Spieder

Hey everyone. Just FYI. I don't know why but they have alot of Mazda Panasonic in dash 6 CD changers/radio/tape deck for around 150 on Ebay. Search for Mazda 6. They are the new/current models that the Protege 5 is shipping with. I already measured and they will fit, although the face plate may hang over a bit on the console, I can fix though.

I bought one because I couldn't pass it up, I am waiting for it now. It was great because the lights are also read colored and will match my dash better. Considering that a descent CD player was like 140 + it seems good.

Just thought I'd pass it along in case others were looking.

Blitz0309

Its a good deal, but i got a mp3 player.... *grin*

Directfreak

iTrader: (2)

I too have an Mp3 Player, but...
that's a pretty good deal.

Blitz0309

Oh, im not saying its not a good deal, im just saying that i prefer my mp3 player... when it works. *grin*

MIKE-P-28

iTrader: (1)

Guys you sure this isnt part of the premium sound system? (car had a seperate amp?) I would have no problem getting it to work, but you novice installer's beware. The wiring harness will not be the same too.

V8kilr

no no you have it bacwards,
if it part of a premium sounds system it will work fine,
you may have to buy a splitter and din adapter cable but it will work,

now if its not then you will need to yank the stock amps,
and bypass them,
if you run through them it will work but it will sound like garbage and i dont care who on this board says they are doing it that way and it sounds good cause they obivously have a severe ear infection.
also it does depend on the year of your rx7
im speaking on behalf of the 84-85

also mike p,
just wondering if you remeber the old majestic amps and how they had a din plug for the high input?
do you know of any other amps like those?
im trying to find soem old majestics but its damn hard.
that way i can just plug and play under the rear bins

Manntis

Depends if this brand-new premium system is compatable woth the 20ish years old external dual amplifiers or if they've switched to a new type of amp since.

either way, there's wiring to be done. Looks like a slick stereo though, and having the Mazda logo in your dash stereo can't hurt.

Too bad I have a CD/MP3/XMradio deck with a trick drop-down face and CD tray or I'd be all over this deal - it'd look slick in there.

rx7gslse

that radio is also in several other cars.. I beleive it's the same that comes in just about all Ford's now.

I know it's the same as the one in the Tribute/Escape, and I think you can get it in all sorts of cars now... Might not say mazda though.

Manntis

makes sense, as Escape Tribute share the same parts bin...

EDIT:

No manual, no original box, but they have a bunch of these for sale at about 25% of retail price.

hmmm. It's a great deal, but I wonder if I'd be buying stolen goods...

MIKE-P-28

iTrader: (1)

dave trust me, I guarantee I know more about car stereos than you know I did a pretty new Mazda Miata and it was amplified. No more DIN cords on those, it was a standard newer Mazda plug... It was low level like an RCA but with wires like for a regualr hi level deck... Which is pretty much the norm now days, the only car with a premium sound/factory amp cobo that still uses a DIN cord is a Mitsubishi. Everyone uses the standard Molex plugs now, inclusive of Bose stereos too.

The only old dinosaur's I can think of that had DIN inputs where old Clarion's (circa 81 or so), Technics, Panasonic, old Alpine's and Kenwoods, most Sansui amps were too, almost anything from the late 80's to 90's was DIN input, take your pick and NONE of them are a direct plug in Nothing back then was universal, I remember when working on cars at the shop around 88 and 89, people come in man I tried to hook up this Kenwood deck to this Alpine amp, and I want to know why my deck doesnt work anymore, LOL They tried to plug the Dins together and that is a NO NO.. I belive it sent 12V constant to R+ input LOL Oh and DIN input was low level input (low level input is high impedance) high level input is low impedance. (like with speaker wire input as they call it now)

So either find out the Din config and start moving pins around, or start plugging them in and frying stuff

V8kilr

well you also have to remember majestic is a stand alone company ,
if "nothing is universal" were true then the amp would not hook up to any radio,
in fact i remember specifically in 1995 i had one,
it was 600 watt and the instruction booklet specifically said "universal din input"
at that time i didnt even know what hell a din was,
i knew a descent amount about stereos,but never came across one with a din input.
so i asked around and my budddy steve knew,
in 95 i was 15 yrs old,steve was a guy who liked my older sister and was 19,so he knew quite a bit more then me.

well he took my amp down in his basement where he had some radios lyin around and snatched a radio off the work bench,hooked it up and showed me what the din input was for.
if it wasnt for that moment i wouldnt even know that about the old majestics.

the schematic for the stock clarion radio is on this board and it tells the din pin configuration.

also the thing i was stating about if the radio was NOT a premium sound type radio,then you would be forcing 25 + watts per channel into the stock clarion low input amplifiers.
not good

you would need to bypass the stock amps or it will hiss,pop,crackle,and just sound like **** until you blow the stock amps.
or blow all your speakers from overloading the stock amps and then starting to cut at higher frequency's

know if the radio is premium sound you can use the low level outputs to run into the stock clarion amps with a little time and rewiring.

ask jeremy how when i was at his house i took the two stock clarion amps from the donor car and ran them off the low level output of my pioneer 1.4 din headunit because all the high level out speaker channels were blown on my headunit

i can upload a diagram i made on how to do this if anyone is interested on how to run an aftermarket radio through the stock clarion amplifiers

Spieder

Ok here it is. It's a 190 watt stand alone. If you ask the guy selling it they will include the adaptor usually. Mine did. Then you connect the right wire from the radio to the where it goes in the car. You do have to pull out the amps from under the baggage bays, but I did that long ago to install my 88 double din RX-7 radio.

A lot of people have them so I don't think they are stolen. They come in a box of 4 (with 4 wiring aedaptors)so that's why they are out of the box. There's like half a dozen people that have them and one guy has like 2 dozen. They recommend having Mazda install it so I doubt it's stolen (although you never know).

Someone may have gone bankrupt and it was scored as a liquidation. I am not recommending them, just saying it looks pretty good.

MIKE-P-28

iTrader: (1)

Yeah if you had a Metra harness that was a male plug, and had a metra harness for your car, it would be an easy install, provided you didnt have an amplified system. So if hes give you a aftermarket harness to plug in the stereo, your good to go. That was a good deal , guys...

If you want factory that is.

Directfreak

iTrader: (2)

Sure. Why not?

Strider

I'd be really interested in your diagram....can you email me one?

Thanks!

mwpayne

Well, I can personally vouch for these things. Got mine and installed it yesterday, fits almost perfectly in the big ol' hole that the P.O left for me to fill. The hole is actually about 1/8 inch bigger than the unit. I slid the
unit as far as it would go upward so that the tiny opening is a the bottom, might fill it with trim of some sort later. It's easy to use, looks and sounds great.
Only slight problem I had was $18 wiring harness I had to pick up at Best Buy,
I think its a helluva deal!

markrx7

Do these fit in 1980 rx-7's??

Strider

Only if it had a double DIN sized opening.

I just finished installing one myself. If it is centered in the existing opening, then you can't tell there is a gap at all really. I took the metal sleave that the old radio is mounted in off the old stereo, then remounted the sleave, then put the dash back on and slid the new stereo in until it locked in place. I had to use my rotory tool to cut off the pegs off the back side of the dash facia where the dash pocket screwed in. Actually, there was six pegs total, and I just groud them all off. Also, the metal sleave required me to hammer out the little tabs and recessed screw holes so that the new deck would fit, but it was easy enough.

I also had to get a wiring adaptor from Best Buy, and that was because the included one didn't have the wire for amp turn on, only one for power antenna. The power antenna is off during tape or CD play.

Anyway, here is my setup: I had to run a lot of new wire, and I ripped all the old amps out. I ran a 10 gage wire directly from the battery to power my two amps, a new wire for antenna on and amp on from the dash, spliced into the wire at the rear hatch light for battery power to the power antenna, and ground wires for the power antenna and two amps. I also had to run new speaker wires (14 gage) to the speakers, and speaker wires (16 gage) back from the deck unit to the amp as the deck doesn't have RCA outputs.

The main amp is a Sony 400 Watt 2/3/4 channel amp I wired it for four channels, and ran the new speaker wires from the amp to the speakers. It is mounted in the passenger side storage compartment, all the way back in a near verticle position so that compartment is still usable. The top mounting bolts are in the plastic, and the bottom are through the felt, but I stretched it tight and added a stiffener to the back (1/4 inch plexiglass strips I had lying around. Anyway, it is out of sight, has room to cool (I'll have to double check this next summer), and is still accessible for adjustment. The second amp that I mentioned is a 100 Watt 8" Bazooka tube, mounted in the back passenger side of the hatch area, with the speaker facing the back corner more or less.

The speakers are component Jensens (I was on a budget here, and I had them laying around my garage from another project that never got started, or else I might have purchased Pioneers or Sony). I had to do some slight cutting on the rear for the 6 1/2 inch speaker holes, but the front 4 inch speakers bolt straight in. To top it off I wired in parallel to the front speakers a set of Radio Shack piezo tweeters that I mounted on top of the dash where they reflect off the windshield.

The sound is awesome! I need to do some fine tuning on the amp gain to balance with the Bazooka, and I haven't figured out how the dim wire hooks up. (what happens now is that when the headlights are turned on, the illumination light turns off altogether. I think maybe I have the dimm wire hooked up incorrectly.)

I had the Bazooka from a previous car, the deck cost $148 with shipping (Ebay), and the Sony amp was $150 at Walmart. I don't remember how much the Jensen speakers were, I also had them in my garage from another project, never installed. I think the Radio Shack tweeters were $19, and the wire and inline fuses were probably around $25. Almost forgot, I also replaced my broken power antenna with a Metra replacement for $45. I used the mount from the stock antenna and bent it a little here and there and it mounted up fine. To wire it requires a ground, a battery +12V connection, and the power antenna wire off the deck.

The deck operation is awesome! It holds 6 CDs, without a cartridge. You just load them in the slot one at a time. Nice big simple controls, the tape deck has metal / Dolby / autoreverse and track fast forward search, but who listens to tapes anymore? The radio is good too, and like I mentioned, the antenna only goes up when the radio is in operation, and down with the CD, tape, or ignition key off. I REALLY LIKE THIS DECK! So what if it doesn't do MP3's, I don't like them anyway, and anyone who knows anything about the Sampling Theorem should understand why. I personally can hear the difference, quality lossy compression and all. Who needs mp3s when you have 6 CDs? I also like how it looks stock, says Mazda on the tape door, and doesn't have useless bright flashy neon LCD graphics. In short, I'd recommend it to anyone that wants to replace the stock premium double DIN sound system.

The sound would probably be good without the Sony amp, as the deck supposedly has 190 Watts (4 channels), but the sound is REALLY clean with the amp.

Radio Shack Tweets

If I get around to it I'll take some dig pics, if someone would host them or whatever so that I can post them (never done it before.)

lotsacars

This is something that would be of interest to me. I like the idea of upgrading to a CD player, but hate the appearance of aftermarket stereos. I like the factory look and imagine it would also add a bit of theft deterence as theives are most likely looking for something aftermarket, not stock. I'll probably end up doing a couple of these this spring (one for my 84SE, one for my folks' 85SE). How much monkeying around would need to be done to wire it up to the existing infrastructure? I would replace all the speakers (and probably the wiring) but would rather just use the factory amps or bypass them altogether since the new deck is internally amped.

I'm not looking for competition quality sound or volume, just good, clean 21st century sound. Thanks for any input.

Strider

Well, the existing wire harness for the stock stereo has your battery power, key power, and illumination light wire. There is also a wire for your antenna, but you'll have to add a relay if you are using the stock antenna since the stock one uses a positive ground system. I spliced into a dash board bulb wire for the dimmer input to the deck, but its not working right for me and I'll have to go back and work on that sometime. There is a positive amp on wire if you ever want to wire one in.

Forget all about using the existing speaker wires. Well, maybe you could use the front ones, but the colors are really funky and easily confused. All the rest have those DIN type plugs from the deck and the amps. The best thing to do there is to run new speaker wire to the rear. This was really easy. I just strung it from the deck, up under the passenger side dashboard, down inside the passenger side kick panel where the speaker is, then remove the door kick at the bottom, lift up the carpet, and run the wire under the carpet with to the passenger side storage compartment. There is an existing hole through the wall there. You should remove the storage compartments and the hatchback trim panels (left and right and rear). There is another gap out of the storage compartment area under the vinyl covering the wheelwell, then behind the passenger side trim panel and there you are for the rear passenger side speaker. I just ran a longer speaker wire under the storage compartments and down the driver's side for that rear speaker. Definately easier than trying to monkey around with the stock speaker wire harness.

mwpayne

Hey Strider

Can you give more details (maybe pics) on the R.S tweets? Sounds like a great idea if I don't have to muck up the dash too much.

BTW, you do just about the BEST job describing in words how you acccomplish something, its real easy to picture in your mind as you read. Great Job!

Strider

Thanks for the complement.

The R.S. Tweeters are too simple. I wired them parallel to the front speakers, meaning I strung the wires down to the front speakers from the tweets. Just take off the kick panels and the dashboard side panels (You have to open the doors wide and have a shorty screwdriver.) Run the wire behind the dash side panels and down the inside of the kick panels. Just wire positive to positive, negative to negative on the front speaker posts. That way the front speaker wires from the deck supply both the front speakers and the tweeters.

I have to admit that my mounting job for the tweeters is a little cheesy. I just used double sided tape and put them on the top of the dash in the corners almost up against the windshield. They face upward, but the sound reflects off the windshield perfectly. I put them there like that just because I wasn't sure that was where I permanently wanted them. Another place I considered surface mounting them was on the door panels up high and forward towards the dash. Either way, they sound good. Mounting them in parallel like that with the front speakers seems to balance the sound well, as well as the power between the front and rear. (Before the rear speakers seemed to dominate, and its been my experience that if you try to push the same amount of sound through smaller speakers, you distort the sound.) Anyway, I'm totally happy with the setup.

lotsacars

So are the stock amps worth retaining? Typically 20 year old stock stereo stuff isn't all great, yet Clarion is supposed to be pretty good. Would there be any value in retaining them?

Thanks for all of the useful info thus far...

Strider

NO!!!!!!!!

You will waste your time trying to figure out the wiring for those stupid DIN connectors, plus the amplification in this deck is probably much better than the stock amps are. PLUS, it would sound like total crap according to others (not having done it I can't attest to it, but I'll take their word for it.)

Just rip those out so you won't be tempted to use them!

The only reason that I spent the money on a Sony amp with this deck is because I think I've found THE car. The one that I want to use as my daily driver, the one that I'll buy other replacement parts cars for and like Frankenstien's monster, keep alive with spare parts. Since I drive it every day to and from work, tunage was important to me, and I can transfer this gear to any replacement rex I might get in the future. Otherwise, the deck by itself should do a fine job. I guess that wasn't such a short answer after all. The curse of being litterate.

lotsacars

Cool, sounds like I'll probably be happy without any additional amping. Thanks!