OEM stereo woes
 

My 11 year old deck is showing it's age. The CD player works just fine, but the deck is only playing the D/S front.
My question is, will the Legacy units of the same vintage "plug & play"? I'm guessing the cd will plug into the radio, but will the car harness plug into it? If not, can the plug be "repinned"?

i have the spare out of my 92 works great minus the backlighting, yours for make me a low ball offer +shipping, and as far as i know the old legacy decks interchange but i could be crazy

The SVX wiring harness is incompatible with units other than the one that came in it.

That being the case, can I repin the SVX harness into the Legacy plug? IE: pull the pins from the SVX plug, then reinsert them into a Legacy plug. Do they share the same pin count/function?
I figured the plugs were different. Though with both being Subie parts, I am hoping they have the same #of wires, with the same functions.

http://www.geocities.com/svxdc/Audio...adioConnPinout
Scroll down to 2.5.4, it shows the splicing.
I just put a Kenwood deck in mine and went to Radio Shack and bought some of the round pins, then attached those to my radio output wires. Then found the appropriate wires in the SVX connector and pushed the pins in.
The pins are not the perfect match in size, so you have to push them in quite hard. But they wont fall out :p
I believe SVXdc also has the connectors for the swap also, check with him.

I recommend checking your speakers — they tend to die also.

If you're going to look at getting a compatible replacement AM/FM/cassette unit from a Legacy or other Subaru, you can probably find a newer radio/cassette/CD combo unit for about the same cost. Then you can sell your working CD deck to another SVX owner.

Most Subarus from 1993-up, and North American Legacies from 1995-up have a 14-pin harness, with all pin positions used. The pin assignments are the same for all Subarus that use this 14-pin connector, but here's the pin-out table for Legacies.

The SVX has a 20-pin harness with 16 pins populated. In addition to the table that Turbone posted the link to, also see the picture in section 2.5.4.

The extra two pins are for a 3rd dimmer wire (unique to the SVX) and a wire used for remote control buttons on steering wheels in some JDM cars.

These 14- and 20-pin connectors are from the same family, so you could repin the appropriate 14 pins from the SVX's harness into a 14-pin shell to plug into a non-SVX Subaru radio. But I can tell you from experience that they are a b!tch to extract.

If you were going to buy a reverse harness for a Legacy radio anyway (for the shell), you might as well get that along with an SVX harness from me. You'll spend less time soldering the two harnesses together to make an adapter cable than repinning, and you'll keep the option to easily switch back to a stock radio.

The Subaru pins are flat. So you were literally shoving "round pegs into square holes" :rolleyes: :D

Hey I do that ALL the time... you just need a BFH:D

Ok thanks SVXdc I'm still not entirely sure which route I'll take, the OEM replacement, Lego swap, or aftermarket. I have some OT coming. Depending on how much I end up with, I'll likely be hunting the JY's & pawn shops.

Your absoloutly right :D
Thats why I said you had to push hard :p
I know I could probably find the right size pins, I just didnt want to wait to do the search. I'm sure I can get them out of the Mouser Catalog, altho I havent got one for a couple of years now.
But I will still be able to use the stock harness again if I need to.

Was there a link for the pockets also, I cant remember?

If you decide you want to just replace the OE deck with another, I have one that worked perfectly when I pulled it to put an aftermarket one in. If you are interested, PM me. I will give it to you for the cost of shipping.

How to Check Speakers
 

How do you check the speakers to see if they are dead? Are all speakers pumping sound when a CD is inserted, or do they cycle on and off depending on the stereo outputs of a particular song? Is painstaking listening at the location of each speaker the only way to tell if it's functioning? Thanks.

I always just changed the balance and fade to force all the sound to come out of one speaker. That makes it pretty easy to test...

I think he was thinking along the lines of how can you tell if it's the speaker that's dead or if the problem is the headunit.

To test a speaker the easiest way would be run leads off of the +/- speaker terminals and hook up another speaker in series. If the alternate works the speaker is bad, if it doesn't then it's the headunit.

I tested mine with my MP3 player & some dead, cut up headphones. Touch the leads to the speaker terminals, if you hear music, the speaker is good.

That works too, but depending on the source you might not get much volume out of the speaker.