Okay I just ordered my new HU off of Crutchfield. I'm getting the Alpine 9835. It comes with an adaptor mounting kit and the wiring harness and also 10 gauge wire to wire the internal amp to the battery. I'm still confused on how exactly to wire it. Do I want it to run through the factory amp or not? If yes how do I do that? If no, how do I do that? Thanks

If you bought it through Crutchfield it should come with all the wiring harnesses you need. Should be a simple plug the Alpine harness into the back of the HU, then the other end goes into the Crutchfield harness which then plugs into the factory harness. I'm assuming the 9835 is one of Alpine's Vdrive or whatever that claims high power output, hence the recommendation of the 10gauge. I had one of these in my previous vehicle and simply used the factory wiring harness and never had any problems.
If it's an XE like mine, I don't think there is an external factory amp so when you put the new HU in there it will be running off the new Alpine HU.

Don't know if that makes sense....

Here's a pic of my 9830 installed:


I couldn't get the Alpine supplied trim ring to fit.

the trim ring is for when you use the DIN ring.... When you mount ISO the trim piece is too thick.

I color all the exposed (the ones you see if you look, but not protruding) mounting brackets that shine with black sharpie on my installs. You could get creative and use flat black model car paint if you wanted, but the sharpie works for me.

Ahh!! Thanks for the tip!

Mine does have the external amp becuase I got the Rockford Fosgate package. So what do I need to do?

you can modify the trim ring to fit. you will have to trim it with a grinder(very, very carefully) until it will go on. Or mount the radio further in or out to allow for the trim ring. You can also remove the brackets that are on the sides, that you see in these pics. (I would remove those either way.You only need those for a DIN mount when you use the cage). That should make it look a little better for you.

You will need to bypass the factory amp, I believe. The Alpine HU has a 4 ohm (preamp) output impedance as far as i know. The factory Amp will only work properly with 2 ohm HU's.

If you had the factory fosgate system, the Alpine might seem underpowered. an aftermarket amp (~250) should do nicely.

Good luck!

Not to duspute JeffW's oppinion, but the alpine 9835 has 26W RMS and 60W peak(if you use the 10 guage power wire directly to the battery). This GREATLY exceeds the factory radio specs. Even the RF. however, you will want to rewire around the factory amp. This is going to take some doing... The other thing you need to know is that you should connect the 10 guage power wire to the yellow wire on the radio harness. Make sure you put the inline fuse at least 12" from the connection at the battery. Have fun and do some searches for more information. You have a lot of work to do with that have fun!!!

Okay I think I understand pretty much what I'm gonna have to do. Please tell me if this is right or not.

I need to remove the factory HU and disconnect everything from the factory amp. I need to take the speaker outputs from the amp and hook that up to the wiring harness from Crutchfield. This will then hook up to the Alpine HU. Then I will need to run the 10 gauge wire from the harness to the battery. Is this correct?

yes that is correct. you will have to locate the speaker wires for each speaker on the output of the amp, and that will take a while. You might find a wiring diagram for the RF system on the forum somewhere, I don't remember seeing one though. you might just want to use the wiring harness that comes with the radio, rather than the crutchfield supplied one. The only wire that will be helpful from the harness they gave you will be the red, 12V switched wire. Everything else you will have to wire yourself. Just remember you will have to connect the yellow to the battery via the 10Guage wire.

So is there a factory harness I'm using or is it just a bunch of wires from the output that I'll have to use?

wires... lots of wires...

So am I gonna have to crimp or solder all those wires to the harness? Hopefully this will make more sense once I get everything apart or I might be in trouble. How much would a shop charge to install this for me?

about $50-75 depending on where you go. If you go that route make sure they know to bypass the amp.

Dispute it!!(it appears to be wrong)

B/c I just checked the specs and the only preamp output appears for a potential powered sub.

I can't believe that they're still making HU's without preamp outs......

He would've had to buy the 9831 to get a preamp out, and that woulda been a 4 ohm out.

The fosgate amp pretty much needs a fosgate hu, because they are the only ones that I know (off the top of my head) come with the 2 ohm output.

I'm sure he'll be fine as long as he bypasses the amp.

Jeff, you must be looking at a different headunit than kschul2 said he ordered. That radio has 3 sets of 4volt pre-out's(a l/r front, l/r rear and l/r sub) It's not too shabby.

Actually you don't.

I just installed a non-Rockford stock X stereo into my Fosgate equipped X. The original radio was gone, as were all the speakers.

I just had to turn on the amp with an ignition switched power source (tapped off the ignition switched power for the radio itself ) and then installed the radio like normal. The speakers work fine, the radio plays normally and all is good with the universe. The steering wheel controls don't work with the stocker unit (because it's not an RF unit, no plug in for it) but I like the big volume control on the radio, I can adjust it with gloves on.

Now I just have to get my Sirius put into the PhoeniX and go ice racing again. Oh the joy of life.

Agreed.

Instead of "You will need to", I should've said "it might be adviseable to".

Of course you can use it. Most car audio equipment will work (to varying extents) together; they just may not be designed to. Sometimes it will cause problems like clipping or blowing the amp; other times it won't be anything noticeable, perhaps a just little input signal attenuation.

A good site for information:

http://sound.westhost.com/amp_design.htm

He will want to... The alpine radio's internal amp is much better quality than the RF.

Cyclemut, I'm glad you did that. I had suspected that was possible to do. I also suspect you can take a RF 6 disk radio and put it in a non RF system. I tested the speaker leads coming out of it and got a speaker level signal. That changes a lot of theories in this forum.

So what you're saying is that the RF headunit IS NOT passive, meaning it is putting out a high level signal and not just a low level RCA type signal.

If this is the case then the stock RF amp must be taking the high level signal similar to aftermarket amps that offer the same feature. Makes sense if this is the case.

That is my observation... You can take a speaker and connect it to the speaker outputs of the radio and you will get a normal sound level as in any radio.

Interesting. Thanks for the clarification because I was always under the impression that the head unit was passive. Goes to show you how much the sales reps knew about the Xterra when I purchased it.

Okay I took it to get it installed today and I have a few questions now.

They didn't use the 10 gauge wire to connect the HU to the battery. I was thinking maybe they used one of their own...is there any way to check and see if they did or not?

Also, I'm not sure if they bypassed the amp or not...is there some way to check that?

Lastly, there's now a bit of noise when I'm listening to CDs. It's kind of a soft static type noise that's only audible when the music is soft like in intros to songs. Is there something that can be done to eliminate this?

Thanks.

to check to see if they connected the 10 guage wire. Look at the battery to see if there is a wire connected there. I'm sure they didn't connect the 10 guage wire if you didn't ask them to. You will have to take out the radio and look at the wires to see if they bypassed the amp. You will have also had to ask them to do that. This would have probably cost you more...Where did you take it?

David's Car Stereo. It's a local place here and they're an authorized Alpine dealer so I figured they'd know to run the 10 gauge. As far as the amp, it sounds fine now so I don't think I'm gonna bother getting it bypassed. Also, there is a feature on the 9835 where if you're using an external amp you can turn the internal one off and when I tried that there was no sound. Maybe that means they bypassed the factory amp?

Also, any suggestions on getting rid of the static sound? Or does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Edit: The static hum or whatever you want to call it seems to be coming from the right tweeter. It wasn't there before I got the new HU installed so I'm guessing it has something to do with the wiring they did while installing it. What can I do?