I'm considering putting an aftermarket stereo in my 96, does anybody make an adapter to mount an aftermarket double din stereo in it? Also, can I use the original amplified Bose speakers with an aftermarket stereo? The speakers in the car work fine but the CD player in the Bose gold series stereo doesn't work anymore and for what it will cost to fix it I'd be better off just replacing it with something more modern. Also, does anybody make the wiring harness adapters for it? I really don't want to cut the original wiring harness plugs off of it and try to figure out what each wire is for, I'd like to have a wiring harness adapter instead. Not to mention that the car is an LT-4 collector edition, I don't want to butcher up the original wiring in case I ever want to bring it back to stock condition. Another thing I noticed on the factory Bose radio is that there is no separate antenna plug on it so I'm assuming that the antenna is wired into one of the two wiring harness plugs. An aftermarket stereo will have a standard antenna plug in it (a round hole that the antenna wire plugs into or a wire with a socket for the antenna wire to plug into) so how do you connect the antenna in the car to an aftermarket stereo since it doesn't have a seperate standard antenna wire that plugs into the Bose stereo? Any help is appreciated.

 

The short answers to your first two questions are Yes and Yes.

Check out crutchfield.com, use their "what fits my car" option and tell it you have a 1992 Corvette with the Bose system. They don't list a 1996 in their system but the 1992 info still pertains. The wiring harness is about six feet long and is intended to connect the head unit to the stereo control equipment that's in the storage bin behind the passenger seat. It's a royal pain to install but it's really the only clean way to do it without butchering the factory wiring. It's been awhile since I did mine but I'm pretty sure I actually do have an antenna connector that I had to plug an adapter of some kind to in order to plug that into the head unit.

The plastic structure behind your stock radio is fairly shallow and most double din units will require you to cut some of that plastic out. Not a huge deal but just know that you'll need to do that for most. One exception, and the unit I'd seriously consider if I were doing this fresh now is the Alpine ILX-W650. It's less than three inches deep so shouldn't require any cutting of the plastic structure. It's also designed to work with their power pack amplifier which attaches to the back of the head unit and adds about another three inches of depth to it. I think even that may fit without having to do any cutting.