Installing a modern radio

[goglio704]

I've owned at least one Gen1 Maxima for six or seven years now. I had never attempted to put a newer radio in one until just recently. I've thought about it before, but never attempted it because I was afraid it would be a nightmare. It really isn't that bad. The following info was gathered from 2 cars of the 82 model year and seems to be consistent with info in the 83 service manual.

Things I've learned so far...

1: The factory radio is really easy to remove. Pull the knobs off the HVAC controls, pop the plastic face off the HVAC cluster, remove the two screws that hold the upper radio bracket, and slide the radio out.

2: If you reuse the plastic faceplate and mounting brackets from the OEM radio, you can mount a single DIN radio just fine in place of the original radio. Naturally, the plastic faceplate has to be cut out to accept the new DIN radio.

3: The factory radio has two pigtails coming out of it that terminate in Molex type plastic connectors. I had a totally defunct radio and cut the pigtails off it so I could leave the vehicle harness alone. The colors I am about to mention refer to the OEM radio pigtail - not the vehicle harness.

In the six pin connector:

The Blue wire is 12 VDC switched.
The Red with White stripe is 12 VDC constant (switched by the storage switch).
The Black is the ground.
The Green activates the power antenna.
The Green with yellow stripe is for illumination.


In the eight pin connector:

The White and White with Black stripe are the Right Rear speaker.
The Green with White stripe and Green with Black stripe are the Left Rear speaker.
The Blue with Black stripe and Blue with Red stripe are the Right Front speaker.
The Yellow with Black stripe and Yellow with Red stripe are the Left Front Speaker.

It is worth noting that the eight pin speaker pigtail had some jumpers that apparently shared the minus with more than one speaker. If you carefully cut the jumper flush with the connector on the correct side, you will have about 2 inches of wire to make your joints up. I cut the other wires to the same length for the sake of uniformity.