hi all, i recently bought a new head unit and have a power pack on the way. thought i would install the head unit first but ran into some difficulties. i'm a second owner and am not sure what i'm looking at.

existing:

• alpine CDM-7874
• alpine cd changer
• subwoofer wiring (removed before i got it)

what i bought:

• alpine UTE-62BT
• alpine KTP-445A

questions:

• what is the remote turn on cable?
• what is the alpine gray box thing?

so i remove the old head unit and try to connect the new one, but the wiring harness does not fit. i think i'll have to buy a new one. while looking at the harness, i see a couple things that don't look stock, can someone help identify them for me and let me know what i can do with them??




general wiring...white plug does not fit new head unit


monster remote turn on cable?


alpine something? has number 15, guess it's a fuse?


CDM-7874 head unit




thanks!!

 

I'm no Alpine expert, but this is what I see:
The white plug connected to the car's blue connector is an adapter harness, in turn connected to the old headunit's harness. This is good,
because it means that a) the previous owner didn't hack up the car's wires, and b) any wiring work you need to do can be done outside of the car.
The gray Alpine box does look like a fuse - for some higher power Alpine headunits they suggested powering directly from the battery, and
that would be a fuse for that wire. If the yellow wire leads to the adapter harness, then the fuse is redundant because the power wire is
already fused.
The blue wire likely was a remote turn-on wire for the old sub amp, which would be connected at this end to a blue or maybe blue/white wire
in the headunit's harness. I believe it's unnecessary for the KTP-445A, but will do no harm as long as the other end of the cable is
insulated with electrical tape to prevent shorts.
I'm surprised that the clear white connector fits the old Alpine headunit and not the new one, as I believed that Alpine hadn't changed its
connector in decades, and looks similar to both the CDM-7874 and UTE-62BT .harnesses I googled.

 

thanks for the reply! i was surprised about the connector as well, since i hadn't read anything about needing to buy a new one. maybe it's the same and i just need to fiddle with it more. it definitely fits easy into the old head unit and the provided new (unspliced) one fits easy into the new head unit. i'll have to check on the gray box but i thought it was on the adapter harness. do you mean power wire is fused already...from the fuse box or elsewhere? and will leave the remote turn on wire alone since i'm not getting an amplifier.

i'll try again with the old connector tomorrow after the power pack arrives, thanks again

 

For most headunits the yellow (+12v power wire) just connects to the factory harness, so you'd have an unfused wire going from the adapter
harness to the headunit harness. The power wire in the car's harness is already fused in the under-dash fusebox, IIRC 15 amps. Alpine, being
concerned that their higher-power headunits might draw more current than whatever random car's wiring could provide, had a long yellow wire
attached to the radio harness, so you could run it straight to the battery,hence the fuse. If instead of running the yellow wire to the battery they
connected it to the adapter harness (so it's getting power through that harness), then the gray fuse is redundant because that power wire is already
appropriately fused.
It might be helpful to hear from people running the KTP-445 whether they are powering it through the factory harness or a separate wire to the battery.

 

 

Why did you take the power pack out? Mount it behind the dash. Also, I don't think the one you got 445A is bridgeable. I think you want a 445U for that, but I could be wrong.

 

decided it wouldn't help with stock speakers so i took it out for now. wanted to see the difference and there wasn't much, but i didn't do much of a comparison i guess. yep, i looked for mounting spots and behind the steering wheel seems good...i'll probably re-install after i get some new speakers.

 

I would mount in behind the passenger's side dash rather than the steering wheel. This seems to be the general consensus. You have to remove a few panels. There is a youtube tutorial, I believe.

 

cool, i'll check out youtube then. i didn't see any space when i looked real quickly before.

 

I have same head unit and stock speakers. I installed ktp 445U and bridged it. It makes a dramatic difference with the stock speakers.