Installing a Pioneer Head Unit?

[deviantsource]

New member, first post, etc... :-)

Long story short: wife left me, took my 2000 Infiniti G20. I was OK with it since it was higher miles (180k) and turning into a money pit... Moved from MI to WA, and have now inherited a 1995 Ford Aspire. It's the 2dr Hatchback, base model, with only 61,000 miles on it! Not a typo. It's a *little* rough cosmetically in a few spots, but overall a gorgeous car that runs wonderfully!



So why it's getting posted here... I'm going to have a 30+ minute daily commute, and wanted good tunes. Just bought this head unit for the car, and am curious about the difficulty of installing it myself? Where would I procure a wiring harness, etc.? I've had difficulty finding exactly what's needed for it. I'm debating just taking it to WorstBuy and having them do it, but that'll run ~$70 by the time it's all said and done. If I can do it for a much cheaper cost of materials and it's mostly plug and play...

I look forwards to joining the community in force!

[econoaddict]

I usually head to walmart and grab an install kit and a wiring plug kit.
This is the brand http://www.scosche.com/ have installed many and had good luck so far

[FestYboy]

^ yup! that's a good unit too, i have one and it's awesome for the money.

you should look into a bass tube or a unit that can fit under the front seat, those 5.25" in the aspire don't do much for the bottom end. Caety has a sony home theater passive sub in the rear and the amp is under the passenger seat. i have a blaupunkt and a pioneer self powered unit in 2 of my cars and they slide under the pass seat and work wonders. think i dropped 50 for each of the units.

[DriverOne]

I upgraded immediately to 6.5" speakers in the doors and back deck, and I put a 10" sub in the back, which was more than enough for my Aspire. Currently I have a SoundStorm Labs SSL powered 8" sub under the seat of my Festiva, which is about the size of a small DVD player. It's good for a good sounding bass without too much oomph. All you'd need is an amplifier install kit. I also went to JC Whitney and bought two sets of Motorolla tweeters and mounted them on the deck and in the mirror panels of my Aspire, since they had a 45 degree mount available. I then wired the tweeters in parallel with the 6.5's.

[angrygocart]

I just installed a Pioneer in my Festiva a few weeks ago. I got the Scosche harness from Amazon- around $10. You just match the colors of the wires from the Pioneer to the harness and plug it into the factory plug in the car. I used my cut-off wheel to cut the head of the rivets that held the mounts/brackets on the side of the factory radio. I had to enlarge the holes in the mounts and mounted them on the sides of the Pioneer radio with screws. The Pioneer now mounts just like the factory radio.

[deviantsource]

Are all the speakers 5.25" around the car then? I'm not *too* concerned with having a high-end system, just enough to play my iPhone through really. Might pick up at least some replacements for the rears today (unit just got dropped off by FedEx), as I'm pretty sure they're entirely blown - though it could just be the head unit currently in the car...?

Thanks for the advice/help from all!

[DriverOne]

6.5" man, seriously.

[devon527]

Where in WA?

[deviantsource]

Currently in Lynden/Bellingham, moving to Tacoma shortly.

And 6.5"... is that the actual size, or what you're saying I should be upgrading to? I went to BB today and bought a pair of 5.25" Pioneers (nothing too fancy) for the front doors since they sounded a bit off. Discovered this when I took the passenger door panel off:



So the new speakers seem to be right in size, but hole pattern is all out of whack. Need to figure out where to go from here with that. Le sigh...

[89newb]

get some of those white license plate clips, drill new holes to match your new speakers.

pop the license plate screw clips into your newly drilled holes. (use the screws that come with the clips, not the speakers. dont want to biff up the threads)

if you want to go the extra mile the sell styrofoam that is .5" cube by the foot. buy a couple feet of this to put around the circumfrence of the speaker before screwing it to the door. eliminates 90% of the rattle and ALMOST as good as doing dynomat

[DriverOne]

I had a set of Dual 6.5" speakers in the doors. They fit right in.

[Basement_Modder]

Am i the only festiva owner without door speakers?

[FestYboy]

nope, i don't run them, i use a small sub and a good head unit with a built in HPF.

[zoom zoom]

I never buy the adapters.. I tried to once for a Honda, and never could get it to "plug n play"

With some black tape and 15-20 minutes you could twist the wires together yourself, there's not a whole lot you can mess up really, 8 speaker wires (hot/grnd) acc/power/ground and the antenna.

I replaced my factory speakers with some 6.5" 4way Sony xplodz from wally world, I couldn't be more disappointed. Get 3way speakers or less, imo, and from a quality dealer. I put a 1k watt amp and a 12" rockford sub in the spare tire well, sounds good, but vibrates the whole car..(not rattle, vibrate)

[ericsmith32]

Black - Ground
Red/BLK - Illumination
Blue/Wht - Illumination
Blue/Yellow - Accessories - Hot with key
Blue/Red - constant 12v

Left Front
Brown/Black +
Green/Red -

Right Front
Green/Orange +
Blue/Orange (looks pink) -

Left Rear
Blue/Green +
Yellow -

Right Rear
Blue/Black +
Brown/Red -

Here's the wiring diagram I used for my 94 and also a 95. You can use 5.25 and 6.5 but I'd use the latter. Even 6x9's can be used in the rear if your willing to cut. Fairly easy to install.