[MatthewL]

Hi there. After several years of twiddling the tone knob in vain on my R760 to get better sound out of my decent-ish aftermarket Alpine speakers I’ve decided to invest. I’ve bought a Philips R960 which looks identical, has separate bass and treble setting, and doesn’t have half the buttons glued in like on my radio. These R960s I believe have input for remote steering wheel controls.

I have seen that some Rover R3s have an identical looking steering wheel with remote volume control. Does anyone know if there is a standard loom you can fit to an R8 to get these to work? The wheel has horns so is there something you’d need to change on the steering column to have these radio signals leave the wheel. Is there a special loom from the steering column? Lots of questions!

[Dorchester]

Several years ago in 2016 I found on Ebay a steering wheel with its remote device plus harness for my 'modern' Pioneer Bluetooth USB radio in my 2002 25.
I've even noted the ref: PC99X32 in case it might be useful.
I've partially succeeded with only the volume up and down. I'm happy with that.
This old thread could help you: https://www.mg-rover.org/threads/stalk-adapters.279715/

[MatthewL]

That’s great to hear. Volume is all I’m after. I have a Bluetooth transmitter which the radio will be tuned into. As the car is less quiet than a modern one I find myself adjusting the volume all the time.

I’ve just bought a £20 steering wheel from a Rover 25 to look at the steering wheel controls - I may need an older control which pairs with the older radio but I can then see if I can adapt my steering wheel to fit the controls at least. I’ll need a different “clock spring” on the steering column which covers horn and radio controls. I’ll see what’s possible but I’m not even sure which pins on the radio I’d need to wire into yet.

Thanks for the link - I’ll have a good read

[CoupeFan]

I can only speak as a Tomcat owner, but the steering wheel mounted volume and station/track up/down button only appeared in Tomcats with the Series 2 cars and their R3 style "bubble" dash in 1996. That's when the standard radio changed to the Philips made Rover branded R860 instead of the R750 and before that the R652 used in the Series 1 cars, both of which could be factory upgraded to the R950 with CD changer controls. The 652, 750 and 950 all had an integral display of station etc.

The R860, which has CD changer controls, does not have an integral display and instead uses the clock to show the mode AM/FM/Tape/CD and channel or track. It also has separate Bass and Treble controls. The radio was downgraded sometime in 1998 to the R770.

So be careful when swapping out the radio if you want to avoid having to change the clock as well.

[CoupeFan]

Having reread your posts again today, and further to my post above, I'm reasonably certain that your radio model numbers are a bit out. You say that your current radio is an R760 but imply that it only has a Tone control, not separate Bass and Treble.

That can't be right as the R760 has both Bass and Treble. So your current radio is probably an R750 not an R760, especially if you say that the R960 looks the same. I can't find a reference to the R960, only to the R950 which does look the same as the R750. So if you actually have an R750 then you probably have bought an R950 and I don't think that you can have steering wheel/column mounted volume & track controls on the R950.

Unfortunately the Rover sales brochures say that the R950 has both Tone and Bass & Treble controls, which I suspect is wrong as the sales brochure shows the R950 as having Bass and Treble controls, not Tone. The brochure doesn't mention the remote volume and channel/track up/down buttons on the 950, but that omission might be another typo/proofing error.

Also the presence of the two horn buttons isn't a sign that the steering wheel remote was fitted. The change from the centre horn push to the two buttons was driven by the introduction of the Driver's airbag sometime in 1994 I think it was, not the change from the x50 series radios to the x60 series in 1996.

Replacing the 750 with the 950 looks straightforward, so you will get the separate Bass & Treble controls, but I don't think you'll get the steering column volume & channel/track controls as well.

That's how it looks from a Tomcat perspective, and I'd have thought that Cabbies would have followed suit. But I don't know how well these changes fit with the changes to the 3 & 5 door R8s.

But, please, everyone, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

[MatthewL]

Hi Keith. I think you are right in that I had an R750 not an R760 - one knob for tone.

Never, ever to be trusted Gemini AI reckons there are 3 pins on the loom for remote volume, track and mute. Reckons the remote unit sends a signal using resisters to adjust voltage and therefore send a message or up/down. Hmmm - I’m not too sure. I hope to find out though. Can check with my voltmeter maybe.

Rumour has it (Gemini again) the 960 is just a 950 but instead of selecting “next disc” you can pick the disk number - largely irrelevant as I’ll not fit a CD changer.

I’ll try to mock up the remote controls with the unit. In the exceptionally unlikely event this works, I can then look for a clock spring with horn, airbag and radio controls.

I interestingly I saw a picture of an r950 in a 200BRM with steering controls…. That was where I got the idea. Matthew

[CoupeFan]

I have now found radios on ebay which seem to be the R960 model, but they look to be a rerun of the 950 as, unlike the 760, 860 and 770, the 960 has an integral display. This is what you'd want if your existing radio is a 750.

I'd be surprised if the 950 didn't let you choose specific discs by pressing the relevant "station" button when in CD mode. My 860 can, but that might, as you say, have been the incremental change between 950 and 960. The 950 was supposed to be top of the range. But so far I haven't been able to find user manuals online for the 950 or the 960.

I hope you're managing to get it all sorted.

[Johnny 216GSi]

The sideways connector on the R950, R960 and believe it or not, the MG sister unit "741" is pre-amp out. I think it's all 4 equivalent "speaker" channels (i.e. "post" balance, fader, bass and treble) that are on that sideways connector so you have full control of the audio is using external amplifiers. They are not pins for steering wheel controls.

The later units such as the R860 (and presumably the R760 and R770 ?) have the sideways connector dedicated to steering wheel controls only. They are not as high-spec a set of units (the tape decks don't have auto-reverse for example) and don't have pre-amp outputs. They're also not built as well as the R950, R960 and MG 741 and fail in large numbers as can be seen if you browse eBay. The R950, R960 and MG 741 seem to go on forever.

The R950, R960 and MG 741 are high-end units and in some vehicles, Rover fitted supplemental discrete amplifiers. There are equivalent Land-Rover models to the R950 and R960 that also had pre-amp out for the same reason.

The ONLY difference between an R950 and R960 as far as I know is that the R960 allows direct disc selection using the numbered keys whereas the R950 had a DISC selection function on one of the keys, which cycled through the discs in the CD changer.

The keyboards are actually different between an R950 and R960 though - the former having 1 to 5 station numbers and the latter having 1-6. You may also find hidden functions on some keys that were never turned off in software but aren't labelled on the keys, such as "REG" on/off which is a regional setting that selects how sensitive the radio is, i.e. whether it pulls in lots of faint stations including some that aren't national but have powerful transmitters, or whether it just stops on stations with a better signal strength. The MG 741 has a specific "DX" function for this, DX-ing being a ratio-amateur slang term for long distance transmitting/receiving.

[Roverlike]

In case of Philips R760 and R770 sideway connector is used solely for clock-display since they do not have built in display. Steering wheel controls (2 pins) are part of ISO A block in which you have power connectors.
As far as I know Philips R860 share the same principle as R770.