So, after doing some research, and REALLY liking my floating screen he chose the 10” floating screen HU from Boss. We all know it’s not the best, but again, he’s paying and didn’t have much of a budget. While most of us wouldn’t buy it, I believe it to be a decent budget HU that has all the features he’s looking for… wireless CarPlay, Bluetooth capability & comes with a backup camera.

Unfortunately, for me, the dash kit is outrageously priced (I agreed to pay for this as a graduation gift) because the AC controls are built into the OEM radio. So this kit comes with a new LCD screen/controller for the climate/vehicle function system.

We’ve gotten an awesome donation of a pair of 12” subs and possibly some Infinity coaxes for the front speakers from one friend, and also a 5ch amp & Pioneer coaxes for the rear from another friend.

I just ordered the radio & dash kit today, along with a few odds & ends to fix a few bits of the car so I’ll update this as we go along. I also told him we’re not installing squat until employment has been aquired so it may be a bit yet for audio updates.

Hopefully he and the car will make it to some meets.

 

What a gorgeous vehicle and vehicle color (I have a Lexus too )

 

Super nice first car. Mine was a 94 Chevy cavalier. Total crap box but got me to work, and even back home sometimes. Can't wait to see the build!!

 

I wanted to get him a sh!tbox but I couldn’t really pass up this car for the price… $7000 after tax, tags, title, etc.

I think it should be a right of passage for your first car to be a 💩 📦. Mine was a 1980 Pontiac Phoenix and my wife’s was a Chevy Chevette.

 

Nope.

Not my actual car, but pretty sure my interior was that same color.

 

Nope.
View attachment 445247

Not my actual car, but pretty sure my interior was that same color.

Yeah yours was way better then mine...

 

I bought a citation a 6/7 summers ago. Just for fun because my Mom drove on when I was a kid for many years.

My first vehicle was a 89 S10 Blazer with no brakes. It was fun driving in to ditches to slow down so you could pull the e-brakes!

 

That's a super clean car! What a great find. Just beware the transmission issues they can have. I believe they were less prevalent in this model year but I'd stay on top of fluid changes and also make sure the timing belt gets done if it hasn't been already.

 

Looking forward to watching this thread. its always nice to see a new person getting into audio.

 

But the person has a father that has wealth of knowledge in car electronics. He can make $10 sound like $100 🤤

 

Love the car great find you got there. Nothing wrong with buying a taken care of low mileage car like that. That's what I did and I love it. But yeah I saved all my money from when I started working in my uncle's auto wrecking yard at 12. When I was 15 I bought a 1989 Checy Cavalier Z24 with 89k on it for 800 bucks in 1996 it was in great shape drove it for years had tons of systems in it including a wall with 4 15 in Eclipse aluminum at one point. Being a kid and have your first car is awesome the crappy part is nowadays gas prices we would put 5 bucks in and drive all night back then forget about it now lol.

 

Congrats on the nice find Todd and good luck with the build!

 

I don’t think the back seat, or cargo area, have seen any action.

Not for long

 

Even though I was an 18yr old boy at one point… I’d like to not even think about this. 😆

At least in this instance… ignorance is bliss.

 

When I was a teen I would be super happy with car of that caliber as a first car,....here we had Fiat 500, 750, Zastava Yugo, Peugeots 205, and similar ****.... and car audio systems of any kind was just a dream...a wet dream, lol. I was in heaven when my dad allow me to put first casette/radio in his VW Golf at that time.

It is nice to se youngsters that are interested in this hobby to be active and IMHO it definitively helps if cool dad is a supervisor.....JUST GREAT!

I would surely give up some pieces of equipment if we would be closer...

 

It is nice to se youngsters that are interested in this hobby to be active and IMHO it definitively helps if cool dad is a supervisor.....JUST GREAT!

I would surely give up some pieces of equipment if we would be closer...

I appreciate the offer. Even if we were closer, I think we have it all just about taken care of as far as equipment goes. I think wiring is the last thing to acquire yet.

I was actually surprised that, when we were practicing for his license, he asked about installing a “boomin’ system” in whatever car he got. Even as a little kid he always enjoyed it when I turned up the volume/bass.

I’ve been itching for a new project too, so this should be “fun”.

 

Nothing audio related yet but, despite the brisk 93 degrees and several setbacks, we got the passenger front door lock actuator replaced. At least right off the bat he got to experience the “everything worked when we tested it, but now that it’s back together it doesn’t” part of automotive repair.

As is normal, I started taking pics as we were taking it apart, but once we ran into issues & the cursing started, the photos stopped.

Here he is taking the door panel apart (without him knowing I was taking pics… he would NOT have been happy)

Here’s the offending part ready to be replaced

I made sure to teach him to plug the new part in and check functions before reassembly to make sure you don’t have to pull it all apart again. Everything worked fine so we reassembled. With that, another lesson learned (and one I should’ve known)… don’t put the door panel back on until EVERYTHING has been confirmed 100% functional. And here’s where the pics stopped. We shut the door, locked the car with the key fob, then unlocked… door won’t open… DAMMIT! Get in from the driver’s door, reach over to open passenger door… door won’t open… DAMMIT! The next 1-1.5hrs was spent with me trying to get the door panel off without being able to open the door.

I finally managed to get the panel off while only breaking ONE clip. I’m pretty happy about that. After getting everything squared away and working properly, everything went back together. Of course I didn’t get many pics but it’s still a bunch of boring maintenance stuff yet anyway. I promise to better with pics when audio starts going in.

The new antenna was on the agenda for today too but with the heat & frustration, we decided to save that for a day, or evening, with more comfortable temps.

Until next time…

 

U guys are brave to play in the sun 🥵

 

Wait, you managed to get the door card off again with the door closed! Respect!!!

 

Yup! When I say it wasn’t easy, that is a HUGE understatement. It probably took me the majority of an hour and I only attempted it after looking into buying a replacement door panel. Knowing I could get a replacement gave me a little more courage to tear into it.

 

I no how you guys feel my passenger side window motor is going so ill have to eventually fix it too.

 

car,....here we had Fiat 500, 750, Zastava Yugo, Peugeots 205

Nothing wrong with a 205 or a little Fiat, I learned to drive in a Fiat Punto 😎

U guys are brave to play in the sun 🥵

Agreed, it's been utterly miserable here, so hot to do anything much outside. I'm over it.

Which didn't prevent me like an idiot attempting a new mtb trail yesterday... Almost 13 miles with 2,000' of climbing, yeah I think I was dehydrated when I got home.

 

U guys are brave to play in the sun 🥵

Agreed, it's been utterly miserable here, so hot to do anything much outside. I'm over it.

I agree with both of you. Unfortunately, we didn’t really have much of a choice. We’ve been putting it off because of the recent heat wave, but the days it wasn’t hot it was raining, or threats of storms. I knew it would take a little longer than normal because he’d be learning to do it himself with me guiding and the last thing we wanted was to get caught in a storm, or run out of light, with the car apart.

We got started early (9:30am) before it was too hot but the setback(s) pushed completion into the afternoon… I think it hit 90 by 11am and I had to keep stopping to try to stay hydrated.

In the end he learned a new skill and there’s a little bit of pride that comes with doing the job yourself.

 

Ok… almost 2 months later and we’re finally working on some audio.

He had his first job interview Friday and he got a call back today about starting with orientation on Tuesday at 4 so, with employment imminent we figured it’s time to get going. It also helped that he attended his first meet in VA yesterday and listened to some big heavy hitters, so he’s a little more interested than he was before.

With that, we broke out the radio & dash kit and started test fitting everything. Here you can see some Sharpie marks because we’ll have to drill new holes… why do these things NEVER line up? Nothing like eyeballing some new holes to mount your nice floating-screen HU

The first ones are always a little wonky but they lined up really well with the corresponding holes in the radio so I transferred them to the other bracket.

After taking the following pic I widened the holes a bit to allow for some minute adjustments if needed.

Next up was cutting a hole in the back of the pocket for a pair of usb connections. One will be for the wired CarPlay and the other will be used for a flash drive loaded with music when he doesn’t want to be streaming.

With that all taken care of it was time to assemble everything together… radio, pocket & brackets.

And test fitted into the dash kit

And now a test with the monitor installed to make sure it’s not blocking the AC control panel

I have to be honest, even I’m a bit intimidated with all the wiring that’s involved with this (there’s a LOT because of the new control panel for the AC/vehicle functions), so I’m going to tackle the wiring instead of him to make sure all goes well. The directions say some wires & connections need to be connected in a certain order or you risk bricking the new control panel… so I’ll leave that risk to me rather than a first-timer.

I’d also like to offer my EXTREME gratitude to @j4gates & @Aka Tommy for their generosity of offering deep discounted gear for his car.

HU not included in the pic but I think this is a pretty good setup for an 18yr old’s first car. I know MINE wasn’t this nice

Hopefully we’ll have another update soon. Until then…

 

Congrats to your son on the new job.

Didn't get to talk to you or him much yesterday, was pretty busy and also a little annoyed that my sub amp decided to act up (think I gave 2 demos all day, 1 of them very brief). I'm glad that he came with you though and seemed to enjoy the meet. Fingers crossed you'll be both driving down to Pulaski in a few months.

 

I had to work today but he’s been itching to get this radio in. He’s a little more patient with everything else but he REALLY wants the radio so I promised him we’d get started today when I got home from work. My company is having an employee appreciation day at Hershey Park tomorrow so this was always going to be a two-day affair.

Through some research I found that the OEM amp doesn’t play nicely with new radios so we were going to have to utilize the included amp bypass harness. In previous cars with OEM amps I always cannibalize some RCA ends and connect them to the input wires behind the radio but this time that wasn’t going to work… yay. So one of our purchases was 20’ of 9-wire. This evening’s job was amp bypass and tomorrow will be radio install.

So when you fold the rear seats down and pull the carpet up we have this metal bracket/cover. Not entirely sure why it needed to be this robust & difficult but… here we are. The OEM amp is under that.

It turns out you need to remove the entire rear seat(s) and all the trim in the cargo area to get that metal panel out… EFF THAT! All I needed was to get to the speaker output plugs on the OEM amp, so with some contortions and a bunch of swearing I managed to get the plugs out & connect the bypass harness.

Now it was time to run the 9-wire.

Next was connecting the 9-wire to the bypass harness. I also connected about 6’ of remote wire in preparation of the JL amp down the road. I wanted to make sure there was enough to allow for any mounting location without having to access under that metal bracket again.

And everything was tucked away & buttoned up.

That’s where we left it all tonight. The 9-wire is coiled up on the pass floor in prep for tomorrow’s radio install. Other than connecting those wires up and the Bluetooth mic everything else should be pretty straightforward. Hopefully tomorrow evening I’ll have an update with everything in and working. He was pretty inspired by everyone’s cars at the VA meet so we were discussing sub box install, trim panels & LED lights as well… the boy had some pretty good ideas. Stay tuned.

 

The radio IS IN!

We got the 9-wire tucked up in the kick panel and up to the radio cavity

The 9-wire was trimmed to length and all the wires were connected

Next we had to pull the vents and some switches from the OEM radio and transplant them into the new dash kit. Here’s Ben doing that while I was crimping up the wiring harnesses

After that was all done we connected everything up and did a test-run to make sure everything worked… success

With everything confirmed to function, he buttoned up everything and we proceeded to go through all the settings and set everything up.

Next up will be speakers and the backup camera. Those will be short term goals and long term will be to address sub & amp install. That’ll be a little more involved so that’ll have to wait until we have more time. (PSU football season kinda occupies a big chunk of our weekends)

Big picture, though, he’s extremely happy and excited to have his new radio AND he did a good chunk himself. Anything he didn’t do he at least was there watching and listening as I explained what I was doing and why.

 

I taught the kid how to apply Rain-X to his windows tonight.

Hopefully, if his work schedule cooperates, we’re going to try getting some speakers in soon before the weather gets too cold. He’s already asking about the next GTG so I think he may be hooked.

 

He’s already asking about the next GTG so I think he may be hooked.

That's great, one more to convoy to Pulaski / NC next year

 

I may have missed this but does he have an account on here?

 

Nope, hence why I’m providing updates.

 

right, I need to stay off this site past my bedtime…

 

Nice job so far. I think you made a good choice on that ride. It's nice to put pictures to what you explained to me at the show. My kids will be starting there's soon too. I think the 06 Volvo Wagon will be the first to get going. She has the sub, back door speakers, and Boss Car Play unit. I hope the preamp on it is at least Okay. Now that I'm back with Team Zapco, she may get some hand me downs.

 

I was home today so after Ben got home from class we did a little more work & got the front speakers in. I wanted to wait until we had enough time to apply CLD but he “wants it now & doesn’t care about vibrations right now”. He’s going on a road trip of sorts this weekend to visit a friend in college and wanted the speakers in. So… undeadened and quick install is what he got.

First off, again, thanks to those that donated speakers for his cause but, he spotted a set of PowerBass coax speakers online that were direct replacements for his but I tempted him to spend another $20 and get the components even though they weren’t a “direct fit”. I was confident in my modification skills that I could make them work. So… prepare for some jankyness.

Speakers in question

I was pretty surprised they came with foam on the front AND back

So, while I prepped some stuff, he got to work removing the door panel. Also called proof I’m not doing all of the work

Door panel off and time to remove the OEM speaker

Because these were not a direct replacement for his model some modifications had to be made to the mounting brackets. One bolt hole had to be widened a bit and I had to make a notch in one of the mounting “wings” for the 3rd bolt. Even without the bolts it snaps into place & it’s a really snug fit so I’m not worried about the mounting.

New midbass in and sounding MUCH better than a 22yr old speaker

 

Next up was the tweeters. This wasn’t going to be nearly as easy as the doors and it’s also why I didn’t realize I didn’t take a whole bunch of pics during the process.

So the OEM tweeter is a small little 1/2” Mylar(?) thing that’s mounted in a little pod on the dash corner and aimed on-axis with the opposite listener.

After popping it out, you can see there’s not much to it

And they’re held in with this sweet little metal bracket that’s held in with 2 screws. And also, because it’s a 22yr old car & the plastic is brittle, when I removed the screws… yes, all 4… the posts that the screws go into shattered into itty bitty pieces. Dammit!

So… enter the hot-glue gun and also some epoxy. This is also the main reason I stopped taking pics. When my brain goes into panic/plan B mode all other thoughts immediately take a vacation.

In with the new 1” metal inverted dome tweets

If anyone is truly interested in how I made it work I can pull them and take some quick pics but it’s pretty self explanatory. The OEM tweet is screwed to the bracket, and the new one fit perfectly in its place, so I epoxied the bracket back in and hot glued the new tweet to the bracket as well as the dash pod.

He’s now looking forward to the amp/sub combo even more. He noticed a big improvement with the new speakers and says it gets much louder while also being clearer. He’s hooked. He’s been sitting in his car listening to music for the last 20-30mins.

 

@TheTodd - Thank you for posting this. I was trying to figure out a good way to hide the tweeters in the corners of my dash in the Porsche. I think I can modify / cut these down enough to make them work. Just ordered a set from ebay. Hopefully my tweeters will fit.

Next up was the tweeters. This wasn’t going to be nearly as easy as the doors and it’s also why I didn’t realize I didn’t take a whole bunch of pics during the process.

So the OEM tweeter is a small little 1/2” Mylar(?) thing that’s mounted in a little pod on the dash corner and aimed on-axis with the opposite listener.
View attachment 460919

After popping it out, you can see there’s not much to it
View attachment 460920

And they’re held in with this sweet little metal bracket that’s held in with 2 screws. And also, because it’s a 22yr old car & the plastic is brittle, when I removed the screws… yes, all 4… the posts that the screws go into shattered into itty bitty pieces. Dammit!
View attachment 460921

So… enter the hot-glue gun and also some epoxy. This is also the main reason I stopped taking pics. When my brain goes into panic/plan B mode all other thoughts immediately take a vacation.

In with the new 1” metal inverted dome tweets
View attachment 460922

If anyone is truly interested in how I made it work I can pull them and take some quick pics but it’s pretty self explanatory. The OEM tweet is screwed to the bracket, and the new one fit perfectly in its place, so I epoxied the bracket back in and hot glued the new tweet to the bracket as well as the dash pod.

He’s now looking forward to the amp/sub combo even more. He noticed a big improvement with the new speakers and says it gets much louder while also being clearer. He’s hooked. He’s been sitting in his car listening to music for the last 20-30mins.