Stereo upgrade

Years ago my younger brother and I put our heads together to come up with a cheap but effective stereo setup for the Disco. Mine is a 3dr so not everything that I was able to do is achievable but most of it is.

A bit of homework and not paying homage to particular brands can result in excellent savings and a better end result.

Head unit -
Pioneer single CD head unit with remote.

CD Changer -
Pioneer 6 disc changer that sits in the left hand rear map pocket. Perfect fit for the space.

Front speakers -
Stock 4" speakers were replaced with some 4" speakers from JayCar. (These are fantastic little speakers with a great range and sensitivity.) These speakers run straight off the head unit.
Door pockets were removed and a piece of unholstered MDF fitted with some Phillips 6" splits, powered off the amp were fitted. Again, good range and best quality in the range at the time.

Rear speakers -
Stock 4" ones left in there. Your rear speakers are only for rear-fill sound. If I wanted to, I'd swap them out with another set of the JayCar units. These too run off the head unit.

Sub -
Single 12" Orion sub in a box fitted in place of the left storage pocket in the cargo area. Box sits flush at the top so the blind can still be used. This runs off two channels (bridged) off the amp.

Amp -
Boss 75w x 4 RMS mounted to the sub box.

All up, a very neat job that didn't cost much and sounds great.

If I had to do this again, I would go for quality 4" speakers (pair of my 5.25 my JBLs were $50) and instead of 6x9 rear pillars, I would go for 6" round. Still some hacking to do on the rear though. The problem is that even that the 6x9 have a lot of bass, its gets lost in the vast space and the distance the sound travels, to the driver (you), so not really worth the effort. I got rid of the rear door original sub, it was busted and just taking space.

I also have a Kenwood head unit and all speakers wired directly from that, bypassing all original Disco wiring and clutter. (Previous owner has done that).

I think what really made the most difference up front was the deadening of the front and rear doors, (I am a big fan of this now). I sticked few pieces inside the door on the inside of the outside door skin and then sealed the door completely with the deadening material. Sounds like a Merc inside now, very quiet and a luxury ride.

Focal make a 4" shallow mount speaker with seperate tweeter, 100VRS. Screws into the existing holes and the tweeter snaps into A-Pillar trim like its made for them, the only down side is the $$$

depending on year model..

keep pulling the harness out carefully and you will come up to an amaglamated blob, carefully cut this away and viola another set of connectors.

One thing I have noticed is you all have electric windows :(
I could only fit 4" alpine s types in my doors, and had to use spacers, putting some sixes in the back soon an I have a 12" s type sub, alpine head unit with three pre outs, had a dash pod made so I can take the head unit out of that slot down the bottom, put one UHF in there and another in the pod, Christmas time shall be fun :P

Hi all, many thanks for all the useful tips

Putting LED cabin dome light globes into my 95 Discovery 1 300TDi, I noticed a little spark then realized the switch was still on and the door open.

I turned the switch off fitted the LED globe and it wouldn't work. Reversed the LED globe, still not working.

A quick check and stereo and cabin digital clock not working either.

Pulled all 18 fuses of the main fuse board. All good. Swapped them all out for new fuses. Still no stereo.

Checked all the sub fuse B fuses. All good, swapped them out anyway. Pulled all the sub 1 fuses. You guessed it , last fuse pulled out fuse 1 the anti theft device fuse. Clearly burnt through. Swapped it out. Stereo lights and clock all good.

Good thinking Land Rover. No one steals a car with a broken stereo or no clock!!!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hendrous

Just wondering if any of you blokes have removed the old radio cassette on a D1 and replaced it with a more modern unit with CD and ipod connections? The existing stereo on my Disco is pretty much ****ed. The volume control has a mind of its own and the cassette player's only function is to eject whatever you put in it!
Been looking at some Alpine stereos that seem to fit the budget, but I figure a lot of them won't fit the housing and maybe they have different wiring connectors.
If someone has been down this road and knows of a unit which is easy to install I'd be keen to hear about it.

Chrs

Mark

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I replaced mine with a sony xplod unit along with the two front speakers as well, its mostly just a switch over job, I did end up having to just cut through the black power cord going into the old unit though.
Old one seemed to be hard wired in with a rather thick power plug whereas the new one fit on an existing plug in the wiring loom and didn't need it.
I didn't buy a wiring loom adaptor and cut/respliced the wires on mine.
fairly easy job and only took 15 minutes once you figure out the first few its easy

Hey mate have a look through this, there's a few good options from people

http://www.aulro.com/afvb/discovery-...ers-front.html

I think CD players are pretty much obsolete nowdays and unnecessarily heavy. the mp3 one i bought was fairly shallow and light as paper. the old unit that was in there had dvd n gps andng and was way too heavy for the plastic surround and it cracked everything to bits the first time i went offroad. not sure if it was already damaged before i bought the vehicle. I know the previous owner superglued a lot of stuff. is also was a spaghetti junction of really bad wiring and wiring loom conversions. i cut everything away right down to the original wiring and then bought an adapter from supercheap auto which plugged into the original wiring loom and fed the unit perfectly. it is so much neater behind the scenes now.

i bought that unit from jb hi fi. i can hands free my phone through it with blutooth. plug in my mp3 player etc. bought some bigger speakers for back and got that metal bracket cut so i could mount it. the fronts i just made some wood spacers so i could fit the speakers that came with the head unit. the original disco speakers are very shallow which is why i made the spacers.

it sounds pretty good. left factory tweeters, then the new 4 inch front and 6 inch back. you can buy these alpine subwoofers and amps all in one units. they are very compact so you dont compromise on room for gear.

if you are interested i can send you my dimensions for the metal brackets i made for the rear. I have a CAD drawing of it. it is very solid and looks pretty good in my opinion.

all the best.