Aftermarket Headunit On 1stgen

[Abear]

What I am doing is replacing my stock Headunit with aftermarket HU. This is pretty easy, it was alot easier than I thought. I know alot of you guys have probably done this already, but just to make sure you know how easy it is.

First I started with removal of the stock HU, easy enough..buy the metra dash kit, its awesome and I think I saw a seller with a store on ebay who has them for around 15 dollars shipped. I took my HU out a few days before I got my kit, so it was sitting my room for a while. Yeah, no radio, but oh well. Heres what I did/am goin to do, I haven't finished yet, it got dark. The Stock Harness has 3 plugs, white, blue and gray. The Blue one is the one your working with. If your one of those people thats gonna reuse the stock amp, I would suggest not doing that, you can, but the signal is amplified and sounds like crap(had this setup in my car for my sub, its was crappy). So if your gonna bypass the stock amp like me, most likely your new HU came with a Harness(no it wont match the stock harness). I Havent gotten to the dash yet as I lost my sockets to take my battery terminal off :chairshot: But I have been in my trunk all night from about 4 to 8, it got to dark and I dont have the luxury of a well lit garage. In the trunk the stock amp is below the CD changer, if you have no CD changer its on the passenger side under the carpet in the trunk. The amp has the plugs on it, a white one, a orange one and a blue one(maybe Gray), the orange one is the one you want. I am not gonna use my stock amp again, so tomorrow it will most likely be coming out, so I just cut off the orange harness and stripped the wires back enought to fit into my splicers(will have pics tomorrow). Once in the trunk you will need the wiring colors found here....

FRONT LEFT SPEAKER: PINK+, PURPLE-

FRONT RIGHT SPEAKER: LIGHT GREEN+, BLUE-

REAR LEFT SPEAKER: BLACK+, YELLOW-

REAR RIGHT SPEAKER: RED+, WHITE-

10'' SUB: LIGHT GREEN with RED STRIPE+, LIGHT GREEN with BLACK STRIPE-

(THANKS TO TURBOGS300)

You can either cut the harness off like me, or just strip the wires if you plan on taking this stuff out if you ever sell your car(shame on you). So now you have the wire colors. All you have to do now is buy some wire(I am using 18 gauge) and run it back to the center console. You will need to take the backseats out and pull up the carpet and remove the plastic blocking the carpet(like I said, I will have pics tomorrow). I havent run anywires yet, the reason I have nothing done is because I lost that freakin socket. Now where were we? Ah yes, Running the wires, come out the trunk, down the back seats, underneat the carpet(you will need to pop the black tabs to get the wire under the carpet and pull the tower thing that the seatbelt drops into for the passenger it will pop, just pull it at the bottom). Then run the wire under the carpet infront of the passenger seat( the black tabs will need to be popped again, and theres a white plastic thing by the door that will pop also just takes some prying). Now just match the wires with the harness on your aftermarket HU, I plan on running the wires one at a time tomorrow as to not confuse myself, but thats just me :)

Now we're at the dash and we need power for this sucker. This is the same thing, there will be three harnesses that came out the stock HU, a white, gray and blue. We will be needing the BLUE here. On one end of the blue you will find the wires you need. I will probably not cut off the entire Harness here, I will most likely just cut the wires I need, I only need 2, Constant and Ignition(My HU doesnt have Illumination as I read on in the instruction manual..sorry Jael if I made you look for more info than necessary ).

Constant 12V (+) - Blue/Yellow

Ignition Switched 12V (+) - Grey

Antenna - Pink/Blue AND Pink/Green

ILL 12V (+) - Green

Ground ( - ) - Simply crimp on a ring connector to the stereo harness and ground under the bolt to the body directly under the stereo - no need to tap that.

(THANKS AGAIN TO TURBOGS300)

The thing about this is I already have an aftermarket amp and sub running, the only way Im thinkin you can use the stock sub is if you use a y spliter on the sub out on your aftermarket HU, run RCA wires to the back and splice the RCA wire and plug it to your sub. I am gonna use a y spliter on the Sub out on my HU and run RCAs to my amp, This way I can use the HU to "tune" my sub. If you dont have an amp for a sub but you plan on puttin one, you might as well run the Blue AUTO ANT wire from your HU. Its the remote turn on wire, you will need this with any amp I am pretty sure. I know I forgot to mention the antenna, its the 3 wires on the other side of the Blue harness. I am not gonna reuse the stock antenna, I am gonna get a hideaway antenna, supposedly better reception and plus no ugly antenna on the car(SCORE, haha), with the 3 wires if you figure out which ones are the correct ones, all you do is strip them, and wire all 3 together and give them a power source. This will make the antenna stay up all the time, if you dont want that you can do a switch, switches are easy, just search google on how to do those. All there is left is to make sure you clean everything up, make sure you tape your wires up nice and tight and use zipties as much as possible, we dont want any fires lol. Make sure and disconnect the battery when you start messing with your power wires, I didnt disconnect when I was in the trunk stripping the speaker wire, but I figured it didnt need to be. I hope this helps people now and in the future, I know I wished there was something like this when I first started doing my stuff.

Also, good luck to anyone who attempts this, and feel free to add to it!

-Jacob

p.s. any questions you can PM me or email me abear2386@hotmail.com

[droppedlexus]

great post I am going to try it this weekend, I had a stereo shop hookup my aftermarket radio, and they hooked it up using the factory amp, now I get popping and all sorts of disstortion

[Abear]

Ok guys, Sorry it took so long to get the pictures. My mom needed to use my camera.

This picture shows what it looks like when you have the dash out.

This is a picture I took Back at the amp, it shows the wires and where you can kinda find the amp.

This one is just a close-up back at the dash, Shows which harness and what the antenna wires look like.

And last but not least, The Final Product.

Hope this helps, and as stated in my last post if you need help PM or email, but you would prolly do better to email me as I check that everyday.