Stradale Stereo Add

My Stradale did not have one new and I had an aftermarket stereo installed. There was no factory wiring for it in the car that I am aware of.

 

When I was looking for a CS, the one I found had no stereo. My F car dealer quoted for complete install with all factory items including speaker box between seats to match leather seats the car had - £5000. Ouch! Bought a 16m instead! Double ouch!

 

£5,000 quid to add a Stereo to a CS sounds a little on the steep side but there are several reasons why this gets a lot more complicated than you'd first imagine.

1. The carbon door panels don't have space or pre cut holes for speakers (no 6.5" speakers or tweeters) to be added nor any pre-wiring and thats the default installation position on the regular 360's. This ofcourse was rectified on the 430 Scuderia (and 16M) where you get tweeters and speakers back into the doors.

2. The CS to save weight removed the stereo, wiring looms and central dashboard area so the extra box (trimmed to the same Alcantara color as your car) needs to be sourced and fitted. This is a further pain as people who've had to change their airbag cover will know, Alcantara discolours with age so your likely to find the Stereo box wrapped in Alcantara will be an 'off color' to the dashboard Alcantara. There is no way around this other than ordering a full new lower dash! Not cheap.

3. Since there are no speaker positions in the CS door panels you need to retro fit a speaker box to the central position behind the seats. This again suffers from the trim code and potential discoloration issue (especially in hot weather climates) and your interior will likely look a different shade of trim to the covered backbox. No workaround other than a complete 26+ piece re-trim will suffice for OCD sufferers. In otherwords a completely new full interior, think tens of thousands....

My advice is don't bother if your car has seen a lot of sunshine and their is a possibility the Alcantara has faded somewhat.

Alternatives to the factory Becker (it was never any good anyway and the hanging down box looks kind of naff, an ugly after thought) is to do what Ferrari did with the 16M option of fitting an iPod Dock. If you could find a way to get an iPod dock then it would be much nicer to fit one just ahead of the central console carbon tunnel and don't bother with any of the becker headunit or box at all. Then all you'd need is a neatly fitted amplifier in the front trunk with wires to a pair of speakers for your behind the seats location. Buy a 360 premuium sound speaker box from ebay (its the same box) and have it retrimmed to match your interior [you'll still never get a perfect colour match btw). I'd then get a stereo specialst to fit that with some premium high end speakers. not only will you have a neater installation, its all removable and the sound quality will be 1 million times better than the creaky old Becker ever was. Disadvantages are lack of radio but again a specialist installer can source you a unit which provides satellite radio, again this can be stealty installed without the horrible hanging down speaker box.

 

if you are actually driving this car, the stereo is completely useless and superfluous. mine has one, but i have the radio on only during warm up. after that, it makes no sense anyway because you cannot hear it. waste of money or time to add one if you dont have one.

 

I have been considering adding a stereo to my CS. Here are some pics I downloaded from FChat of an installation someone did. They claim no drilling was performed to add this system. I currently just attached 2 small speakers to the back of my drivers seat with velcro and hooked to an IPOD with an inline booster. It works ok, but not great.
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No likey

 

I believe those pictures are of Kuzi's old car and I used those photos for the basis of my installation. Mine is an Alpine unit that runs my ipod. Small speakers in the kick panels and subwoofers hidden up under the dash with amp up front. No drilling or cutting was done so that if I decide to remove it, it will be as good as new from the factory.