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Yesterday i attempted my first radio install of a new Alpine 7870 deck to replace my OEM radio/cassette player. I bought the head unit from circuit city but ordered the wiring harness from Crutchfield, which also included their install guide specifically for Saabs as well as access to their tech support (btw, Circuit City offered free installation but i passed on it because 1) i wanted to try this myself, 2) i didn't want to complain to an electronics store about symptoms my car was having after their teenage installer did "something") I figured i'd attempt myself and if all fails i can take it back to CC for their free installation, which in reality costs about $35.
The install went smoothly, EXCEPT for the lack of clarity of the Crutchfield sheets. The sheets stated that my amp was behind the lower DIN slot (which it was) and that i needed to unplug the connector attached to the amp and plug that into the wiring harness i bought from them. Well, there's no way the two connectors are going to fit together so i called Crutchfield tech support.
Their tech support was polite enough, but essentially useless. He tells me to cut the wires off of the connector i bought from as well as the connector from the amp and splice them all together, which makes no sense to me as the amp connector had 13 wires and the speaker harness only had 8! I question him on this and he only replies that the harness they sent me "should" work. I'm getting nowhere with him so i tell him that i'm going to hunt around the dash some more and will call back. I figure i'd give it a little more time and then resort to having CC to the work if i can't figure it out. I also questioned him why i bought the harness in the first place IF i now needed to cut the wires and splice them? I offered to take pics of what i was looking at and email to him before i went cutting any wires and was told that they can't receive emails.
I continue to look into the dash from the driver-side speaker grill and find something that looks like it will accept the connectors of the wiring harness. I plug everything in and PRESTO... power to the radio, but only static! Oh yeah, i need to plug in the antenna and PRESTO x 2... we have music!!
So the main problem i had was that the instructions from Crutchfield say to unplug the amp at the lower DIN and plug that connector into their wiring harness, which i believe to be incorrect... i don't think the connector which formerly went to the amp gets plugged into anything. All the connectors needed (at least on my '86) are in the upper part of the dash, and the reason for unplugging the amp is so that you don't have live wires unnecessarily behind your dash (although Crutchfield states to plug this into their wiring harness).
Well, that's my radio install in a nutshell and i would say that i was pretty disappointed with Crutchfield's lack of help and "caring" when i was in my time of need. If you've actually read this far, and followed my descriptions, please let me know if you have any comments about things i did right/wrong in the install process.
Thanks!
posted by 67.82.15...
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