Im getting a pioneer double din for christmas. I know that i need the dash kit and the harness, but what, if anything do i need to keep my stock bose speakers working and my steering wheel controls working.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

for the bose speakers, you will want to hook up the RCA pre-outs from the Pioneer DD unit to the bose inputs (part of the harness). There are a couple ways to do this, personally, I prefer getting 4 RCA plugs (just the plugs - usually 2 black, 2 red) from radio shack and soldering the appropriate speaker wires (one plug per two wires - the wires with black stripes are the ground and go to the "outside" portion of the RCA plug). Other people have done this by cutting a stereo RCA cable in half and splicing the wires from the cable to the harness wires (essentially the same process as described above - just using a different part). Personally, I prefer to avoid the very low gauge wire found in most stereo RCA cables that can be purchased at low cost.

For the steering wheel controls, you'll want the PAC SWI-PS unit. These are easily found at most mobile electronics stores (including crutchfield, etc. online) and on ebay.

The best alternative (in my opinion) is to completely replace the bose speaker system. You'll get much better sound out of a good aftermarket setup.

 

Thanks for your help, however i do not see where the harness has outputs that would have anything to do with the bose amp. it appears that everything is controlled via the one harness...

 

Realize that the harness is just a way of adding colored wires to a plug. The plug has both inputs and outputs. Some of the outputs from the plug are power, ground, steering wheel control signal. There are also 4 pairs of inputs into the harness. The colors of the wires are purple, purple/black, white, white/black, green, green/black, and gray, gray/black. These are 4 channels (signal and ground) that take the signal from the head unit (factory or aftermarket) to the stock bose amplifiers.

 

+1 for using rca pre-outs and a PAC SWI-PS.

the bose amp doesn't have any special connectors on the factory wiring harness. it just uses the speaker wires to go to the bose amp. so on the wire harness that connects to your pioneer stereo, you will not have the wires for the speakers connected to anything. they will have to be connected to the rca pre-outs and those will be connected to the factory harness which leads to the bose amp.

i just did an install of my pioneer avic-x910bt and i have the bose system so i can verify that the information bmak is giving you is indeed correct.

 

Do you have to use the preouts? I am finishing up my install (Pioneer 3200bt) and didnt use pre-outs, just the harness speaker wires. But now I have no sound, everything else works perfect, but no sound.

 

I ended up not using the preouts and using the metra harness to wire everything. It has been this way for almost 2 years and i have never had an issue.

 

Sounds like two things to me. You mentioned that you have the Bose speaker system. The Bose amp will not turn on without a turnon signal from the stereo. That should be a blue or blue/white wire on both the stereo output and the metra harness, check that connection. The harness speaker outputs are amplified by the head unit, you do not want to feed the bose amplifier amplified signals, that's what the Pre-outs are for - for feeding a non-amplified signal to a speaker amplifier, in this case, the bose amplifier. If you do feed the bose amp an amplified signal, you will have limited control over the volume of the sound and will likely blow the speakers or the amp if the volume is turned up high.