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Need help with radio upgrade


dingles9

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I have a 92 Bonneville SE. I have steering wheel controls, tape deck, and not enough power.

 

I want to install a factory GM radio (that I won't have to go to the dealership to get reprogrammed) that still uses my steering wheel controls, has a cd player, and had some power.

 

Any help is appreciated

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If you've got the cd player option then you have the premium *U1A* head unit, there is no *optional* upgrade for that head unit from GM for this time period, there was the optional monsoon system that came into being shortly later, but it isn't really worth the effort of looking for one of those head units because the monsoon was a complete system, the head unit, the external amp, the 8 or 10 speaker system that was a combination of both 4 ohm & 2 ohm drivers. Somewhat overrated, you could purchase yourself a better quality aftermarket head unit & amp/amps plus speakers & redo your system.

 

There is an aftermarket device from Pac-audio that can retain the steering wheel controls used with an aftermarket head unit.....it's called the SWI-X, It's a programmable interface module that will let one keep the steering controls.

 

http://www.pac-audio.com/Products.aspx?CategoryId=29

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[ATTACH]18884[/ATTACH]

 

Are these rare?

 

 

Not even a little. But mounting it will be a pain, and I'm not sure the SWRC works or even plugs in the same.

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Not even a little. But mounting it will be a pain, and I'm not sure the SWRC works or even plugs in the same.

Pls explain mounting. I thought all gm double dins were the same mounting bracket?

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For starters, that's not a double din. But your car shouldn't have a double din anyway. Second, I don't recall too many GM radios mounting the same. The older ones it was just a matter of moving the mounting screws around on the frame of the radio. The newer ones are stamped steel mounts, as seen in your picture. You can cut those off, but you'll still need to come up with a way to mount it to your dash.

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The newer style bonneville's had a similar dash and used the style radio you posted a pic of. There may be a way to make that work, but you'd get better results on an H-Body site for Bonneville info.

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Pls explain mounting. I thought all gm double dins were the same mounting bracket?

 

Actually they're DIN 1.5, which basically means they're bigger than a normal radio but smaller than a normal 2DIN.

 

The brackets are different because the W bodies had a removable bracket on the bottom but this radio has brackets on the side. You could dremel them off but you still have to deal with making a bracket.

 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-T989 using Tapatalk

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[ATTACH]18884[/ATTACH]

 

Are these rare?

 

Heartbeat is right. They are everywhere. And his suspicion on the SWRC not working is warranted. That is a later generation of radio that used a different SWRC system. You would have to find like a TGP CD player or some other late 80s/early 90s GM CD player like this:

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/GM-RADIO-CD-PLAYER-IPOD-3-5mm-AUX-86-87-88-CHEVY-MONTE-CARLO-SS-EL-CAMINO-DELCO-/201341414217?vxp=mtr

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This is all very fine and dandy guys...but it's not answering the OP's original question,

 

he wants to replace his *premium* GM head unit with another GM head unit that more output power,

 

to the best of my knowledge there's nothing out there in an OEM head unit that will do that, the amplifier section of the radios back then were pretty much all the same, ( in my opinion, not very good.... during warranty 2 U1A head units were replaced due to the amplifier section failing).

 

I can understand the want to keep the SWRC active ( I lost mine when I installed an aftermarket head unit, but that's a choice I made over keeping a less than satisfactory head unit ), but the only way to get more ooomph is to install amp/amps. Using a GM head unit with an aftermarket amp will need making use of the high impedance inputs to the amp (assuming the amp has those).

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I used an adaptor to keep my SWRC for my aftermarket head unit.

 

As far as the post, it was the OP who posted about the pictured unit.

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