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#96: Learn how to, and install a Car Stereo

Date Completed: 09/18/09

So, my new car came stereo-less. 2009 Nissan Versa 1.6, by the way. There were speakers, but no stereo. I don’t know how well you all know me, but a stereo is nothing short of a requirement for survival for me. Especially having a long commute as I do. These couple weeks have been various levels of boring and stressful commute-wise. I ordered a new stereo, and it is supposed to come with all the required parts. One of the joys of using Crutchfield. However, they were out of my dash kit, so they offered to reimburse me up to $20 for a kit from somewhere else. This struck me as reasonable, and I wasted no time gathering the appropriate kit on ebay. It took it’s sweet ass time getting here, and finally arrived here yesterday evening. Apparently you have to assemble dash-kits. I did not know this.

I got to work quickly! I had had the various wires for a while, and had already crimped the conversions together, to make everything fit nicely in my car, so it was simply a matter of assembling the dash kit, installing the receiver in that, and then moving on to my car. After unplugging the negative line to the battery, I used a screwdriver to pop the top off the center of my dashboard, and unscrewed the plate around where the stereo would go. This pulled out nicely, and I simply had to unscrew the blank faceplate that was there. Now, because I’m high-falootin’, I got a stereo that will let me connect my ipod directly, and control it through the receiver. I wanted to put this all in my glove compartment, so I drilled an appropriately sized hole in the interior of my glovebox, and pushed the wire through. Piece of cake. From there it was just a matter of connecting all the wires to the stereo, grounding them, and screwing everything back in place. Voila! STEREO! A test proved it worked.

And now I can listen to music in my car. Just in time to drive all over the place this weekend.

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