SolaraGuy.com

I have a 2002 convertible with the JBL system. The cassette deck just died and I use that for an XM Roady. I am just outside of Washington DC and the fm modulator option does not work well in the crowded airwaves here.

I am looking at replacing the head unit with an Alpine CDA-9883. I am on a bit a of budget here and wondering if it possible to tap into a couple of wires going into the existing JBL amp to reuse the subwoofer. The Alpine unit has a low pass filter and subwoofer outputs so it would save me money and trouble if this is possible.

I am guessing that the JBL amp is 4x50 and 1x100 for the 300 watt total. Since the Alpine is rated 4 x 50 peak, if I can reuse the subwoofer I won't lose any volume out of the speakers which is my main goal here.

Thanks,
Len

As far as I Remember the JBL Systems uses the DSS(Distributed Speaker Subwoofer) which is acually all 4 of the 6x9's(2 Front Doors, and 2 Rear Deck) Creating a Subwoofer sound if you take a look at the rear deck speakers wiring harness in your trunk you should see 2 sets of wires(GreenPOS blackNEG & RedPOS BlackNEG) going into the Harness if you see that the the only way to use the anyother system in the car is to install a Input Level Converter with a Hi/Lo Input converter see the link below and you will want to splice the Rear RCA out of the Converter into the alpines subout and then spice the original wiring for the Front door and Rear Deck speakers see my bad wiring diagram of how installing an aftermarket head should look

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-34kLU50rZS ... &I=142SLC4[/img]

Thanks for the info. But I believe that is applicable to the coupes. The convertibles with a JBL system have 7 speakers, a tweeter and midrange in each door, 2 full range in the back and a "real" subwoofer under the rear seat I think.

Just to clarify, what I would like to do is find a wiring diagram for the JBL system so I can tap the 2 wires that go into the JBL amp for the subwoofer and use that along with the 4x50 from the Alpine to the other speakers.

BTW, some other posts indicated that the standard 15 wire connector is laying inside the dash. I took apart the dash and did not see any connectors lying loose. What it looked like was possibly the 20 pin output from the head unit going to the JBL amp (How do I get the glove box out?) and then the the wires from the amp coming back into the dash and connecting to another connector. Could this be the 15 pin to the speakers?

Thanks,
Len

I just took mine apart today, there are 3 screws along the top, remove those and then pull the the passenger door trim (along the bottom of door opening) and remove the gold screw. Next to the console portion of the area is a black screw that holds the structure to the frame, remove that and pull the clips out of the frame (they should just pop out) and the whole glovebox door, and body of it will come down, and then you have access to everything you need, It will be a total of 5 screws, 4 of which are black and 1 gold (at least they were on mine)

Jake 99' SLE Solara

You could get your XM directly connected to your current HU and not need the cassette adapter. Then you wouldn't need a new HU...unless, of course, you really want one.

I wound up getting the inline antenna kit and installing it, plenty of room in the dash for it. Sound is about the same as with the cassette adapter, but a cleaner installation. The only cosmetic drawback is that to listen to XM, the radio has to be on, and that raises the power antenna, which I do not need.

I have the Roady XT mounted on the center right vent with the antenna monted on the dash. Reception is fine, but one day soon I will probably mount the antenna on the trunk. I wound up drilling a small hole in the side of the duct so that the antenna and power wires for the Roady come out of the vent.

I would have preferred getting an aftermarket radio, but I did not have the husband points built up to spend the $200 or so on one.

You have a power antenna? I didn't know Solara's came with one.

Doing a quick cars.com search, the Gen 1 and 1.5 convertibles had retractable antennas stock. They dropped that in the Gen 2.

In my mind it is still something additional to go wrong in the future, but then again, I have had nothing but domestic (mostly GM) cars since 1976 and this is my first "Foreign" nameplated car.

Yeah. I don't much like power antenna's, they stand out too much (much thicker), but was just surprised. I never noticed them before.

lgerstel wrote:Doing a quick cars.com search, the Gen 1 and 1.5 convertibles had retractable antennas stock. They dropped that in the Gen 2.

In my mind it is still something additional to go wrong in the future, but then again, I have had nothing but domestic (mostly GM) cars since 1976 and this is my first "Foreign" nameplated car.

Yeah, I agree with that my 91 Oldsmobile Toronado had one of those and it sucked, that POS bent everytime it was up and i went in the garage, damn thing sometimes didn't go down, so I just unhooked it. I also didn't know about the retractable antennas mine is an antenna on the back window, but then again mine is a coupe and not the vertable.

You can use a Honda S2000 amplified antenna. It fits just fine with a minimum of modification.