just turned the dimmer off anyway. Thanks for the help! Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tif22 Posted January 17, 2004 Share Posted January 17, 2004 OK, so we finally got the truck, and I just tried to install the stereo. I have a harness that supposedly mates up with factory unit, all wired up and ready to go. Now, I pulled the factory unit out, and lo and behold...the factory harness isn't the same! Any schematics I found online, match the adapter harness I bought, which makes things even stranger. Can anyone shed some light on this? We also have the 'FM diversity' antenna, which has an odd plug, but for which, I assume that I can find an adapter. Thanks, Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tif22 Posted January 17, 2004 Share Posted January 17, 2004 AH HA! After some searching, it appears that the harness in our truck is for a '94 Nissan. Ownership says it's a '95, but perhaps it's an early MY '95 build, and the harness cutover wasn't until part way through the MY. I hope that's the case anyway, otherwise, someone has done some funny paperwork! Just thought I would post this for the benefit of anyone else who is in the same situation. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lily0gi Posted January 20, 2004 Share Posted January 20, 2004 anyone know of a good site where i can read up on stereo installations? i'm looking to install an aftermarket head unit into my pathy, but i'm sooooo lost. i want to do this as a weekend project, but after even trying (without success) to take the front door panels, i'm ready to give up... please help... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lily0gi Posted January 22, 2004 Share Posted January 22, 2004 WHOO HOO!! i finally got my head unit installed. i'm still running into minor problems (no trim ring and no dim sleeve, but easily fixed). now on two step two of my sound upgrade... speakers. anyone have any recommendations for the 4x6s in the front and 5x7s in the back? i've used sony xplods in the past and they're pretty good, but anyone had a really good experience? i'm still not ready to move on to the sub and my own amps yet, but one step at a time right?? thanks for your help... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kbreitwieser Posted January 29, 2004 Share Posted January 29, 2004 A few stereo tips... Yes the 95 uses the harness from the 94 (I had the same problem). The remote wire coming out of an aftermarket deck is usually blue or blue with a stripe. Some decks have two, one for the power antenna, one for the amps. I recommend using the factory amps while they still work. An easy solution to previous posts about only having the volume on 3 and it already being loud is easy, turn off the loudness feature on your deck and you will eliminate excess noise and feedback. Most decks these days have enough audio adjustments to get your system sounding sweet. The factory speakers don't last forever, mine started going bad a few months ago. Been having a hard time finding speakers that will fit w/out modifications. Crutchfield is absolutely useless, they say that there are no speakers that fit our trucks, which is not true. I have found that going to speaker man. websites such as infinity, polk audio, clarion, jbl, etc... is more helpful, most offer a vehicle fit guide on their sites. Also, a place for good priced speakers and decks is a website called etronics.com, so far they have the best prices on the stuff i'm interested in. I bought a new kenwood deck from them 1 year ago, and had no problems, they ship fast and have great prices. Some speakers that the manufacturers' claim fit: Polk Audio ex357 Clarion src5715 src5795 JBL p8652 gto8626 Infinity ref6802cf All are reasonably priced. Have also found speaker dimensions for my '95 (can't remember the website) Front 5X7" 2 3/16" depth Rear 5X7" 2 11/16" depth Hope this is helpful to some of you, please advise if any of my info is inaccurate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lily0gi Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 kbreitwieser you're right about crutchfield. they're worthless. only thing they're good for is wiring harnesses. anyway, i've got a 95 pathy, and i used 4x6's in the front and 5x7's in the back. Be warned about the info from manufacturers though. I bought the kicker 46 and kicker 57 for my car (which they said would fit). i needed ALOT of modifications to make them fit properly. first of all, the rear speakers have a metal dome on the top that's fitted for the factory speakers. mine did not fit very well, so i had to cut off some of the roofing material to make it fit and screw in properly. as for the front, Nissan once again made a custom molding for their factory speaker. the 4x6's that i got would fall through their hole. i ended up having to get some plywood, cut out the same pattern, and mount my new speakers to the plywood. you could probably fit 5x7's in the front, but once again it'll be some more custom work. i was able to mount an alpine 6 cd changer in the glove compartment relatively easy compared to the speakers. anyway, my system sounds pretty good now, but i'm just waiting for another free weekend to put my bass tube in the car. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest streetpathy91 Posted February 9, 2004 Share Posted February 9, 2004 I think i can help with some problems if anyone is interested, i intall car tereos for a living, and ive done jsut about every crazy thing imaginible with stereos. One thing i know for a fact is my 91 Pathfinder can take 6x9's for rear speakers and 4x6's with very little modification at all. However i have installed 5-1/4" components (Alpine SPX-137a) up front WITH the crossover mounted in the door, and this crossover is HUGE, so theres room up front for more than you might think. I also had to bypass the factory amp located behind and just below the CD player, not very hard to do with a proper wiring diagram. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
revgolem Posted February 11, 2004 Share Posted February 11, 2004 Hey everyone. I've had my 95 pathy for about a year now, and i'm just about to start digging into and making it my own. A few months ago i replaced the factory head unit with an Alpine tape/changer controller, sub and EQ (currently only running sub)... i used the harness and everything worked. this was before i had ANY idea about removing the factory amps from the equasion. so of course all my speakers are tattered. i'm just about to replace them, and was all ready to bypass the amps when i thought of a twost to the whole scheme... the whole reason to bypass the amps is because the power of both the head and amps were too much for the speakers... BUT, if i wanted to add them to the EQ mix, should i leave the amps in the loop? i was noticing that the EQ has only a "low level input" from the head. so am i correct in assuming that i should just cut the existing wires in the harness and hook them directly to the EQ, leaving the amps the way they are? does anyone know the specs on the factory amps? I'm pretty new to all of this, but learning fast! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
87pathy Posted February 21, 2004 Share Posted February 21, 2004 I have installed a major stereo in my Pathfinder and haven't run into any suck problems. If your worried about that amp jut run new wires. It not that hard to do honestly. I'm running a pioneer deck a 600 watt Panet amp. Front 6.5 inch neo's and 6x9 neo's in the back all concealed in original panels. I have fiberglassed the panels to create custom boxes and installed Resonant engineering 8's that pound. This took all of a day to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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