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Sunday, January 20th, 2002
There has been some discussion on how to replace the radio, or if a changer can be added to the car, so I decided to look behind the radio. I would like to first say thanks for Mistral on the Altimas.net forum for starting this topic and by removing his non-Bose system and taking these pictures on his site. Now, let's take a look at what the Bose system is all about.

Once again, the first thing I did was to remove the Auto-Climate control cover plate.

To the right of the climate control, there are two screws. Remove the upper right screw. This is the only screw holding the center dash piece in. Grip behind the dash and below the radio and CAREFULLY pull toward you. You will begin to feel the dash start to come out.

Now, there are only four screws that need to be removed to take the entire radio unit out of the dash. Remove the 4 screws at the four corners of the radio brackets. You can now pull the radio out of the dash a little bit. There are three white plugs and an antenna plug holding the radio to the car still. Un-plug these by pushing in on the tab on the top of the plug and then pull out. Now the radio is free from the car.

Here is the label on top of the radio.

The front of the radio says that it is a Bose system, but it is made by the Matsushita Communication Industrial Corporation of USA, or better known as Panasonic. Here is a little bit more about Panasonic and Matsushita:

Matsushita Communication Industrial Corporation of USA is a unit of Japan-based Matsushita Communication Industrial Co., Ltd., which is a subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., (NYSE: MC). Best known by its Panasonic brand name, Matsushita Electric is a worldwide leader in the development of technologies and the production of electronic and electric products for consumer business and industrial use. Additional information on Panasonic and Matsushita is available at www.panasonic.com.

Here are some more pictures of the Radio. And it looks like the Bose unit as well as the non-Bose unit both have the 8 pin DIN plug on the back.

As you may have guessed by now, I am not that afraid to take stuff apart, and I am really curious to know what that 8 pin DIN plug is on the radio, so... It's time to go inside the head unit!
First thing I had to do was to remove the two side plates. There are four screws on each side holding the plates in place. The next screws to remove are the gold screws on the top of the radio. There are two on the top at the front of the radio, and one screw on either side of the radio, making up four in total. Now the top lid comes off.

You can see that behind the DIN jack, there is a small circuit board and a ribon cable connecting the jack to the radio.

The mini circuit board confirms to us that the 8 pin DIN jack is an aux. input. You can see that there is an AUXILIARY INPUT (AUX.IN), connections for left and right chanel audio inputs such as LEFT INPUT NEGATIVE (L.IN-), LEFT INPUT POSITIVE (L.IN+), RIGHT INPUT NEGATIVE (R.IN-), RIGHT INPUT POSITIVE (R.IN+), two NC connections (don't know what this is) and a COMB.ON connection, which I believe lets the radio know that the auxiliary unit is on.

Taking a look at the wiring harness, I noticed that there is an un-used plug way in the back. It has three wires connected to the plug. I would guess that it is to power whatever this auxiliary device might be.

Now I put the cover back on the radio and put the side plates back on and placed the radio into the dash. When putting it back, I realized that the mounting bracket was designed to have something mounted above the radio. There is definately space there for something else. Maybe there will be something added in the 2003 Altimas, or perhaps that item got scrapped after the radio compartment was designed. Either way, if something was put there, you would have to cut into your dash above the radio. Take a look at the picture to see how they line up.

The slot that is there for something else is not a single DIN space. Single DIN is the size of a radio that you might buy at an aftermarket stereo dealer. I have my old stereo and I held it up to the space to show you that it is slightly smaller than Single DIN.

I am really not sure what this space could be used for, but perhaps it is for a GPS receiver or a Navigation unit. It could also be one of those XM satellite radio receivers. Who knows. I'll try to find out more info on what could fit there.

After taking all these pictures, I put the car back together and then went inside and confirmed that Panasonic CD Changers use this same round 8 pin DIN plug that is on the back of the Bose and non-Bose radios, so I would 99.9% say that the jack is for attaching a Panasonic CD changer to the head unit.

Thanks for looking and feel free to go back to PAGE ONE!