Fitting a car stereo

[Thumper]

Is it an easy job? Or is it worth paying £25 for the guys from Halfords to fit it for me?

thanks Ian

[Dave Liquorice]

How long is peice of string? Depends if the radio is standard size, that car has a standard opening (many now have the radio custom designed into the consol) and the wiring on the radio and car conforms to the same standard.

Wonderful things standards, there are so many to choose from.

[S Viemeister]

My daughter fitted a couple by herself, with no prior experience - the directions and diagrams were reasonably good.

[Ret.]

Depends...

Most modern cars today will not have standard DIN sized openings - so you may have to buy a dashboard adapter. Halfords and most car audio outlets will sell wiring loom adapters to enable you to plug the new radio into the existing car radio wiring socket. (Assuming the car you are fitting the radio into had a radio originally...)

[Thumper]

How long is peice of string? Depends if the radio is standard size, that car has a standard opening (many now have the radio custom designed into the consol) and the wiring on the radio and car conforms to the same standard.

------------------------------------

The radio is a Philips CEM3000 available from Halfords. It would be going into a Ford Fiesta 2005 model. It got a "yes" on the Halfords website section, "will it fit my car". I guess it's standard size :-)

[Ret.]

Then the only thing you 'might' need is a wiring loom adapter.

[Gazz]

Check halfords small print, i read a few years ago that their radio 'fitting' service wasreally a radio replacement sercive, no modifcations allowed at all, basically they pull the old radio out, unplug it, fit a wiring adaptor which you pay for of course, then push the new radio in, take along a car that never had a radio fitted from the factory, and they wouldent have a clue where to start.

basically your paying 25 quid for something a 5 year old could do,

you should get a face plate adaptor fitted by them too (again at extra cost) if your car has a built in stereo with an odd shape, but again, anything that involves more than pulling something out and pushing something else in is not covered.

[Skipweasel]

Often very - as simple as plugging it in.

Where you might come unstuck is when the hole in the dash isn't the same shape as the radio or the cables don't have compatible plugs. When that happens there are adaptors readily available from your local PROPER car place (though HalfWits do sell some) to blend one seamlessley into the other. Allegedly.

If it's not straightforward, expect Halfords to screw you for the extra.

[Skipweasel]

In my experience there is the right sized hole behind - just the mask that goes round it ain't right. Of course, if you don't care what it looks like this doesn't matter. I ain't spending money to make the radio look "nice" in an N-reg old banger.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Thumper" saying something like:

1. Slot out, slot in, easy.
2. Replace standard speakers with some that aren't so crap, still fairly easy.
3. Do a full installation with 600W amp, 10" sub in the bulkhead, fill-in undersides and custom-fit dash-mount replacements, like in my SOJC - a total pita, and hours of work, as I've just found. It sounds utterly cracking, though could do with some improvement yet. The front is too bright and I really need a seperate sub-amp, as it's running off the low-pass rears from the difference signal.

Ho-hum... these things are never finished - take this as a warning. :)

[Thumper]

Please ignore the model of car radio above. Just found out this evening from my nephew that the current radio in his Fiesta is a "double din" style. He has been advised by Halfords that they can't fit them.

[Jules Richardson]

There's a joke in there somewhere about XR2i's and noisy stereos, I'm sure :-)

[Ret.]

But you should be able to obtain a dash adapter to enable you to fit a single DIN radio into the over-large 'hole' - particularly for a car like the Fiesta.

[Skipweasel]

[Thumper]

I'm sure you can too. This just shows up how useless some of the Halford staff are. I've found a couple of local car audio shops that I intend to visit in the next few days. I can ask them the difference in fitting costs between each option.

[Thumper]

Finally got stereo today from Halfords. Would've liked to have gone to an independent shop but both the ones I found on a google search, no longer exist.

He got an Alpine for £186 on Reserve & Collect, compared to £229 in store price. He ordered it from his phone, while standing in the shop. He was getting a friend to help him install it, but last I heard was the connections are different.