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spuyear's avatar
spuyear
Explorer
Aug 04, 2017

Replacement stereo for 2018 Gulf Stream Conquest

Anyone put a new stereo in their late model Class C? Our rig is on a Ford E-450 chassis and the stereo head unit installed at the manufacturer does not meet our needs.

I want to replace the head unit with something that has built in Sirius, CD player, on-demand backup camera display and RDS so we can see the name of the songs.

I am wondering if you all have some suggestions on a good unit that you have that you enjoy.

Thanks!
  • swing over to crutchfield.com and see if any model's looks jump out at you. if your 450 has a factory head unit, or at least a DIN mount head unit, should be easy to find an upgrade for it.

    if you have steering wheel controls (radio, phone, etc), some but not all will have a CANBUS interface box/module (usually for extra $) that will talk to those as well
  • I've replaced the head units in both my 2001 e350 and the '98 E450. Both replaced stock radios. Kenwood ddx393. double din mount. has sirius, bluetooth, dvd, usb thumb drive and backup camera. works great, easier to see than those little single din units. blue tooth connects to the phone for hand free phone talk as well as streaming for pandora, or music stored on the phone. Also has software eq as well as sub output.



    After market speakers - 2 super tweeters on door frame, 2 super tweeters on overhead cutout behind drivers and passengers heads, 2 alpine 4x6 in door and small powered sub under driver's seat.

    also have a switch to tap off rear speakers for use outside. I've got a small marine power amp to run the outside ones since they're big 6x9 tri-axials in external boxes.

    System sounds pretty good, although it needs to be turned up to take advantage of all the speaker range. Installer wanted to put sirius antenna on front fender. umm nope. ran it up the side and mounted on the roof.

    I've got most of my audio collection digitized now and dumping a couple dozen albums on a thumb drive and playing off that works the best. Better than fumbling through cd/dvds. Sirius works ok, but this far north can be blocked by trees or mountains. Decent selection of music, but you can tell their digitized stream is pretty heavily compressed. Pandora subscription on my phone works ok as long as you're in good cell coverage. t-mobile unlimited streaming helps, but their coverage isn't the best.
  • Thanks all. Looks like the Kenwood DDX774BH meets most of my needs. I had forgotten that I needed to also get the SiriusXM SXV300v1 kit as well. I will post how it goes.