Wednesday I'm taking my Stony CD Player out and going to get a JVC or Alpine unit from Circuit City... I have checked connections and everything but cd's skip like crazy and half the time won't play. I barely bump the thing and the screen goes blank. Time for a new unit...

How hard is it to rewire everything? I'm thinking about selling my kick panels and just going back with some good 4x6's in the dash... 6½'s in the rear... a 4-Channel amp with at least 50W RMS per Channel... and keep my 12" RF Punch HE off the 100.2 RF Punch amp... So how hard and about how long should all this take? I'm wanting to rewire ALL the stereo... front and rear speaker wire... all of it... thanks in advance

 

Id guess abotu 2 hours. I installe new wire for my front kicks and pulled out my head and put back in, in 2 hours.

 

Depends on how careful you want to re-wire this. Are you just snaking wires throughout the car? Or are you going to be careful about introducing noise into the speaker/RCA cables?

With my carpet in, I managed to run the power along the driver's side door sill, all three preamp cords down the center of the car (from radio console, along transmission hump, over the back center of the hatch, and out the back center edge of the hatch carpet), and all the speaker wires down the passenger side of the car. All seats were pulled. The center console and radio console were pulled. The plastic along the rear passenger side of the car, and the rear of the hatch, was pulled. All door sill plates were pulled. I un-hung the rear driver's side plastic. The kick panels were pulled. The dashboard pad was pulled. My hair was pulled.

Remember to do what I told zee28- if you have to make a speaker wire or RCA cable run over a power wire, run the wires at 90 degree angles to each other. This prevents ANY noise from entering any of the cables... they cancel each other out. This goes for preamp cables at the head unit, preamp & power cables under your amp board, the driver's rear 6x9 speaker wire crossing over the power wire for the fuel pump, located behind the rear seat fold-back, etc.

I rewired all my speakers, too. I used rolls of 18 gauge speaker wire from Radio Shack. People still tell me I was (and am) crazy for doing my car like this, but hey, I know it's done 100% right. You wouldn't believe how many systems I heard in highschool that sounded like crap because the kid used cheap wires, and ran them along the same side of the car.

I don't even use my factory harness; it's cut out, and heat shrunk/soldered to my new radio harness. I only use 5 wires- the radio power, radio memory, illumination, ground, and power antenna relay (converted to turn on my amps).

 

first off,get an alpine!!! they are made to build systems off of. with dual 4v pre-outs almost standard on all the new models theres no reason to mess around with other brands,unless your looking for some real high end gear,alpine is the best bang for the buck,$300 will get you a very good HU. 4v rca signals will provide a clean flawless signal to the amps....

I would use a GM wiring harness if your stock one is still in,it's easy and saves time. i used to solder and shrink tube everything too,but i got tired of it and I'd rather solder or crimp the wires on a bench,then plug'em in.all HU's pretty much come with full installation instruction in english,francia's and 'espanol. I would keep the kick panels too,where did you get them from and why don't you like them??

a friend told me a great trick to wire an amp from the rear to the front speakers,splice the front/rear RR-FR & LR-LF wires together at the HU,disconnect the wires at the rear speakers and hook the front channels up at the rear speakers.

If i was doing what your doing,i would take my time and take most of the interior out and set my own wires in,solder everything,and zip tie the wires out of the way. use twisted pair RCAs,run some 2awg in case you decide to upgrade amps.

I ran wires in my friends silverato,I had to take the seat belts out to get most of the side panels out,it was a pita,but i wanted a clean install and that was the only way. it took some time but it was worth it,and i got a free Kenwood HU and some pioneer 6.25"s out of the deal!!

 

Hehe, my MECP friend hates how I solder/heat shrink when I install a radio! It drives him nuts! Haha, it's great!