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Guitar_Guy's 2004 Legacy McIntosh Stereo Hack - Pic Heavy


Guitar_Guy

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So after 6 months of dealing with the limited McIntosh system I finally got around to replacing it.

BUT... I wanted to do something that nobody else seems to have done and that is to fully integrate the McIntosh amp and factory speakers

with an aftermarket head unit.

After hours of forum searching and research, I could not find a single thread that achieved this without bypassing the McIntosh amp and/or replacing it

with an after market amp but I was convinced it could be done.

What you will need:

- Screwdrivers

- Soldering Iron

- 5x Male RCA ends

- an aftermarket headunit that supports 3 sets of RCA line level outputs, mine was a fairly generic Pioneer that my old man had lying around (score!)

- Patience

My project began by removing the McIntosh head unit and fan controls from the car.

5ab101cf4b95a2f33e7c.jpeg

Once this was out and fully unplugged, I sat down and started pulling it apart... like completely apart.

Breaking down the plugs in the back from left to right:

Far left is the aerial,

next is the factory Subaru 20 pin DIN which provides constant power, accessory, earth and illumination,

then a single earth tab (I think),

then a 10 pin DIN which integrates the factory Sat Nav system into the stereo for DVD playback/the beeping noise when you touch the Sat Nav,

then a single green wire into an 8 pin DIN, possible a handbrake sensor for DVD playback but I really have no idea....

underneath is the multicore which joins through a 20 pin DIN, this connects the head unit to the McIntosh amp under the seat,

and last is the square DIN which was't used in mine (stolen pic).

4NNlL.jpg

Once I worked out what each did, I continued removing bits to break it down into core components.

First I took off the DIN rack side thingys...

6CB541F0-3966-4B3E-861D-3670C51FB873_zps

Next, I separated the fan controls from the Head unit.

3E57FEA9-4302-48B6-9204-6C39BB8BC13B_zps

Now the front on the head unit comes off, couple of screws needed to pop this off, not hard to find, then it unclips from the front fairly easily.

A0597E8B-69CC-4348-829A-A1D4EE811587_zps

At this point I removed all the screws to separate the head unit section from the CD changer.

NOTE: In my pictures, I have already removed the McIntosh multicore cable that is dangling out the back (we'll get to that soon).

85F13375-E93A-409D-9942-943A72693659_zps

6ECCD779-A9B9-49CE-88A2-36481D5BEDDA_zps

C0355185-515F-42DB-971F-082EBA427282_zps

5BAF9886-63BA-4DC4-899A-155CEF42536D_zps

Now the top comes off the head unit section and reveals a whole lotta fun bits....

BFE5A231-2E53-4886-A8DF-2DB43000B218_zps

A couple of other screws come out and then the top bit pops off...

959BBFED-1A06-4FE1-821A-D3C85BBECDBE_zps

Underneath....

6DFA8812-C0A2-4AC2-9685-47A19DB5C430_zps

Now, onto the McIntosh multicore cable which would be dangling out the back if I had taken my photos in proper order...

Here it is, wired on the circuit board...

D59D8D3C-5BBA-44CA-B593-9BC7738058E6_zps

14 connections in total, these are:

- Front Left +

- Front Left -

- Rear Left +

- Rear Left -

- Front Right +

- Front Right -

- Rear Right +

- Rear Right -

- Amp On (remote cable)

- Earth

- Subwoofer +

- Subwoofer -

- Centre +

- Centre - (these do nothing, they only integrate with the factory Sat Nav which I wasn't worried about).

Next, I flipped over the board and found they were all nicely labelled for me, SCORE!! It was going to be a nightmare otherwise.

A35A5E08-FCEC-4C2F-9AD0-C5975B6C3D28_zps

At this point, I used a soldering iron to melt the joins and pop all the pins out, adding tape to the loose wires as I went to make ID'ing them

easier for the next part.

601180E3-847A-4E3A-A4FF-F3809A75B8EE_zps

Next I bought some RCA plugs with no cable (I lie, I bought a 3x male to 3x male set from Dick Smith with RCA plugs that I could unscrew and removed the wiring that came on them to use for this)

So with that, add an RCA male to each set of these wires, we'll need to use the aftermarket head unit's RCA outputs so its line level for the McIntosh amp.

Obviously, Front Left + and Front Left - are wired to one RCA plug and so on, you should end up with 5 in total.

- Front Left

- Front Right

- Rear Left

- Rear Right

- Sub (mono)

and tape off the Centre speaker wires, as above they aren't required.

Please ignore the visible tape, these were my labels incase my connections failed and I needed to open up the RCA plugs again.

All my joins are soldered and not taped up with masking tape... haha.... seen it done before, not pretty!

449AB3B7-6093-41A3-81CC-A0FBA88FDF11_zps

At this point we have done the hard part but we have 2 wires left from the multicore, the Earth and the Amp On signal wire.

I bought 2x ISO harnesses from Repco/Supercheap, either will do.

1x Subaru - ISO

1x ISO - Pioneer

This gave my aftermarket head unit power, an earth, illumination, etc etc.

The speaker output part of the ISO harnesses is void as we are only running out of the RCA plugs to the McIntosh amp.

I then tapped the Aerial/Amp power cable on the ISO harness (blue colour usually) and soldered the Amp on signal cable from the McIntosh multicore to it.

See the light blue cable tapping onto the darker blue cable on the ISO harness... excuse the tape, had no insulation tape handy bugger it, connections were all soldered though.

0F5D51AB-2B9F-4730-B17E-3FD8A880BFE0_zps

I also tapped the earth cable on the ISO harness (black) and soldered on the remaining earth cable from the McIntosh multicore.

See the red cable (McIntosh multicore earth, why is it red? I don't no, earths are never red....) tapping onto the black cable on the ISO harness.

1DAF8F60-F215-4CFB-B997-1CDB5D380FB7_zps

At this point, everything is now wired in and should be good to clip into the car again.

17EEB2F6-CAD0-4912-9167-A2E4AAA2EBE8_zps

Aerial cable goes back into the new head units aerial socket, 20 pin Subaru Harness clips straight into the ISO harness we bought for power etc.

The McIntosh multicore clips back together and thats about it...

Power up the new head unit and you should now have an aftermarket head unit fully integrated with the factory McIntosh amp and speaker setup.

As for the Fascia, I am going to cut a hole in mine to mount the new head unit as I'm not forking out $600+ for new fan controls when mine are separate

to the head unit section... will up date later but for now the aftermarket unit is screwed into the DIN rack thingy with no fascia.

Good luck!

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  • Admin

Bloody good write up there. Most just chuck it in the too hard basket and replace the lot, aka me ;)

Have a look on the aussie ebay, have seen just the top half openings on there in the past. May look a bit better than having the CD hole and a few Mcintosh buttons remaining.

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Haha yeah, I thought about replacing the lot but I really had no budget for this so when a free head unit came up and all I needed was a few hours and to buy some RCA plugs it seemed worthwhile having a go.

The thing about is that the McIntosh factory system is really quite nice and I didn't want to waste it if I could utilize it but there isn't a single forum thread that's done what

I've done (atleast not that I can find and that covers ClubSub, LegacyGT, NAOSIC and others) so I really wanted to do something would help other people wanting to achieve the same thing.

Will definitely check out eBay for for a top half fascia bit though!

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  • 2 months later...
  • Admin

McIntosh amp only seems to receive power on Tuner mode of the aftermarket headunit.

The Amp on signal cable is spliced into the antenna cable like you described.

It seems that on this aftermarket headunit in particular (Alpine) the power antenna signal is only sent when on the Tuner function.

Will try rewire to the Amp On wire (Blue/White) on the ISO harness.

UPDATE: Wiring the McIntosh amp on signal wire (light blue) to the ISO harness Amp On/Off wire (Blue/White) worked!

Edited by 1randomkiwi
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Hey Guitar_Guy!

thank you so much for this awesome writeup!

with the help of 1randomkiwi I managed to wire up my old alpine unit to the car and work successfully!!!

Words cannot describe how grateful I am for your writeup! honestly!! :)

Just need to get an adaptor for the antenna/ modify the faceplate and it should all be sweet!!

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 im-a-bus said:
Hey Guitar_Guy!

thank you so much for this awesome writeup!

with the help of 1randomkiwi I managed to wire up my old alpine unit to the car and work successfully!!!

Words cannot describe how grateful I am for your writeup! honestly!! :)

Just need to get an adaptor for the antenna/ modify the faceplate and it should all be sweet!!

No worries, stoked someone else was able to use the guide and had success!

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  • 2 months later...

What did you end up doing for the fascia? Can see a couple on ebay...going through the same dilemma at the moment with an 04 Legacy I just picked up withe the same McIntosh head unit.

Baby on the way so not sure I have time to much around with the custom wiring though!

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 willisnz said:
What did you end up doing for the fascia? Can see a couple on ebay...going through the same dilemma at the moment with an 04 Legacy I just picked up withe the same McIntosh head unit.

Haha about that... I didn't want to fork out for one so completely dismantled the factory fascia and cut a bigger hole in it. It's pretty rough but has kept me happy for now.

I'll probably end up buying a small square of sheet metal or something and cutting it to fit before putting a vinyl wrap on it.

The frame behind the stereo actually fits an aftermarket headunit with a bit of fiddling anyway so nothing to change back there.

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Fair enough, $160 for a piece of plastic is a rip-off! I have access to a 3D printer so was considering that. Through some digging I have managed to locate the part number (66065AG050 or 66065AG040), and there are a few online in Europe that work out at bout $70.

Just need to work out if that + a double din head unit and a bunch of wiring/soldering (which isn't trivial given imminent baby induced time constraints!) is better than just buying an Anycar 1080B and a band expander.

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Yeah, the main reason I went the whole hog was that my factory headunit was stuffed.

Got rubbish reception with the band expander and it made a horrendous buzzing sound for the first 5mins of travel time.

If this hadn't been the case I would have put the Anycar 1080B in for sure.

I think that unless you specifically want a different headunit, the Anycar link would be the way to go.

Hassle free, relatively cheap and you'll maintain all the functionality of an aftermarket unit.

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I'm leaning towards Anycar, bluetooth one appears to go for around $220.

I'm intrigued by this discussion of the secret codes to change radio region....might have a play around mashing some buttons tonight...if I can get NZ frequencies then that is another tick in the Anycar box.

https://jeremy.geek.nz/2015/04/03/mcintosh-pf-2824i-and-pf-first-glance/

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  • 1 year later...
  • 6 months later...
  • 7 months later...

Hey Guitar Guy, I've done this too now, thanks to your posting and proving it possible. I bought a junk Mcintosh stereo from Japan to acquire the 20pin din socket / cable cause I didn't want to butcher good working McIntosh Tuner's - they are quality tuners, shame their integration with other stuff is harder than this! I also got thrown by the Red earth and blue wiring, and initially wired them to normal expectation (!) and got no sound! Eventually figured to swap, them recalling your comments about red earths and suddenly this great sound burst forth into the car. I bought the fascia ex Japan as that seemed cheapest. I did not realise they are original Subaru equipment. Came with an earth wire and antenna adapter (after I'd bought one expecting to need it!) Shame Subaru doesn't sell them less the Kenwood Air Con Control as I anticipate most people will be like me with a perfectly fine controller not needing replacement.

 

I used a Kenwood Head Unit which (similar to the above referred Alpine) a blue Amp 12V on (Light Blue (!) "Power Control  Wire") wire complete with an excessive dethump delay. The voltage when on and wired to the Red wire was 0, pretty much proving the Power Control circuits are current limited and protected, as is the amp! I used some shielded RCA cables, cut them short and spent a few hours laboriously connecting the wires and heat shrinking covers etc. The Kenwood has two Subwoofer outs which made me wonder. I'm using the red RCA alone and it appears to be working fine. Need some music with strong bass alternating between left and right channels to tell if I've limited the bass to one channel.

 

So far sound works perfectly once getting over the Red earth problem!

 

Haven't figured out how to get proper dimming light levels. I wired in the Outback's orange illumination wire but that doesn't seem to do much other than go from 12V to 14V when the lights are turned on. The associated while Illum Neg goes from 0 volts to 10Volts but in reverse to the dimmer so I am not sure how to exploit that. Maybe swap it for the orange lead but that might work it back to front? Also on the Mcintosh head unit there is a green wire into an 8 pin socket. Not sure what that's for and whether I should be using that, anyone know? The service manual says its a dimmer cancellor. (8 pin J900 socket)

 

Soo once again many thanks for the posting and hope some others are encouraged as well cause the McIntosh speakers and Amplifier setup are IMO really good and its stupid to try to replace them.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just completed this in my new SpecB daily last week, works great. thanks for posting.

A double din unit even bolts onto the factory rails, just had to cut the oem fascia up and slide it in.

 

cYCxnXz.jpg?1 cB6EIU8.jpg?1

 

Here's the wire colours incase others don't want to open up the McIntosh unit. Excuse my student level handwriting :P

CoKDDGo.jpg?1

Edited by mitch8198
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  • 2 years later...
  • 2 months later...
  • 1 year later...

Hello

just wiring in after market radio to Subaru Outback, I don’t want to cut the lead out of the McIntosh head but want to connect into the second bit of lead that goes to the amplifier question is will this still have the same wire colours as the first bit?

Cheers 

Stu

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