The "I replaced my car stereo myself and have the scars to prove it" thread

Anyone else out there try the Crutchfield’s DIY approach and, like me, found it way, WAY harder than you were expecting? Two whole days - yikes! Now I am the first to admit that I am not very handy at this sort of thing. But it seemed like every single step had some unexpected wrinkle that I had to improvise my way through, and/or call them for help. And mine was probably the single most common scenario - 2010 Prius, replace the stock head unit and door speakers, and add a small power amp. Didn’t even add a sub. The few times I called, they were extremely good at explaining the steps, despite sounding quite bored (it was obvious they get asked the same questions over and over and over again). I did end up doing some steps differently than what they recommended, after browsing the web.

In the end, I’m proud to say I got everything working, it looks and sounds fantastic, and probably cost less (money) than if I had someone do it. But man, my hands are all sliced up, my back hurts, and I’m paranoid that my car is going to suddenly catch on fire.

Actually, mine apparently is a DVD player. It’s hard for me to imagine my having a use for a DVD player in a car, since I don’t have kids. Any ideas?

My car has a DVD player and a CD changer and a radio in the dash. When I bought it, I soon realized it wasn’t receiving radio stations properly.

Last week I finally had the time to pull it out and look at it, and (unsurprisingly with this car) the previous owners had done a hackjob of a Sirius satellite radio installation to it, which involved plugging the car’s antenna into a little box that then ran another antenna wire to the car’s radio. All of these many feet of wire were stuffed inside the console haphazardly, of course.

So I pulled it all out, reconnected the car’s antenna to the radio, and it worked perfectly again. Also instead of using a car plug with the car’s cigarette lighter to power the Sirius radio, they had hardwired the male end of the car plug into the car’s power system… they didn’t even have the decency to cut the car plug off and splice the wires into the system, no, they just touched the wires to the metal parts of the plug and taped them in place. I still haven’t had the gumption to get in there and disconnect that particular hackjob.

Just… leave your cars stock, folks. Don’t add any of those goofy additions to them. Nobody wants them and they’re just a pain for everyone else.

I couldn’t even figure out how to install a 6 CD changer thing into my car so I gave up.

My car is only about 10 years old. I don’t see any need to spend more than a few thousand on a car. As long as it runs safely and reliably, it’s fine.

Looking back on the couple of days I devoted to this project, there were many “surprises” – at least they were surprises to me.

Started at 8pm, just after eating dinner, on day 1. Getting the stock radio out of the dash was pretty easy, and only took me about 2 hours. But the mass of wires on FOUR harnesses, was intimidating and seemed to bear no relationship to the back of the new radio. After reading the instructions, and various websites, I decide to go to bed, with the plan of calling Crutchfield in the morning.

Woke up, went to the farmer’s market, then started working on the car at about 10am. Crutchfield was VERY helpful on the phone and I had a pretty good idea how to make sense of the wires after talking to them. They suggested not worrying about the amp until after I am able to get just the radio working.

By about Noon I have the radio functioning. I decide to go ahead and also install the amp. Needed to buy the wire stripper, but I was expecting that. That’s when the fun really started:

• had to buy better wire splicers (the twisty ones they provided were unreliable)
• there were no instructions on wiring the amp (another phone call to Crutchfield)
• didn’t know how to run wires from the battery (drove to two auto stores)
• where to put the amp? Can it really go in the dash behind the radio? (another phone call to Crutchfield)

Crutchfield help is really good on pretty much all of the calls, even though I get different people each time I call. One minor hiccup having to do with a blue wire… on mine it’s blue but the guy on the help line swears it’s blue and white. Eventually he decides that one of our manuals (probably his) is wrong.

It is REALLY easy to drop stuff down the various areas of the dash and gearshift column. There are at least three “pits of despair”. One I was able to get at by removing the gearshift harness (not as hard as it sounds). One I was able to get at by going in through the side by the passenger’s feet. One was completely inaccessible, and there are now two items caught down there, presumably forever. I quite nearly lost a VERY important bolt down the second pit of despair, but was luckily able to fish it out with a pair of chopsticks after extensive dismantling around the firewall. Many bruises and cuts on my hands after this.

• important to route wires, or ways of getting at harnesses, BEFORE putting things in place. Twice I had to uninstall something I had finished installing, because my install was blocking access to a wire or a harness.
• Set any switches or jumpers BEFORE putting the item in place (doh!)
• Had to buy a wire crimper
• Had to buy various connectors
• Had to buy 12 feet of heavy gauge black wire
• Had to buy 12 feet of heavy gauge red wire
• Had to buy some long plastic tie cables for mounting the amp
• Had to buy a metric socket set so I could handle the various size bolts

It is 8pm on day 2, and the amp works! Ate a quick dinner.

Now I was ready to start on the speakers. I was imagining this to be the easy part. Ha! First, getting the stock speakers out of the doors involved drilling out some rivets. That sounded easy, since I have a power drill. But after removing the rivets, I still had to pry the fasteners out with pliers, and even a hammer to get the remants out of the door. I was concerned with whether my 1/8" drill bit was going to survive all this, considering there were four doors, four rivets per speaker per door, PLUS the instructions said to drill new holes IN THE DOOR panel. Yikes, that metal looks THICK. Much thicker than a rivet. Plus, it isn’t AT ALL clear how the various mounts work to position the speaker in the door – does the adapter face inwards or outwards? One way blocks the door panel, the other way looks like it might block the window from going up and down.

And a bigger problem - the mount Crutchfield provided doesn’t fit in the existing oval hole in the door. Am I supposed to enlarge the hole?

Instead, I went to sleep. It is nearly midnight, the end of day 2. I have ONE of the fours stock speakers removed – planning to call Crutchfield in the morning.

Day 3. I awaken at 6am and start browsing the web. Turns out, several people have figured out that it’s better to NOT use the mounting brackets supplied by Crutchfield, but to instead LEAVE the plastic stock mount in the door (don’t drill out the rivets), CUT OUT the stock speaker, and drill holes in the old plastic mount rather than in the metal door. To me, this makes a LOT more sense and would be gentler on my poor drill.

Now, I’ve already removed the first plastic mount – luckily, I hadn’t destroyed it in the process. After trying many different screws, I am able to jury-rig attaching the speaker to it, using a plastic ring that comes with the speaker and has a zillion holes to choose from. There are some more surprises along the way:

• cutting out the old speaker also necessitates cutting out these thick plastic bars behind it. Luckily, I have a small plastic saw that seems to work.
• routing the speaker cable through the plastic mount requires drilling a large hole.
• how to reattach the mount? Web says to buy a good riveter (ugh!). I get lucky, four big screws I find in the garage make a perfect grip and seem to hold it in place well. And luckily, I won’t need to find more of those screws because I’m NOT going to remove the other three mounts.

At this point, the door panel won’t go back on. Argh! Parts of it do, but parts don’t. What’s blocking it? Closer examination reveals – ugh – the panel has an oval plastic molded baffle that hug the original 6x9 mount, and my jury-rigged attachment extends beyond the side of the original mount. The baffle is bumping into my jury-rigged speaker mount. I have to cut the plastic oval baffle off of the door panel. This is tedious, and I end up doing it in one-inch segments with a large pair of wire cutters. Luckily, the grill doesn’t fall out as a result of cutting off the baffle (it appeared to be a possible risk).

It is now 10am and I have finished one front door speaker.

Amazingly, whereas it took over 3 hours to do the first door speaker, the next one only takes me 30 minutes since I now know what I’m doing. I also discover that I don’t have to saw out the plastic bars, they break off rather easily with a little twist. I’m also getting better at cutting off the baffle - seems once I get a stretch started, I can roll a bunch of it off.

Now for the back doors. They’re a bit different, since the enclosures are round rather than 6x9. They’re actually easier, as I don’t need to use the round plastic thingy - I can just drill screws right into the mount directly from the speaker. However, I need to use my power drill to get them started, since the plastic is thicker and there’s a big layer of foam that doesn’t come off as easy as for the front speakers. It takes me an hour to do both back doors. The first one takes about 40 minutes, the second only takes 20 minutes.

I ended up never calling Crutchfield about the speakers - the web was my consultant and I’m glad I mounted them that way rather than drilling holes in the door.

It is Noon on Day 3 and I’m done. Well, cleanup takes an hour. My back is sore, and my hands look like I just put in a deck in the backyard. I end up NOT using any of the speaker mounts they sold me (I suspect one of them may have been the wrong mount anyways), nor the wire splicing twisty things which mostly fall off. Probably spent about $60 in additional stuff. Total time on the project, about 20-24 hours.