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95 Pathfinder stereo issues


bstone
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So my stock stereo works OK, but the display has gone out. Went and bought a cheap deck- basically just a radio with no CD, but media plug ins. Anyway, everything hooks up fine, but no matter what I do, I get no sound from the speakers. Read several posts about the same topic, but regardless of what I do, I can't get it to work. So 2 questions- 1. can anyone walk me through the wiring? I have an adapter I bought in order to avoid cutting the harness. Or 2, can someone suggest a stock Nissan unit that would plug in? My stock one is a single DIN, non-Bose unit radio cassette. In terms of a stock unit, I don't care if it's single or double DIN.

 

Thanks.

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The trouble with the stock stereo is that Nissan, for whatever reason, used a head unit that outputs to a pair of amplifiers (should both be in the passenger's rear quarter panel on your '95, that's where mine were anyway), and those amps are what drive the speakers. Hooking up a new HU to the old HU outputs can be done if you also connect the turn-on wire for the amps, but I don't recommend it--your HU will have to be on low volume to compensate for the amps bumping it up and any stupid beeping noises your HU makes will be deafening. Better to bypass the amps. I did a writeup on this a few years ago but of course the pictures are gone because Photobucket. The Crutchfield chart (linked in the writeup) is most of what you need to know anyway.

 

The other way to do it is to just run new wires from your aftermarket HU directly to the speakers. The stock wires are pretty thin and much longer than they need to be. This is probably the better way to do it, but my dirty/quick/nasty worked pretty well, too.

 

Oh, and the stock amps aren't completely useless, either. I wired a 3.5mm jack to my old rear amp (just hooked it to the right/left inputs and ground) and connected it to a couple speakers and ran that in Rat Trap for quite a while before I got around to installing a new stereo. Also makes a good shop stereo, if you've got a 12v supply handy.

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Try this, I found it years ago and it worked great. You don't even have to hack up the amps if you want. On mine I just tinned some short pieces of wire and jumpered the connectors to go direct to the speakers. Easily reversible if you want to go back to stock.

 

http://www.nissanpathfinders.net/forum/topic/24612-how-to-bypass-factory-amps-in-your-clarion-equipped-nissan/

Edited by adamzan
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Hey- thanks for the replies, guys- but I was hoping to find a solution that didn't require soldering, since I suck at it. Was also trying not to re-wire everything- so in essence looking for the lazy-man approach... :) Also forgot to mention that I have the 8-speaker setup, so not sure how to re-wire those tweeters directly to the new HU- noticed you mentioned something about adding capacitors or something to filter out the bass, but again, solder is not my friend.

 

Actually kinda surprised that this would be so difficult- I've done plenty of HU installs over the years- guess it's mainly the amp setup that is an issue. Wouldn't mind using a stock Nissan unit, but even those are hard to find, especially with the plug setup in mine. Most of the diagrams that I find show 2 square plugs with "ears" on the corners. Mine has 2 plus, but one is square and the larger one has rounder corners on 2 sides. Anyways, thanks for the input.

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I tested connections on mine before soldering by undoing the amps and using short lengths of wire and the legs on the capacitors to jumper the pins in the plug as needed, just like using a breadboard. Worked fine for a test. I'll bet if the wires fit well enough into the plug, you could just wrap the whole SOB in tape to hold it together and call that good.

 

Or, you know, learn to solder. Really comes in handy working on cars.

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That's what I did and left it that way, not intentionally, but because @!*% came up and I had to drive somewhere. It has been that way for like 5 years, and I don't think I even taped it up lol. I didn't wire the tweeters back in, I have aftermarket speakers with built in tweeters that sound great.

 

The reason they used the amps in the first place is because it sounds better. The stock system when it was newer sounded pretty good compared to other cars of the day.

 

If you want to use the amps you need to connect the blue "remote" wire on the new deck to the blue amp wire in the adapter harness.

Edited by adamzan
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Adamzan- pretty sure I had the blue wires connected correctly, but still didn't get anything from the speakers... Seems like it should be something simple, like either the amp wires or the ground wires. All the speaker wires are straight forward.

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