Atuca
Supporting Member
- 1,145
- 303
- Jan 6, 2007
-
Central Valley,
California
Hello all, i just wanted to share my experience installing my stereo system into my 97 GS-T. If you want to hear about the stock amp bypass thing, go to the next part where i marked with some **'s.
I have never installed a stereo before, and relatively new to the whole car scene, but i knew a few things not to do, like for instance: Make sure the car battery is unplugged. I also am unable to recall the wire colors and such, but assuming you know the black stripped one is negative and the solid one is positive, this part was easy.
I purchased 250 watt alpines from best buy for about $120 for 6x9 in the rear and $100 for 6.5 in the front. I also picked up an alpine deck for about $160, the mid range model which i chose primarily on the fact it was flip down for the cds, so the screen was a bit bigger.
The guys at best buy said i would have to do an amp by-pass, something disputed here quite a bit on wether it was required or not. Having no idea what he was talking about, he said "blah blah $120 plus normal install price" i proceeded to whistel my favorite tune and tuned him out, and just took the stereo home.
I do have a haynes eclipse repair manual, so i flipped through the pages and familiarized myself with the wiring set-up and looked at what screws i would be looking for when taking out the interior of my car. there were two screws on each side of the rear quarter panel which were easily visible after removing the back seat, i took those four out, than carefuly poped out the panel, pulling one tab at a time by pressing in a little notch located on the tab itself. from there, the speaker was a breeze to pull out; i clipped the wire about an inch from the speaker, spliced on the new wire, sodered it to the original wiring, shrink wrapped it, and repeated for the other ground wire/positive wire. Pretty simple, the speakers were 3 inch in depth, as the eclipes is suposed to handle, although i had to place the giant spacer behind the speaker to give it enough clearance as the body of the car was less than 3 inches at the bottombut only just barely. I was unable to put on the speaker face plate, but by not using it, i was able to use the same screws to put it all back together, and from looking at the finished product, you can't really tell there are aftermarket speakers installed, unless you are looking close and get a glimse of the mini tweater and sub on the center of the speakers i bought.
The doors were almost the same amount of time to get off. there were 6 screws to get off, 2 on each side of the door panel, the inside down door handle hid a screw under a thing you pop out, and behind the door handle there was a screw. once those were all out, using the same "technique" (haha dumb luck for me i guess) i pulled each of the tabs out. than before tossing the door to the side, make sure you unplug the power windows from the bottom of the underside of the door. The speakers were easy to get out once again, and did the same thing with the rear speakers, cut about an inch away from the old speakers, and spliced, sodered, shrink wrapped, and repeated for other wire.
******************************************
Now about the by-pass amp business. I had the infinity premium sound package installed on my car, so there was a stock infinity amp underneather the front passanger seat. Best buy said extra money for amp by-pass, i had no diea what he was talking about, but assumed it was just a money thing, seemed to me why would i want to not use my amp? Well after some searching here on dsmtuners, i found it is a problem with some cars. Here was my experience with the new alpine deck.
According to my Haynes mitsubishi eclipse & eagle talon 1995-2001: the wiring diagram showed wired going from the deck to the amp AND to the speakers it showed that the wires somewhere between getting to the speakers or amp, they were seperated and went to both. So, naturally i presumed they would be wired directly to the speakers if the amp were disconnected. I pulled out all the wires from the back of the stock amp.
I purchased a wiring harness for the eclipse (don't cut your car wires when for 10-20 bucks you can avoid it) and an installation kit to fit underneath the smaller stereo (in relation to the stock stereo)
To get the old stereo out, make sure the power is unplugged from the battary; i was told/read just the negative, i removed both.
start by removing the side panels of the center console. There were pop-out plastic screws near the feet, and a tap you have to remove and than screw at the middle. they slide out pretty easily after that by moving them foward and than back and up. repeat for other side.
than you need to remove the center console. do this by removing the cup holder by simply pulling up around the edges (there are just 4 of those tab things) and there are two screws on the front side of inside there. than move both seats foward, and there is a screw on each side at the back of the center console. With those remove, the center consol should move around freely by pulling up on the back. The console is still installed at the gear shifter (on a manual anyways) but it gives enough for you to be able to remove the stereo.
Remove the plastic around the A/C by pulling up carefuly and you should see 4 screws attached to the four corners of the stereo. remove those, carefully on the top (of everything i could have broke, i broke off a tab that should have been re-enforced in my opinion, but yea, it broke on me so be careful) and than the two on the bottom. There is a screw on the sides of the stereo as well, accessable from the side panals that you removed earlier, they should be easily visible, and not too difficult to get out.
the stereo should come out now. it was a tight fit with the gear shift still connected, but it did come out. before the stereo comes all the way from its hole, i had to unplug all the wires from behind it, cable harness, antena, ect. once they are all unplugged and your stereo is out, the hard part is done.
Take the harness that came with your deck and the harness you got from where ever, mine from best buy, 20 bucks, but you can get them cheaper on e-bay if you plan this out better than me. My harness siad which wire was what, but if for some reason yours doesn't, search for wiring color codes and get them. Match your stereo's color wires with the wiring harness's wires and splice, soder, shrink wrap, and i even electric taped, than shrink wrapped that just to be sure there was no lose or chance of crossed wires / escaping electrons or w/e it is that saturaizes sound (or w/e the word is) Once that is done for all the wires, you should have only a illumination negative plug dangling from the wiring harness from the car. the negative illumination i just eletric taped the end off and and tucked it away with the rest of the wires. there is an amp remote power wire dangling for me from the stereo which i treated just the same as the negative illumination (obviously if you bought an aftermarket amp you do something with it, but that is beyond the scope of using the old wiring and the purpose of this tutorial) I electric tapped all the wires together and made it look kinda shnasy, and ta da, your done with your wires!
Take the mounting bracket off the old stereo by removing the four (or was it 8?) screws holding it on the stereo, pretty obvious. Remove the cheapo "please steal me" basket around your new stereo, and screw on the mounting bracket from your car using the supplied screws rom your new stereo. the old ones won't fit your new stereo (at least i think) so don't try and use the old screws. Besides, you will only be able to use 2 screws front and back when putting on the bracket, as you will notice your new stereo is about half the size of the old one.
With the new stereo mounted on the top half of the brackets, get out your installation kit. I got one with a nice little cubby hole for all of 2 CD's but the idea is to covor the area underneath your new stereo. The installation of the cubby will differ with what you buy, but essencially, you screw it underneather the new stereo on the bottom of the bracket. My cubby only used two screws, one on each side; it moves around a bit now, but was fine once i put it back in the car.
Take your new stereo mounting monster and carefully get it back underneather the center console, making sure you don't get the wires stuck from the cigerette lighter and your mounting amr thing. Once you get it in there, plug in the wires in the back. your wiring harness should plug into the car plug, and than into the back of the new stereo. you will need to plug in the antenea, and that is it. Place the other (i think 3) connectors back away where they came from, they are used for the 10 cd changer, the amp, and, i think the amp again (power maybe?) screw in all the screws in which they came, replace your center consol and side panels, plug your battery back in, and ta da ,your stereo installation is complete!
The whole amp bypass thing was totally unnessesary for me. And without having an amp to put one bajillion amps through the wireing, the stock wiring should be enough to handle the 18 watts rms being pushed by my stereo through each speaker wire. Now i can't say that it is the same for every car made from 95-2001, but according to the haynes manual, simply unplugging the stock amp at the source of the amp is enough. Those extra three plugs that can't plug into your new stereo are what used to get sent to the amp i beleive, and by "by-passing" that, you are using the installed stereo's amp, which, from what i hear, is almost just as good if not better than the stock infinity amp.
The above worked for me, and i am a totaly n00b at car stuff, as well as electronics. Do your homework a bit, read this as well as any other tech guid you can find, and hopefully you too can save yourself 200 bucks and install your own brand new stereo!
-Philip
I have never installed a stereo before, and relatively new to the whole car scene, but i knew a few things not to do, like for instance: Make sure the car battery is unplugged. I also am unable to recall the wire colors and such, but assuming you know the black stripped one is negative and the solid one is positive, this part was easy.
I purchased 250 watt alpines from best buy for about $120 for 6x9 in the rear and $100 for 6.5 in the front. I also picked up an alpine deck for about $160, the mid range model which i chose primarily on the fact it was flip down for the cds, so the screen was a bit bigger.
The guys at best buy said i would have to do an amp by-pass, something disputed here quite a bit on wether it was required or not. Having no idea what he was talking about, he said "blah blah $120 plus normal install price" i proceeded to whistel my favorite tune and tuned him out, and just took the stereo home.
I do have a haynes eclipse repair manual, so i flipped through the pages and familiarized myself with the wiring set-up and looked at what screws i would be looking for when taking out the interior of my car. there were two screws on each side of the rear quarter panel which were easily visible after removing the back seat, i took those four out, than carefuly poped out the panel, pulling one tab at a time by pressing in a little notch located on the tab itself. from there, the speaker was a breeze to pull out; i clipped the wire about an inch from the speaker, spliced on the new wire, sodered it to the original wiring, shrink wrapped it, and repeated for the other ground wire/positive wire. Pretty simple, the speakers were 3 inch in depth, as the eclipes is suposed to handle, although i had to place the giant spacer behind the speaker to give it enough clearance as the body of the car was less than 3 inches at the bottombut only just barely. I was unable to put on the speaker face plate, but by not using it, i was able to use the same screws to put it all back together, and from looking at the finished product, you can't really tell there are aftermarket speakers installed, unless you are looking close and get a glimse of the mini tweater and sub on the center of the speakers i bought.
The doors were almost the same amount of time to get off. there were 6 screws to get off, 2 on each side of the door panel, the inside down door handle hid a screw under a thing you pop out, and behind the door handle there was a screw. once those were all out, using the same "technique" (haha dumb luck for me i guess) i pulled each of the tabs out. than before tossing the door to the side, make sure you unplug the power windows from the bottom of the underside of the door. The speakers were easy to get out once again, and did the same thing with the rear speakers, cut about an inch away from the old speakers, and spliced, sodered, shrink wrapped, and repeated for other wire.
******************************************
Now about the by-pass amp business. I had the infinity premium sound package installed on my car, so there was a stock infinity amp underneather the front passanger seat. Best buy said extra money for amp by-pass, i had no diea what he was talking about, but assumed it was just a money thing, seemed to me why would i want to not use my amp? Well after some searching here on dsmtuners, i found it is a problem with some cars. Here was my experience with the new alpine deck.
According to my Haynes mitsubishi eclipse & eagle talon 1995-2001: the wiring diagram showed wired going from the deck to the amp AND to the speakers it showed that the wires somewhere between getting to the speakers or amp, they were seperated and went to both. So, naturally i presumed they would be wired directly to the speakers if the amp were disconnected. I pulled out all the wires from the back of the stock amp.
I purchased a wiring harness for the eclipse (don't cut your car wires when for 10-20 bucks you can avoid it) and an installation kit to fit underneath the smaller stereo (in relation to the stock stereo)
To get the old stereo out, make sure the power is unplugged from the battary; i was told/read just the negative, i removed both.
start by removing the side panels of the center console. There were pop-out plastic screws near the feet, and a tap you have to remove and than screw at the middle. they slide out pretty easily after that by moving them foward and than back and up. repeat for other side.
than you need to remove the center console. do this by removing the cup holder by simply pulling up around the edges (there are just 4 of those tab things) and there are two screws on the front side of inside there. than move both seats foward, and there is a screw on each side at the back of the center console. With those remove, the center consol should move around freely by pulling up on the back. The console is still installed at the gear shifter (on a manual anyways) but it gives enough for you to be able to remove the stereo.
Remove the plastic around the A/C by pulling up carefuly and you should see 4 screws attached to the four corners of the stereo. remove those, carefully on the top (of everything i could have broke, i broke off a tab that should have been re-enforced in my opinion, but yea, it broke on me so be careful) and than the two on the bottom. There is a screw on the sides of the stereo as well, accessable from the side panals that you removed earlier, they should be easily visible, and not too difficult to get out.
the stereo should come out now. it was a tight fit with the gear shift still connected, but it did come out. before the stereo comes all the way from its hole, i had to unplug all the wires from behind it, cable harness, antena, ect. once they are all unplugged and your stereo is out, the hard part is done.
Take the harness that came with your deck and the harness you got from where ever, mine from best buy, 20 bucks, but you can get them cheaper on e-bay if you plan this out better than me. My harness siad which wire was what, but if for some reason yours doesn't, search for wiring color codes and get them. Match your stereo's color wires with the wiring harness's wires and splice, soder, shrink wrap, and i even electric taped, than shrink wrapped that just to be sure there was no lose or chance of crossed wires / escaping electrons or w/e it is that saturaizes sound (or w/e the word is) Once that is done for all the wires, you should have only a illumination negative plug dangling from the wiring harness from the car. the negative illumination i just eletric taped the end off and and tucked it away with the rest of the wires. there is an amp remote power wire dangling for me from the stereo which i treated just the same as the negative illumination (obviously if you bought an aftermarket amp you do something with it, but that is beyond the scope of using the old wiring and the purpose of this tutorial) I electric tapped all the wires together and made it look kinda shnasy, and ta da, your done with your wires!
Take the mounting bracket off the old stereo by removing the four (or was it 8?) screws holding it on the stereo, pretty obvious. Remove the cheapo "please steal me" basket around your new stereo, and screw on the mounting bracket from your car using the supplied screws rom your new stereo. the old ones won't fit your new stereo (at least i think) so don't try and use the old screws. Besides, you will only be able to use 2 screws front and back when putting on the bracket, as you will notice your new stereo is about half the size of the old one.
With the new stereo mounted on the top half of the brackets, get out your installation kit. I got one with a nice little cubby hole for all of 2 CD's but the idea is to covor the area underneath your new stereo. The installation of the cubby will differ with what you buy, but essencially, you screw it underneather the new stereo on the bottom of the bracket. My cubby only used two screws, one on each side; it moves around a bit now, but was fine once i put it back in the car.
Take your new stereo mounting monster and carefully get it back underneather the center console, making sure you don't get the wires stuck from the cigerette lighter and your mounting amr thing. Once you get it in there, plug in the wires in the back. your wiring harness should plug into the car plug, and than into the back of the new stereo. you will need to plug in the antenea, and that is it. Place the other (i think 3) connectors back away where they came from, they are used for the 10 cd changer, the amp, and, i think the amp again (power maybe?) screw in all the screws in which they came, replace your center consol and side panels, plug your battery back in, and ta da ,your stereo installation is complete!
The whole amp bypass thing was totally unnessesary for me. And without having an amp to put one bajillion amps through the wireing, the stock wiring should be enough to handle the 18 watts rms being pushed by my stereo through each speaker wire. Now i can't say that it is the same for every car made from 95-2001, but according to the haynes manual, simply unplugging the stock amp at the source of the amp is enough. Those extra three plugs that can't plug into your new stereo are what used to get sent to the amp i beleive, and by "by-passing" that, you are using the installed stereo's amp, which, from what i hear, is almost just as good if not better than the stock infinity amp.
The above worked for me, and i am a totaly n00b at car stuff, as well as electronics. Do your homework a bit, read this as well as any other tech guid you can find, and hopefully you too can save yourself 200 bucks and install your own brand new stereo!
-Philip
