So as of last night, the stereo install is officially done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Saturday afternoon I spent about 4 hours removing every piece of carpet, seats, and door skins from the car as well as installing the frost king insulation into the rear hatch. I would have spent longer but we had a Christmas party to go to, so I had to call it quits around 5ish.





I got up Sunday morning around 9:00 and after a quick breakfast the wife and I ran to True Value to get some miscellaneous hardware to create an amp mounting plate out of ¾ MDF. I started by cutting a piece of the scrap MDF I had left in the garage so that it fit onto the rear wall between the targa bump outs. I then drilled holes and counter sunk 4 bolts into the plate that would be used to mount the amp later in the install.



I proceeded to remove the two inner most taillights to give me access to the back of the wall and drilled 4 holes in the corners of the plate and the back wall to allow my to bolt it together using 1 ½“ long 5/16” bolts and big @ss washers. I added a couple layers of frost king insulation to the back of the MDF plate to reduce any would be vibrations between the MDF and the fiberglass.



Next I finished applying the frost king insulation to the front passenger areas. All in all I used 5 bags of the insulation at approx $15/bag. I then fabbed up a set of speaker brackets for the front doors using ¾” MDF again and the Bose brackets as a template. I then drilled for the screw holes and had to counter sink the heads on those as well so I could reuse the short screws with the now much thicker speaker plate.

(forgot to get picks before I put the door panels on doh!)

I ran the amp power wire from the battery through the grommet in the firewall back along the passenger kick plate through the B pillar molding and around the trunk area to the back wall. I also ran a ground from the Alpine H/U as well as the remote turn on from the Alpine to the back in the same area. I tied the constant power from the Alpine into the amp power wire and used the yellow wire from the toe panel as my “acc on” wire for the H/U. The illum wire was pulled from the HVAC display as well. So I decided against purchasing the H/U wiring adapter, as I was able to bypass use of it all together.

I slid the iPod cable from the head unit behind the dash and into the glove box, which will keep it from the heat of the tunnel even though I hope the frost king helps with that.

I ran the 16’ RCA cables down the driver side and through the B pillar molding and around the trunk area to the back wall. The speaker wires were run first from the back wall around the trunk on either side through the B pillars and down behind where the seat would be. I hooked the passive cross-overs to these wires and then ran the tweeter and woofer speaker wires from the cross overs to the doors utilizing the stock rubber wire shielding between the kickpanel and the doors. Next I installed my speaker plates and wired the speakers up.

I then hooked up everything and did a quick check to make sure all speakers were firing, the H/U was working and the amp was turning on. Everything was good so I unhooked the H/U and Amp and proceeded to re-install the interior of my car.


I had to remove part of the foam insulation from the back wall carpet panel and drill 4 holes to accommodate my amp bracket bolts, but when I was done it looked pretty stealthy. I then slid the amp onto the bolts and nutted it down and re-attached all the wiring to it. I finished replacing the rear carpets and panels and dropped the sub box into the cubby and wired it up for the first time.





Next up was the front carpets, seats and door panels. All went in fairly easy with the only exception being the black plastic trim pieces that are supposed to hide the front seat mounting bolts… apparently with the added thickness of the frost king insulation they did not want to slip back into the tabs… so it took a little motivating from my rubber dead blow, but they all snapped back in. I then had to deal with the H/U mounting location. I bent the bracket in the back down so the H/U would slide in, but the RCA cables were causing me fits in the back. One of my cables had a longer head on it, so I had to swap that pair down to the subwoofer out and the shorter pair went to the front outs and that solved the problem (phew).



We put the rest of the center console back together with only 1 slight issue, the fuel release wiring bundle had somehow gotten buried under the passenger side carpet so it took a while to fish it back out…

Started up the car and everything still worked. Unfortunately it was 10:00 at night on a Monday so I didn’t get a real chance to experiment with sound levels and tuning.



I’m pretty excited to have it all done, and I know the wife was glad to see all the parts back in the car instead of scattered throughout the garage, I have to admit, it was a little scary looking.

I even got the pup to help me out as much as he could



Parts before they went into the car...







Let me know what you think.

Special thanks to everyone here that helped answer all my questions, as well as NassuaBlue98 who has helped me countless times.

Jay

 

looks great. isnt it a great chance to clean the carpets really well when everything is out. how does it sound?

 

excellent install pics. they will certainly help when i do a similar install on my car next week.

 

dude looks great how do you like the polk stuff

 

The sound is pretty darn good. I haven't had a chance to fine tune it, but those components hit high and hard

I love the display on the Alpine as well, comparing it to the 9856 which only has 1 line of display its a world of difference.

That amp rocks my sub pretty good too, I have the gain turned down pretty low and it still moves that thing a ton when the volume is turned up.

Overall I love it.

 

That's a great install...looks real sharp and clean! Those are some of the best pics I've seen of mounting a MDF board to the rear wall. We talk about it quite often here, but I don't know that I have ever seen pics of it. I'm sure that will help some people who are new to Audio and Corvettes.

 

Nice looking install! I like that amp rack setup, smart to bolt it through from the back like that, no worries that's going anywhere!

Congrats and enjoy.

 

Yeah I've heard rumors of amps pulling themselves off the back wall in wrecks, so I definetly didn't want that to happen. i also didn't want to have to worry about the glue setting up as I've heard of... it meant 4 more holes in my back wall... but whatever.

Hope my pics help some other people, I know this forum has been invaluable to me.

Jay

 

So you tied the red wire from the head unit into the battery fed wire for the amp?

and then hooked the ACC/Yellow wire from the head unit into the yellow wire down in the pass. floor panel?

And the ILL - Illumination wire is a must have as well?

THanks,
Rain

 

Actually I believe constant on from my Alpine was yellow so I ran that to the Amp power lead wire.

And I believe the switched power for the Alpine was red and I ran that to the floor panel and tied it into the yellow wire in the yellow orange black group that were taped together.

The Illumination wire wasn't absolutely necessary, but its easy to get at, so you might as well hook it up. its on the end of the plug into the HVAC all by itself.

Jay

 

Thanks for the heads up


Directons for this Pioneer unit stink!

There is a yellow/black wire for MUTE capability - not using that.

Then a yellow (says "To terminal always supplied with power regardless of switch position") -

A red one - "To electric terminal controlled by switch"(so this red needs to go to the switched power, yellow wire, dn in the floor panel).

Orange/white wire to the lighting switch terminal(guess this is my ILL?)
and is not required?

and the black wire , ground, i attached to the bottom bolt next to the ignition.

blue/white wire was for controlling on/off of the amp - connecting that one to the amp of course.

 

Nice job Jay and thanks for the pictures and info. I am going to put mine together the day after Christmas so this helps me a great deal. I hope mine turns out as good as yours.

 

Sounds like you have it down. I'd hook the Orange White wire up. If it was a pain I might overlook it, but all you have to do is shave some wire and tie it in. Kind of a no brainer.

Good luck with the install!

 

agreed - I have some 14-16 guage T connectors. Should do the trick in tying in.

Thanks again for your replies - I'm off to the garage
Rain

 

Looks good!