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WRX cd changer in my Legacy

Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 2:18 am
by jamal
Today I installed a WRX cd changer because my crappy sony deck stopped playing CDs. I took a few pictures so I thought I'd share.

All 93+ Subarus use the same harness/plug. Except for SVXs, and 93-94 Legacies. So this isn't a plug and play type deal and you'll need to make a harness.

To do this you need a Legacy harness and a reverse harness for a newer Subaru. I used the harness that was hooked up to my old deck and bought a reverse harness from David Carter for $17 shipped. I highly recommend you buy one from him because it has the extra illumination wire and he's very helpful if you have any problems.

So I guess the first step is to take out the old stereo and harness. When you take out the cup holder you'll see these two screws. Undo them. And also take out the ashtray. There are two more screws holding the trim piece and the ashtray rail in place so you'll need an offset screwdriver or something to get them.

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Then undo the 6 screws holding the din rails in place:

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There are two more farther in that Best Buy convieniently forgot to replace when they installed my old stereo.

Then you'll end up with something like this after you take the old harness off. You can see how best buy really does top notch work what with the crimp on connections and all.

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Cut that apart or buy a new harness and you'll have something like this.

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Now you need to put it together. I went to Radio Shack and spend about $40 on a soldering iron and soldering iron accessories. They had a kit for $20 and then I bought more solder, tip tinner and cleaner, heat shrink tubing, and some zip ties. Radio shack irons are crap so what you should really do is go to home depot or frys and get a weller for the same price.

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What I should have done is spent that money on a photography book because apparantly I suck. Actually my screen is broken so I have to let the camera take it's best guess.

If you want the dimmer to work, you'll have to modify the legacy harness. Vikash recommended moving the ground wire to illumination (+) awhile back and then directly grounding the wire on the reverse harness to the stereo body. So that's what I did. If you don't have a power antenna you could also use that wire (which I realized after I'd already started soldering).

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the black wire is the one I moved. I jammed a small scredriver in there and it popped out. There's a little tab on the terminal that rests on another tab in the plug. After I bent it back down it snapped into the new position.

All my wires were labelled correctly, but you may want to take a look at some pinouts just in case. Here is a Legacy pinout that Vikash made, and here is a WRX pinout that David made. This nasioc thread also has useful Subaru stereo information (and guess who posted it).

To solder you'll want to twist the wires together like this:

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Then use a clean soldering iron to heat up the wires. Don't forget to slide the little shrink wrap tubes over the wires beforehand. Then solder. There are plently of guides how to do that online like this. The important part is to keep the iron clean and to use what you're soldering to melt the solder and not the iron itself. I found I had to help the solder melt though because the wires weren't staying hot enough.

Tadow:

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Don't use too much.

Then after awhile you'll have something like this:

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Use a lighter on the heat shrink, throw on a zip-tie or two or some fancy cable wrap to keep things organized, and you should end up with a pretty nice looking harness:

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Put the new CD player in the DIN rails, connect the harness, and take it to your car:

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Plug it in:

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Screw everthing back together, put on the trim, and you're done:

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I found that my front speakers weren't working, so I pulled everything out and re-checked the harness. No problems there so it must be a speaker problem of some sort. Fade and balance work right for the rear.

I have a little piece of black plastic I can put in that 1/2 din spot but I'd rather have something cool. Any suggestions?

Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 3:37 am
by entirelyturbo
Your write-ups are always very informative Jamal. Good work!

I will likely be doing this in the near future. My head unit is throwing in the towel, and I'm sick of having to change CDs everytime I wanna listen to something different (well, I'm sick of CDs in general, but I don't have the money for an iPod right now...).

Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 9:55 am
by jamal
subyluvr2212 wrote:Your write-ups are always very informative Jamal. Good work!

I will likely be doing this in the near future. My head unit is throwing in the towel, and I'm sick of having to change CDs everytime I wanna listen to something different (well, I'm sick of CDs in general, but I don't have the money for an iPod right now...).
Thanks!

I went the whole summer without a CD player. Although because of it I was forced to listen to the radio so I'm a big fan of Tom Leykis now.

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 9:10 pm
by jamal
Update:

I swapped for an 02-03 deck yesterday. My itrip doesn't work worth a crap in LA so I thought I'd try a tape adapter. So far it's better. Also I machined a piece of delrin and glued it to the trim to fill in the hole:

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The 05 deck had better tone adjustment, a nicer display, and was less cluttered due to the lack of tape deck. The new one lets me play my ipod in the car and matches the interior better.

Also I bought a set of new speakers and was pretty disappointed with the work I'd done back in high school to put the old ones in: twist on wire connectors and electrical tape galore. Plus they were all either blown/disconnected.

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 7:20 am
by greg donovan
the "older/new" one blends in better. looks like it was meant to go there.

my cd player has died but my tape deck still works.

how much does one of the 02-03 headunits usually go for?

Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 4:44 am
by jamal
Like $40-80. I paid $60 for the 05 deck.

Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 7:12 am
by smh0101
jamal... Do the buttons light up when the lights are on on your 02-03 deck? I have this one and the display dimmer works but no lights for the buttons.

Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 8:45 am
by jamal
yes all the buttons light up and dim. There's a thread on nasioc with directions how to take the radio apart and change the bulb color. I assume you could just find something similar at radio shack and swap it in.

Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 4:41 am
by smh0101
Well... It must be a problem with my wireing because I have tried another 02-03 deck and the dimmer worked but not the button lights...

Dammit

Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 7:58 pm
by jamal
update 2:

I made this neato machined ipod holder out of lexan:

http://jamalb.net/pictures/IMG_2679.JPG

I need to trim off all the extra material or just make a new one that's better.

And stupid me was impatient and decided to sand off the protective paper so I ruined the nice clear finish.

Actually I'm going to try to make a molded urethane part later today I think.

Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 5:07 am
by ciper
You copy cat! I too created the WRX adapter plug with scosche components and installed the underseat subwoofer as well a LONG time ago.

Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2008 12:59 pm
by James614
Sorry to resurrect a dead post, but I can't find any website for David Carter relating to car audio. And the only other harnesses I can find are Metra's and Scosche's, neither of which have the dimmer wire (WHY?!?!) I'll probably end up just splicing my own wire into the dimmer, but if he sells them for the same price 100% complete I'd rather go with that.

Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2008 2:26 pm
by tahiti350
I'll finally be working on this this week, as soon as I have the trans back in the '92.

Where can I get the reverse plugs for the '90? Schucks, Walmart, AZ, etc don't have them. I got the stereo side with the head unit I bought, but it's the Scoche type without the dimmer wire. I'm going to just cut the dimmer wire out of the parts car at the wrecking yard and pin it in, then splice everything.

Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2008 8:57 pm
by Bdub
Try BestBuy or any place which installs car stereos, they will have the special antenna adapters.

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 10:18 pm
by tahiti350
The link to Vishka's Legacy stereo pin-out isn't working, and I'm currently armpit deep in my dash trying to do this today...HELP

Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2008 7:13 pm
by Legacy777

Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2008 7:22 pm
by tahiti350
I put everything back together for now, will try again when I have an afternoon, thanks for the link.

Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2009 10:25 pm
by tahiti350
Just to bring this thread back to life agai, I bought Jamal's harnes (yes the one in the thread) and am finally installing my 6 disc player this weekend.

Since I have the other harnes parts I had already bought I'll steal a couple of wires to put the ground and the power antenna wires back in.

It will be nice to have the CD capability, and not to have the driver side speakers cutting out, although I did dis-assemble the old head unit and tightened the volume knob. That got me by until last weekend before it cut out again...

Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 10:04 am
by tahiti350
Okay, so here's the wrap up on my 6 disc install:

I transfered the black ground wire and the blue power antenna wires from the new adapters I had and spliced them into the harness I got from Jamal to provide the factory ground and power antenna circuits.
On the initial install the stereo wouldn't work unless the antenna cable was plugged in (strange, must have done something wrong...). A quick recheck of the harness showed I had pinned the new ground wire into the wrong spot, after swapping it to the opposite side everything works perfect.

Many thanks to Jamal, and all the others who figured out the wiring to get the lights, etc to work right.

Re: WRX cd changer in my Legacy

Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 1:56 am
by SVXdc
jamal wrote:All my wires were labeled correctly, but you may want to take a look at some pinouts just in case. Here is a Legacy pinout that Vikash made, and here is a WRX pinout that David made. This nasioc thread also has useful Subaru stereo information (and guess who posted it).
tahiti350 wrote:The link to Vishka's Legacy stereo pin-out isn't working ...
Vikash's Cornell account finally went away, but he's posted his pin-out on a new site here. He also corrected information about the two illumination/dimmer wires.

Here's the drawing:
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(view is looking at the contact pins side of the car's harnesses, wires pointing away from you)

See my WRX pin-out or my homepage for information on getting the newer Subaru harnesses with all 14 wires.

Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 7:43 pm
by ericem
just wondering where do I get the MALE end wrx harnesS? All I see is female ends.

Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 10:17 pm
by ericem
lol I kept searching for male adapters but I was suppost to type reverse harness!! Is this the right one?

long ebay link

Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 8:33 am
by SVXdc
ericem wrote:lol I kept searching for male adapters but I was suppost to type reverse harness!! Is this the right one?

[ended ebay link]
That's the right style of harness, but you need to have the seller confirm that the one he'll send you has all 14 wires (has both Orange and Orange/White illumination/dimmer wires). Many harnesses don't

The newer Subaru HUs must have both wires for the backlighting to work.

Also, I've edited my previous post -- Vikash has a new site with the pin-out information.

Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2009 3:47 am
by ericem
Hey got my radio in works awesome and looks good. Now need to understand how I was suppost to wire the dimmer.

I am reading this

There are two pins related to dash illumination -- 1 and 7.

Pin 1 ("Illumination +") is +12 volts when the parking or headlights are on; open-circuit otherwise.

Pin 7 ("Dimmer") changes voltage as you adjust the dimmer knob. It goes from close to 12 volts (with knob at the dimmest setting) down to 0 volts (with knob at brightest setting). This pin is also called "Illumination – (minus)".

The radio's illumination lights (like the Subaru's instrument panel lights) are connected between these two lines. So the bulbs effectively "see" a range of 0 volts (dimmest) to 12 volts (brightest).

from

http://www.geocities.com/svxdc/WRX-pinout.htm

I think my harness only had 13 wires if I recall. I guess ill just shove a wire into the connector and tape it from sliding out? Not to hazardous of a idea. Yet seems like I am slacking since I soldered the whole harness lol.

Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2009 9:25 pm
by ericem
ok its all working just ran a extra wire and shoved it in the connector and taped everything. Shook it around no issues. Ill show some finished pics.