ICE Upgade for the NAS D90

Apr 6, 2008

My 1997 NAS D90 still had it’s original ICE system in place. It was basically a Clarion head-unit with a 6-disk CD changer. It also has a factory-fitted amplifier driving 4 speakers. Now, I don’t use CDs (except to rip them once), and the changer takes up room in the center console. Plus I was using a pretty awful cassette-tape connector to listen to my iPod/iPhone when driving. After much research I ordered an Alpine iDA-X100 – the revised version of their first “iPod only” head-unit, the iDA-X001.

I decided to keep the factory amp and speakers, the amps is fine and I’ll replace the speakers this summer. That meant connecting the new head-unit to the existing wiring. Now, I’m not going to hack a factory wiring-harness unless I have to so I managed to get a harness that was close enough to work.

As the 1997 D90 was the only year with this configuration, I had to figure out what each on the pins on the factory harness was for. There was some documentation on the web (1, 2, and a useful 3), but I also had to add connectors to the custom harness so it would work with the factory harness. The Alpine unit came with its own unterminated harness, and good documentation (PDF link), it was easy to connect to my wiring.

The pinouts look like this: (click though for large version)

The pinouts for the 10-way connector are for the speakers and self-explainatory. The pinouts for the 8-way connector are as follows:

(Pin 1 is the top left, above the keyed part of the connector, pin 2 is below pin 1, pin 3 is to the right of pin 1, etc.)

1. Phone Mute – not used
2. Amp Trigger
3. Remote – not used
4. 12V+
5. Remote antenna – not used (power for an electric antenna)
6. Illumination
7. ACC – 12V+ switched
8. Ground

Once I had my wiring adaptor cabled, it connected to the factory harness and the x100 works like a dream! Highly recommended.

From Crutchfield, I ordered the following components:
Alpine iDA-X100 Head-unit
Alpine KCE-422i high-speed cable for iPod/iPhone
Receiver Wiring Adaptor for Land Rover
Antenna Adapter