I've been spending some time messing around with these Delco radios. I've got some things to share.

First off... The radio is made of 3 basic components that seperate easily, with no real electronic skill required.

1) The face / display / ***** and buttons

2) The CD mechanism

3) The tuner / amp / preamp

All of these style Delco radios have section 1 and 2 in common. If it is Bose or not does not matter. The components are interchangable.

section 3 differed between Bose and non bose. In my pictures you can see both side by side. The heat synch is the obvious give-away. The Bose has the small heat synch because there is no internal amplifier. The Bose system uses external amps. The more robust heat synch is for the standard non-Bose model with onboard amp.

Any of these Delco radios can be converted from Bose to non-Bose and back by simply swapping out section 3 of the head unit. Pretty cool, huh!

In my Z, I'm running a Bose section 3. It has line level outputs that I run to my Soundstream 5 channel amp. Bridged to 3 channels, running components in the doors and a sub in the trunk it sounds pretty decent.

Here are the pics:








Also posted at www.f-body.com

 

In my 94 I just modified a unit form a 2002 malibu (same as F bod unit), swaped the connector and unsed it. Looks and performs a lot better and still has a factory look.

Re'

 

Good info.. interesting..
I knew they were modular, and came apart like that, but didn't know the Bose/reg Delco similarities..[I have only messed w/Bose HU's]
I had CD unit go bad, and swapped one.. now I know I can get a reg Delco HU, and use the CD unit for the Bose..
Thanks!

 

wow thanks for the good info, I knew I should not have bougth that alpine