2008 Roadtrek 210P media cabinet wiring and equipment

youngnretired

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My wife and I just bought a 2008 Chevy Roadtrek 210 popular. First time owning anything like this. Previous owner removed the tv and AV equipment from the media cabinet as the TV was junk. Only items left are the equipment that's mounted to the top and sides of the cabinet, coiled up black coax cable, white coax, and a group of 13 multi colored wires. I want to install a 12v TV and necessary equipment to be able to use the factory speakers. I'm looking for:

1. Anyone have an equipment list if what I should install in this cabinet with manufacturers and part numbers to connect to the existing speakers? I know I'll need the TV, 12V to 19V converter and something to connect to the existing speakers. I plan to use a DVD player and/or stream from my phone to the TV, but not use the coax or antenna. Anyone install a radio system in this cabinet to work with the TV system?

2. According to the roadtrek manaul, 12v DC circuit #9 should be in the media cabinet. Anyone know which 2 wire colors these would be from the grouping of 13?

3. Anyone have a diagram or listing of wire colors that would show what color wires run to what speakers?

Thanks.
 

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If you have the surround sound option, which you probably do if you have built in speakers. You should have a subwoofer and 5 satellite speakers, two in the front 3 in the back. Our 07 190 had the same.

The 12v wiring is probably red positive, with green ground, and white or yellow negative, but you will need to check all that with a meter to a 12 source from the battery or inverter section. There probably are not any drawings available unless somebody made one and Roadtrek changed stuff a lot.

The big bundle of small wires is likely for the speakers and it probably goes, or used to go to, and rotary switch that selected vehicle radio or surround sound unit. It is a multipole, probably about 8-10 poles stack in the back and the wiring is horrendous to do. Add that the wiring may be incorrect, or 190 was wrong, Roadtrek admitted they went out bad, but they would not give me a wiring diagram. The said to to the dealer, who said they can't get a diagram either and Roadtrek wouldn't pay as many hours as it would take to figure out. I spent a week testing to get it right then found it had a bad ground on one of the front speakers so I had to take the tray above the driver door out to find it and fix it. Of course then the junk surround sound/dvd player died shortly after that so we replaced it with another brand.

We did put in a 12v TV for a while with a voltage stabilizer, but good ones are hard to find and new AC TVs aren't native 12v anymore so can't just cut off the wall brick any longer on most. We also had a 12v DVD player and there also very few good ones now so they last only a year or two.

I finally did a bunch of power use tests, some are in discussions here on the forum and discovered that you can use an AC TV that has low power use with a small inverter and and actually use the same, or less, power than you do with a 12v TV on a voltage stabilizer. It also gave us the option of using a 110v home Blu Ray player that also has USB input if we wanted, but we went with just plain BluRay that had very low power use as we already had a USB adapter to feed the TV directly. We ran it through the surround sound for a while but the amp unit is AC only and very power hungry. We now use a nice soundbar direct off the TV that is AC powered. All the AC stuff is powered through a 340(?) watt very efficient inverter in the same cabinet.

You will probably have a very hard time finding a replacement unit of the same style as Roadtrek used. We did find one about 5 years ago but it was difficult. The only stuff that fit was from the old dorm room style 5 speaker small surround sound systems that they don't make anymore. I have the one I removed when we went AC only sitting and waiting for me to take it to recycling if you want it. I don't know if I still have the multiposition rotary switch or not, but probably not.

In my opinion, you would be time, money, and frustration if you either use the surround sound speakers from another source but I don't know if you could do that without an AC unit to drive them all and then you have to have that on the big, inefficient Tripplite in the van or an added one. IMO, the speakers weren't all that great anyway and they can't place them for real surround sound in that space either.

If you are looking to be more efficient in battery use, which is likely because you want 12v TV, using the surround sound shoots that down, I think, as it will use lots of power.

A small 110v system with TV, DVD, and a sound bar running on a small inverter would use a tiny fraction of the power the surround sound on the Tripplite would use when not plugged in.

We have had pretty much all the other options at one time or another and the one we have now is AC only and on small inverter has been the easiest to use, most efficient for having better than TV speakers, and has been totally reliable over several years now.

If you do decide to use the built in speakers, I would ditch the multiposition switch and only input the surround sound amp outputs for speakers without the van radio option as with van radio on while driving all the speakers except the lowest range ones are in the back of the van. I would be able to give you a basic procedure for identifying all the wires after you take them off the rotary switch or find where it was. It is not a simple task but is better if you have two people.
 
I replaced the failed dvd/entertainment unit in our 2010 with this:
Screenshot_20250612_072833_Chrome.jpg

Its a tight fit but it works well. I used foam board on the bottom to make up for any gap, and brackets to keep it in place.
We have the 6 speaker system - I tossed the rotary switch and used a AA battery to trace the speaker wiring so I knew which speaker was which. There's videos on how to do this, very easy.
I then connected it all up, works fine. It has A,B, C zones so I connected two speakers to each zone. I can select rear, middle or front or all speakers.
Our aftermarket dash unit just uses the factory door speakers, I replaced those with better versions.
We have a Visio 110v TV in the van that's also connected to this unit for dvd.
Fairly simple but it works for our needs. 99% of our use is cd/usb music when at a campsite. The other 1% is dvd if we're caught waiting out a very rainy day.
 
My wife and I just bought a 2008 Chevy Roadtrek 210 popular. First time owning anything like this. Previous owner removed the tv and AV equipment from the media cabinet as the TV was junk. Only items left are the equipment that's mounted to the top and sides of the cabinet, coiled up black coax cable, white coax, and a group of 13 multi colored wires. I want to install a 12v TV and necessary equipment to be able to use the factory speakers. I'm looking for:

1. Anyone have an equipment list if what I should install in this cabinet with manufacturers and part numbers to connect to the existing speakers? I know I'll need the TV, 12V to 19V converter and something to connect to the existing speakers. I plan to use a DVD player and/or stream from my phone to the TV, but not use the coax or antenna. Anyone install a radio system in this cabinet to work with the TV system?

2. According to the roadtrek manaul, 12v DC circuit #9 should be in the media cabinet. Anyone know which 2 wire colors these would be from the grouping of 13?

3. Anyone have a diagram or listing of wire colors that would show what color wires run to what speakers?

Thanks.
I have a 08C210P RoadTrek which has (and still mostly does) have the original A/V system. Unfortunately RT used a Canadian (Electrohome, I believe) combination DVD player/Dolby decoder/6 channel amplifier. It runs on 120 VAC. I have been looking at various combination of 12 volt automotive amplifiers but have been unable to find a multi channel decoder (Dolby or otherwise). I replaces the original TV with a 20 inch Skyworth 12 volt model. Skyworth is intended for for long distance trucker market and is sold through Truck stops and Amazon. It is 12 volt native and I run it directly off the 12 volt line as it is designed for vehicular use. I have never had a problem with it. It has a built in DVD player which works well. In my case I run the headphone jack output to the Electrohome. There is a switch on the roof of the AV Cabinet which will allow the front vehicle radio to play in the rear, a feature we use all the time as we have Sirius/XM and use it a lot more than the TV. I also installed a switch to allow the car stereo to play through the speakers just above Driver/Passenger heads. That is an improvement over having only the speakers in the doors. I wish that I could tell you that there is a 12 volt drop in for the Elecreohome, unfortunately I have been unable to locate a substitute. I have attached a PDF of the speaker wiring.
 

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A while back, 2014 I installed LG TV PA77U projector and pulled down 35” screen. It takes minimum space at the ceiling, can be powered by 12VDC or 120 VAC. Light source for the projector is LED and image is formed by reflecting light from TI’s DMD (Digital Mirror Device) so power draw is only about 100W. Projector is mounted on rails to accommodate multiple screen positions. The projector can accept separate DVD/HDMI or an USB memory gadget. Sound is from built in speakers which are not great but sufficient for a small van.
 

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When we got our used 2008 210P I had the same task, removing al the stuff and cabling. Installed a new digital off the air Ant. redid the wiring in the cabinet and non working, never hooked up Winegard on the roof. I still have the new guts to the Winegard and the rest. The place that sold that Ant did not have a clue., it was never hooked to power! I have all that "free" to someone for the shipping.
 
Thanks for all the responses. I'm just at the beginning of research to install something. We're doing route 66 this fall, and I at least want a working TV that I can play Hulu from my phone. I can deal with TV speakers initially, but it would just be nice if I could connect to the speakers in the unit. And yes, it does have the 5 speaker surround system selector switch in it. I discovered that just before posting my original post and the cab radio does work on the rear two speakers.

Booster, is there any way that you could post some pictures of the surround sound system with pictures of the rear connections etc that you haven't tossed out yet, and maybe the model number? I have no idea what equipment was in this cabinet to even have any idea of where to start at this time. Maybe just hold it a bit longer for me to figure out what I'm doing?

TX-Trek, what is the model number of that unit?

Johnnyfry, excellent spreadsheet and suggestion on the TV. I've printed this and will check out what you have listed to my wire colors to see if anything matches.

GeorgeRad, at this time, I'm not too interested in mounting anything to the ceiling, unfortunately, but thank you for the idea.
 
Here you go. On edit, I just went out and looked at ours. The multi switch is still there as is the wiring and the connectors for the speaker outputs. I would need to untape and pull out the harness enough to see what color Roadtrek used for it. If it is the same as yours, I would be able to find out the wire colors by speaker as the plugs are color coded. Hard to get at right now because I have the bed mattress leaning up against the cabinet while I do the inverter/charger changes. There are more wires than just the speakers in the harness, I think by the size of the harness so would have to be careful about cutting them out with the original colors with it and then cap them all. If your switch is still in place with all the connections on it, you would be able to splice in the plugs and the unit would work, I think, unless yours is wired wrong in the switch like ours was and in that case you would probably need the switch to see what moved compared to yours,

1749835443470.jpeg


Surround sound front.jpg
 
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I managed to get enough tape off the wiring at the receiver plugs to see where they think they are going.

Please be aware that ours had the switch wired with some things miswired and I don't recall if I swapped them at the switch or at the plugs (which is much easier). The plugs are the ones that plug into the receiver in my pix.

Blue plug...rear left...green and blk green wires
Green plug...center front....yellow and Blk yellow wires
Purple plug...sub...brown and blk brown wires
White plug...front left...white and blk white wires
Green plug....right rear...blue and blk blue
Red plug....front right...red and blk red
 

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