Hidee hoe all !!! I did this article a while ago , but lost all my pics , so i thought i would do it again!! Installing a cd player is very easy for some people , but for others who may just be starting out in car audio it seems a bit harder, so with that in mind i have tried to keep this as simple as possible for ALL to understand, and included plenty of pics to explain better what i am talking about..

I wil also give "pro's " and "con's" of ways to wire up cd players, that can also be carried over to any electrical instalation you may choose to carry out on your rides.

First up we have our list of tools. Now if you do not own a soldering iron, i would highly recommend you get one. Mine cost me around $25.00 from tandy's and has paid for itself many times over. Other than that i use NO special tools at all, and most people would have these tools already in their kits..

1/ Soldering iron, and resin cored solder.

2/ Extension lead.

3/ Screwdrivers, philips and blade.

4/ test light.

5/ Wire strippers.& wire cutters ( please buy they proper strippers, again ,they are cheap and you will use them over and over again !!)

6/ Electrical tape. Not as good as shrink wrap , but it is a lot cheaper and you can use it to tidy up your loom later ( as you will see)

7/ Soft large rag.

8/ A little bucket for screws when removed.



I will emphasise the need to solder ALL joints when doing electrical work.. For starters it gives a far better power transfer than crimping terminals!! Second , it will not come undone at all. Third.. If one of those little crimpings come loose at all ( our cars do vibrate a fair bit) you have a good chance of frying your car , your self, or your nice new cd player..DO NOT under ANY circumstances just do the old " twist and tape" joins!!! If you have ever seen a car burn to the ground you will understand why i say what i say here , and if you havent seen it , you don't want to either.. Spend the little outlay and get a soldering iron..

Ok enough ranting, lets get into it shall we?

First up , the cd player i am removing is an aftermarket one already . So to begin with remove the face plate and put it some where safe. Next remove all other non needed items from your dash area surrounding your stereo. In my case it was , lighter, ashtray ( coin holder in my car ) mobile phones, or anything else that is loose in this area..





Now you will need to locate any screws or clips that will be holding your fascia in place. With the rex, it has little hidden screws behind the drink holder!! So look everywhere, and take your time.. A few extra minutes spent looking for these screws and clips will save you a lot of heartache later on when you have to try and reinstall a broken fascia!! Once located , remove all the screws and place in your little bucket.



Once you have located and removed ALL the retaining screws and clips for your fascia, you may remove it . Place this somewhere safe where it won't be broken or stood on. With the rex , the whole fascia and shifter surround is one piece. So place your rag around and over the bare steel shifter.Spread the rag around so as to prevent any scratches on your centre console when you remove the cradle. You should now be able to see any screws holding the cradle in . So, again take your time and find them all. Mine had four screws , two down each side of the main cradle.. Remove these and put in your little bucket.





Ok , now if everything is fair and equal, you should be able to carefully and slowly slide your cradle out of the dash. Mine is in one big piece, that holds the intire centre section of the dash. Take your time, and make sure you do not break anything on the way out. If it doesnt want to come out, chances are you have missed a screw of clip somewhere.. Go back and find them!! Make sure that when you lay the cradle down, that your rag is under it so not to scratch your interior.

When you have your cradle out, carefully look behind , and see if you have other items plugged in still ( lighter , ashtry light ) If you do , make a note of where and how they are plugged in , and unplug them all. Remove the complete cradle assembly and put somewhere safe.



Now you will need to trim up the factory wiring. now there are a lot of adaptors on the market today that allow you to simply purchase the one to suit your car and type of head unit. I would recommend for most new comers to see if these are available for your set up first.They really are a simple case of plugging in one end to your factory loom, and then plugging the other end into your head unit. No soldering or cutting required!!

If you want to have a go though , here is how to do it.On most factory looms there will be no indication on what wire is for what . Take the loom going to the stereo and cut it off while leaving enough to rewire to , and re wire the head unit if you want to sell it. Now i already know what is what in my car so it is quite easy for me. But you will need to probe a few wires to find out what is what in a factory set up. With the earth wire i never rely on factory stuff, so lets start there.

With your new units wiring loom, attach the earth wire to a suitable ground of bare steel. That means BARE steel, not painted. If you do not have this , then a simple sand with a little sand paper will supply you with one. Screw the earth wire to this point. Next is the switched power wire( normally red in aftermarket head units looms) This needs to go to a wire that is on when the ignition is on , and off when the ignition is off.. DO NOT wire ANY unit with full time permanent power( can turn it on without the ignition on) With your ignition turn to "acc" probe with your test light untill it lights up. Make sure it also goes out when you turn the ig off.

The yellow wire from your new deck needs to go to permanent power ..That is power that is always on no matter what . this wire keeps all your settings on your new deck , clock, sound settings, and radio stations in your memory.

Now with ALL wiring make sure you solder ALL joints. Simply strip a small section of the wire of both to be joined, twist together, and solder. Now when i solder i hold my iron on the backside of the wire, and push the solder into the wire from the front. This ensures you get full penetration into the wire, and a good joint. After you solder your joint, bend the solder down to make sure there are no sharp points on it, and tape it up. Use as much tape as you like, it is cheap ( a lot cheaper than a car or new cd player)

Now do not go getting too far ahead of yourself here join and tape as you go . I normally solder one wire, solder another wire, and while the second is cooling, tape the first .. This way you finish as you go , and do not have bare wires hanging out everywhere.So you should now have your power all sorted out and ready to go.

Here is about where most people go and get the new unit and plug it in to see all their new pretty lights lit up.. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES DO THIS!!! If you do , you run the risk of still blowing your nice new unit as you have bare speaker wires.. And no unit will be covered by shorting!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!







Now we move onto the speakers. There is no real easy way to do this in a factory set up. But the simplest way i have found is to stick your head under your rear shelf and see what colour wires you have going to them.. These can normally be traced back to the head unit as the same colours.ie.. solid blue/ positive.. blue / black stripe negative.. If you do this with each speaker,write down colours and + - on a scrap of paper( make yourself a wiring diagram) and you should not get into any drama's.Front speakers however are a bit harder, and sometimes will require removal of them to find the correct wires.. It is worth taking your time, as you do not want any speakers out of fase, as they will sound like shit!!

When you know what wires go to where on your speakers, you can solder them all up as previously descibed...



I hear you all saying " that looks terrible!!" Well how about we use some of that ever so expensive electrical tape and tidy it all up..



Next we need to mount the new unit. Look at the side of your cradle, and you will find some more screws that are holding your old unit in place.. Mine had two screws holding in the old unit. Taking note of how your old unit sits in relationg to the face edge , remove the screws, and place the old unit in a safe place..



Installing the new unit is a simple as sliding it in, and making sure that the face edge is in the same position..Aftermarket units have a lot of holes on them now, to make installing easier, so you should have at least two holes that will line up with pre drilled holes in your new unit. Mine had three that lined up perfectly , and one slightly off.. Three is more than enough, and most will only have two ( as did my old unit)
Use ONLY the screw size recommended in your instruction book that came with your new unit. There are all sorts of fun circuit boards and mechanisims just waiting for you to screw an oversized screw straight through them. ( again not covered by ANY company!!)



Now we are getting close!!!! After all this is done, you can plug in your loom to the back of your new unit, and don't forget to plug your erial lead , and other acc's like lighter and anything else you unplugged earlier back in too!! Slide your cradle back into position, and make sure the new unit doesnt foul on anything . If it does you will have to remove it , and adjust how the unit sits in the cradle. If all is good, screw that puppy back into place!! Reinstallation of fascia items is just a reversal of the above . Once all the panels are back in place you may go and get your new units face plate and try her out!!







I hope this might help a few out of an otherwise daunting task. If you take your time, it really is quite simple, and very rewarding when you do it all yourself. Not to mention what you will save in the back pocket.... Good luck all ... Jason..

BIG THUMBS up to you mate

Like, I do installs myself, but congrats on all the work you have done as in taking pics & stuff..the info was spot on...well done!
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Great Article.

Whenever I do and install like that, I use loom cover (the hard plastic sleeve with a split down one side) and tape it at each end and in the middle also. Just means, that if you ever need to get back into the wires, you don't spend an hour ripping the tape off.

You can also make your own loom by buying a 12 way terminal block from altronics, jaycar, tandy or some local electronics retailer. They cost about $3 and is well worth the trouble if you want to remove the deck and put in a new one. You can also glue labels to the underside of the blocks to help u identify various wires.

The wires which connect speakers to the head unit sometimes change colour under the carpet as there are usually plugs and connectors located near the rear seat. **** ONLY DO THIS IF YOU HAVE CORRECTLY IDENTIFIED YOUR 12V+, GND and IGN wires **** Another way to identify which speaker goes where is to touch a AA battery to randomly selected wires. If you hear a popping noise from a speaker, u have identified the wires which belong to that speaker. Only do this for a few secs at a time as u can damage the speaker coils.
**** ONLY DO THIS IF YOU HAVE CORRECTLY IDENTIFIED YOUR 12V+, GND and IGN wires ****

You now have the problem of determining which wire is positive or negative. Connecting speakers out of phase results in an 'odd' sound stage. Listen and experiment to determine what is right or get a tuner CD.

Excellent guide.

I would like to add that heat shrink would work/look better than PVC tape for covering the soldered wires. Heat shrink can be purchased in different thicknesses and lengths from electrical stores such as DSE and Jaycar and won't cost too much more than PVC tape.

Begin by cutting an appropriate length of heat shrink and threading the wire through the heat shrink before twisting and soldering it to the other wire. Once the solder has cooled, more the heat shrink so it covers the soldered area and then just "shrink it" using a cigarette lighter or blow torch.

It might sound difficult if you've never used heat shrink before but it is very easy to do and a tiny amount of practice will make you a heat shrinking expert.

gO THE HEAT SHRINK, top stuff, i'v installed many n found that d best n d neatest. If you are connecting wires and know u'll pull them apart soon u dont need to solder them as long as ur twisting is sweet because heat shrink will stick to the original wire. Highly recommanded!!

This guide was meant to be as simple as possible, with what most people would already have at home. Heat shrink is better ( as mentioned in the list of gear needed!!) But it also adds to the complication for some people.

When using the inexpensive form of sparky tape to clean up the job, do you seem to get a distortion in the high volume ranges from impedence? I have so I now keep all speaker wires seperate.

Also it is easier to use a 1.5 volt AA battery to bell out the correct connections for each speaker instead of tracing them out. Just keep tapping wires onto either end of the battery until you hear a popping noise in a speaker, then see which speaker it is.

Just ways I use.

i wish i seen this b4 i paid to get mine "professionally"intsalled for a few hundred.

I have never introduced noise in any system i have installed. This prob, a lot of the time , can be traced back to bad earthing cables, or just bad earthing installation....

As for "popping" speakers with a battery, i have heard of and done this ( but was not done to find out which speaker was which) , but as already stated this was a simple guide. If i wanted to cover every aspect of a cd player install , this thread would of been a lot longer. Battery popping is just adding confusion to an otherwise simple task.... Funny that you only mention the popping as a way to find out which speaker is which, "popping" is also done to find out the correct polarity of speakers, but as i said, why add confusion to an easy task??

mate that was very easy to undertsnad good work with taking youyr time and explaining wat ti di in detail butr still easy to undertsnad

Thanks mate, was the whole idea of this thread.. I could of complicated it with doing this and that, but i know most people just want to have a go, but not be put off with technical desciptions...