Pi Day Car Stereo Installation

Car stereo shops are harder to find these days than they used to, because full-featured factory installations are a lot better then they were in past years.  But because I prefer to drive my vehicles into the ground and the Panasonic MP3-CD player we had installed by Tweeter (THEGQ) some years ago was starting to show its age, I went looking for an upgrade.

I checked in at a local shop, and the salescritter must have liked that I said that I hadn't done any research, because he quoted me a price $100 over Crutchfield's for a Pioneer unit, plus $250 for installation.  This was enough to push me into considering the possibility of doing the install myself.

It's been a long time since I've done this, and I paid for the original upgrade in our Sienna because of my bad experience doing installations in my T-Birds back in the 90s.  The dash in those vehicles was so horribly crowded you pretty much had to brace yourself against the seats and drive the head into into the slot with your feet.  But for the $350 savings I figured I would take a shot at it, and if it turned out to be unworkable, I'd negotiate over the cost of installing a head unit I'd acquired myself.

I went for the same Pioneer device, with GPS, because using my phone's GPS sucked up a bunch of data, and this was particularly a problem when driving in Canada.

This first step is to remove the old unit.  The instructions said to start by prying out the side panels.  The catch is that I worry about doing this without breaking the clips but it turned out they weren't fragile at all.

 

Next, a 10 mm socket to remove the four bolts holding in the bezel.

 

So far so good, there's plenty of room in there.

Wow, look at all those wires.

 

The next step is to take care of the wiring.  When you get the device from Crutchfield, you get a bracket that connects to your vehicle's audio connector.  The head unit itself comes with a bracket that plugs into its back.  The wires are colour-coded according to an industry standard, so as long as you colour vision is OK, it doesn't take much to match them up.

There are however a bunch of wires I'm not going to use.  A connector for a remote (such as you often find on the steering wheel), a speed sensor (to assist the GPS, and often to adjust volume for road noise), a parking brake sensor (which needs to be engaged before the device will allow you to play DVDs--I briefly considered shorting this out, but no) and a reverse-gear sensor for vehicles that have backup cameras.

I found I was all out of electrical tape, I think because I threw it out after it got all goopy, so made a trip out to get some and an extra USB extension cable.

The pros use crimps to make the connections, but I prefer solder and in any case will take any excuse to break out the iron.  This also an excellent job for young 'uns who need soldering practice, but my apprentices are out of town this weekend.

And then make with the electrical tape.

The wiring assembly, connected to the player's main rear connector:

The main difference between this install and the ones I'd done in the past is the number of rear connectors.  The first choice is to run these out under the dash and I may do that in future, but I found a cheaper option.  Note that although there are two rear USB connectors, Pioneer chintzily only gives you one cable.  I will probably never need both (since the van has multiple power outlets and I've already got a dual-USB charger) but I'd hate myself if I ever needed it and didn't wire it up, so I pitched in one of my own.

The three other connectors are for a microphone, AUX input and GPS antenna.

Bolt the player into the mounting bezel.

Now it's time for final assembly.  Connect all the wiring, then think about where the rear connector cables will be run out.

If you look back at the original picture, you'll see there are two 'dummy' buttons on the right side that are just placeholders for options the Sienna CE (the least featureful trim line) doesn't use, corresponding to the hazard flasher and rear defrost buttons on the left.  Once the side panel is removed, it's easy enough to pop out the dummies and we're left with two holes with a clear path to the back of the head unit.  Thread everything through before you put it all back together, in case there's a piece (like the GPS antenna) that won't fit through the opening.

Before bolting everything down, give everything a run-through.  Check that all four speakers are getting signal, and that the USB and AUX connectors are all working.  (Test track:  New Order's Blue Monday (DMC Mix).)  All working great.

Bolt in the bezel and snap all the covers back in place.

The microphone clip fits nice and snug on the hood of the instrument panel.  The rear connectors cables are quite a mess, but I'll let it be for now and think up something else if they turn out to be too annoying, or I'll pay a pro to do it if I ever spring for upgrading the speakers.

Total installation time:  just about exactly 4 hours even.  I could call it pi hours it I don't count the trip out for cable and tape.

From device installation to enterprise infrastructure architecture, look for WGVC.COM at the intersection of Media, Technology and Entertainment.