[GlenL]

It's nice when there's time to do something just for fun.

The car had been hacked-up to have what looks like 2 different stereos installed. The last one was a fancy Bang&Olafson system that must have been super-cool in 1985. The damage to the door panels and rear quarter panels shows it was an eight-speaker system. The door and B-pillar metal is cut further and hints to what else was done previously.

But when I got it, there was no head unit and two door speakers were gone leaving holes in the panels. Can't just mount them behind the perforated vinyl, it seems.

Digging into the wiring, it appears the car originally had the low-end audio system with just two speakers. When made, the harnesses run to the doors and rear. The installers couldn't use that and ran new wiring. All the new(er) stuff is gone and I'll be using the stock wiring.

The trick between the systems is how the wiring to the rear is bridged into the system. With the four-speaker system, there's a short harness added that ties the radio's stereo output to the fader switch below the parking brake. The harness then runs the front/back split to the door and rear speakers. For two-channels, the output of the radio is just plugged into the wiring to the front doors. The connectors mate-up just in front of the driver's seat.

I've made a harness that ties from the new stereo head's 4-channel output to the rear speaker harness. Nice to have boxes of wiring harnesses to pilfer for that 4-pin connector.

So here's a few pictures. The wiring to the head unit is easy enough to adapt. The stock connection has right/left speakers, unswitched power, switched power, ground and antenna-up signals. The head unit has that plus rear speakers and then subwoofer outputs on RCA connectors. (Pic 1) Note the extra connector that goes to the rear speaker 4-pin connector.

The door speaker (Pics 2 and 3) are the Blaupunkt speakers on the bench and then installed. I'd taken these out of another 928 and mounted up nicely. Still sound good. The cut-open door panels show the speakers. Kind of low-tech but I like the look.

An issue with the head is that the "antenna" wire is unused. I needed to grab the power amp ON signal for the antenna. Wait... "Antenna?" Yep. The power antenna was beyond repair so I got a Uro knock-off and put it in. Now, when the head unit is ON the antenna goes up. That's true even when it's on CD or other non-radio input. It's a fun touch, I think, and will be stylish driving at the track.