The next part of my ongoing saga to upgrade my car stereo.

On Saturday Anne was busy for a few hours, so I decided to give the stereo installation a go. I had the receiver that indeed had two inputs, an iPod adapter, a second input adapter, custom wiring harness for my car, a plastic installation kit and a chunk of time.

The instructions Crutchfield gives you details exactly how to disassemble the dashboard of your car. That’s a good thing, because as far I as I could tell, it was all one big piece of plastic. I guess not. I found all these little screws and pulled them all out. Then I just had to use all my strength to pull out these large chunks of my dashboard. It was amazing how much crap I had to remove just to get to a small section in the middle. Eventually I had a pile of screws and clips and my factory stereo in the back seat.

Next was to get the new one in, but first I had to do some wiring. Crutchfield supplies a plug and a bunch of colored wires for your car. The stereo comes with a plug and bunch of wires sticking out of it. These colors were mostly the same, but not always. I played a fun game of match-em-up with manuals from each. You can apparently solder the wires together or crimp them. I actually had a crimping tool and some sheaths I found in a cache once and they came in handy here. I crimped 16 wires together and hoped that I got them right.

To make sure I got them right, I hooked everything up in the car without actually mounting it in the dash. Amazingly when I reconnected the battery, it all worked. Well, mostly. Blaupunkt’s interface is kinda weird (it IS German 🙂 ) and it took me a while to figure things out. The radio worked, an MP3 CD played and I figured out how to enable the TWO auxillary inputs. My iPod worked when playing as an auxillary input (no controls), but was flaky when trying to connect using the iPod adapter. It worked enough to convince me this thing wasn’t a dud and it was time to put everything back together.

Reassembly was no trivial task though. I had to run the wires for the iPod and the 2nd aux input into the glove box, put the stereo in the mounting bracket, screw it in, and then reinstall the front panel that included the climate controls, cupholder and ashtray. Then I found a few more pieces that went in here somewhere and I realized I hadn’t hooked up the IR remote mouse thing. I couldn’t see myself ever needing a remote in my car and there’s no way I would ever let whomever I’ve shoved in the backseat control the music, but if I ever wanted it, this was the time. I pulled everything out again and plugged in the rest – for real this time.

Crutchfield’s kit came with a cheesy plastic space filler that sat beneath the stereo. It didn’t have nearly as much space in it as the factory one. The factory one fit though, so I used it instead.

I screwed, pushed and pulled my dashboard back together. I thought I did pretty well. In the end I only had a few “extra” parts. A few simply didn’t fit with the new stereo, and the others, well, a couple screws and clip shouldn’t make the whole thing fall apart. I think. What I did know is that I wasn’t going back in there to figure out where they went. Everything was plugged in though, even the little sensor that sits on top of the ashtray, presumably to warn you if your car is on fire. Who knew they had those?

Total time for installation: 5 hours. And I came out only a few cuts and bruises. The stereo worked and after playing some more I went inside to clean up. A while later we decided to go out for some lunch and something scary happened. The car didn’t quite want to start up. It eventually did and I restarted it a few times just to make sure it was OK. I think the battery was just a bit drained from my use of the stereo while I finished up the installation. So far it’s been OK, but nothing’s a given here. Now I get to actually use it! Happy Birthday to me (a few weeks late)!