j3studio

After much reading (mostly of Audio/Electronics on the forum—thank you), I'm getting close to pulling the trigger on a new head unit for our 2012 C6 coupe. I'm likely going Kenwood and I'm almost certainly going through Crutchfield.

Now, I'm fishing for random useful information: did anything surprise you about your head unit install for your C6? Any gotchas?

ls1121

Yes that I had to break out some on the hard plastic from the area where the back of the OEM HU sat. Couldn't fit 10 lbs. of **** in a 5 lb. bag.
How difficult is was to mount the back up camera and do the wiring, I like to solder my connections. Had to almost remove the rear valance.

TorchRedFred

I found the most difficult part was getting some of the stuff disconnected from the center console, like the traction control, cigarette lighter, heated seats, etc. You can't pull the console up far enough to see back there so you kind of have to do it by feel. I found the backup camera install to be fairly simple but I used crimp style connectors to connect the power wires to the reverse light. Most difficult part of that was getting under the car to pull out the reverse light bulb connector and working with the short factory wire. Like ls1121 said, space behind the head unit is tight but I managed to stuff it all in there. As far as head unit installs go, the C6 is a fairly simple DIY project. The forum is a great help if you do run into any problems.

Tag7800

Did mine this weekend. 99% of the difficulty is getting the damn cigarette lighter plugs to come free! I could probably get it in and out in a few minutes now but like someone else said you can't really see them.
BU Camera I thought was easy. I didn't use the wires at the light (they are very short) but used the harness below the outside passenger light. Found the directions on here, I believe it was the light green wire.

_Nomad_

The best advice I can give you is don't do the install in the middle of summer unless you have an air conditioner in your garage.

The rest is cake.

ls1121

OK this surprised me today. The Sat. radio sound on my OEM radio SUCKED really bad. So I just recently finished up an aftermarket radio install and the HD sound is Fantastic, I bit the bullet and installed an SiriusXM adapter to my new radio thinking the sound would be dramatically better that before. I got a Surprise, it's better but still is bad.

Boostedsvt

I did a lot more than just the head unit which required removing the full interior so that end of it wasn’t so bad. Best advice I can give is to get some sandwich bags to put all of the fasteners in, label where they go and what size/type of tool used to remove/reinstall them. I followed this guide:

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...p-by-step.html

The backup camera was a pain because my first connection to the reverse light was bad and I wasn’t a fan of drilling holes in my car. Good luck with the install!

Apocolipse

Satelite radio always sounds like ****. Not sure why people still bother. Get spotify or pandora etx and run off your phone. So simple.

hawkgfr

This... I never even turn that **** on when I had it free.... its terrible.

madsonp

The only surprise to me was how much better it sounded over the stock head unit.

SPSandman

What head unit did you go with?

I am looking at the following :
Kenwood DMX905S
Sony XAV-X5000
Alpine ILX-W650

madsonp

The Pioneer AVIC 8200 NEX

89Roadster

^ This.