Dennis Judd's Blog

It's easy to spend money at Kohl's

So I got my new radio yesterday afternoon from HypAudio, it's a JVC KD-SH9700. It's the same model that Jen has in her car, so when we change cars there's no learning curve, plus for the price it's a steal. Front, rear, and sub outputs with MP3 capabilities and you can make silly little screensavers for it :)

Anyways, so I put it in yesterday and thought I'd take the time to teach a few of you the art of installing car electronics.

I have honed, and perfected this skill over years and years of work, both private and professional. I can't tell you how many times i've seen crap jobs done by "professional" installers regardless of place of employment. So I'm here to give you the tips to make you one of the best....like I am....did I mention humble to? :P

1. Electrical tape. Never use it. No matter what you think or believe electrical tape will never stick for long. give it maybe a year and it'll unspool. Unless you put so much of it on it's not funny, or use a wiretie on it afterwards. Eventually i will come off, and in a worse case scenario spark against ground and blow fuses randomly. Of course if your tapping into a larger gauge feed, you'll have no choice but to use it.
2. Solder. You don't need it unless your dealing with 12awg wire or bigger. It's just one more chance to burn your fingers, or worse put a lovely hole in the carpeting.
3. Crimp on butt connectors suck in general, but if you must use them make sure it's at least 16 gauge and you give it a good twist first. Never put wire in there straight. Basically never use them, follow the instructions in step 5.
4. Low voltage taps also suck.
5. Heat shrink tubing. Is your friend. Basically with this, a heater, a good pair of wire cutters and a diagram you should be able to do just about anything. Let me show you:

See that? It's nothing but heat shrink tubing, no solder or anything. Nice, small footprint, almost like there's nothing there at all.
6. Never cut a wire you don't need. Wait....let me repeat that.....NEVER CUT A WIRE YOU THINK YOU DON"T NEED. This will always, always come back to bite you some day in the ass. Don't have a power antenna, don't have an amp to use the remote wire.....don't cut them off, at least not right at the wiring harness. Always leave a few inches (6 at least) and just use some heat shrink tubing to fold it back on itself. That way it won't spark out, and you won't be cursing yourself down the road when you deside to add that amplifier. If you have more than one wire, use tiny zip ties if you want.

That's pretty much all of it. Of course the way I get the wires to stay without solder involves a method of twisting them around themselves so the tighter you pull the wire the better the connection get's, and the heat shrink tubing just locks it all in place. So the finished harness should look like this:

After all that work, now it's time to install:
Before:

After:

now if you'll excuse me I need to tweak the settings for the amp.....

Posted by Dennis Judd at October 21, 2004 03:34 PM | TrackBack