How to install a Sound System and Bluetooth Kit
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The very first piece of advice I would give to anyone modifying a car, DO NOT CUT THE STOCK HARNESS. If there is one thing that thoroughly annoys me, its people cutting stock harnesses, I have installed or helped to install 13 sound systems to this date and I have never cut the stock harness. I made one big mistake by telling my brother to take is VW golf to a shop to have his new stereo installed. Something shorted and the whole dashboard along with all the wiring and electronics burned down. It took me 6 months to rewire and rebuild that car, if I knew that would happen I would just have done it my self!
What I would suggest you do if you do anything which requires you to gain access to the wires of the stock harness go to a scrap yard and buy a broken device which connects up to that connection, they should give it to you for free but business is business.
If you need to do a swap out you can just buy the connector which connects up to harness and attach that connector to your new device.
If you need to tap a wire and still keep the stock device, buy a male and a female connector and construct a T Junction.
Use Fuses Where Appropriate
Use fuses on all live, Acc or lines with switches. This is to avoid the car setting on fire if something should go wrong, one of the many mistakes to my bro’s VW, if it had been fused it would probably have been ok. So don’t be cheap, 10c versus rebuilding your entire car.
Making Wire Connections
I personally suggest you use the following technique to join all wires inside and outside the vehicle. Slide shrink or heat tubing over the wire, then soldering the two wires together, apply liquid insulation, slide the tubing over and apply heat either using a lighter or hot air gun. Using this technique will ensure your connection is waterproof, corrosion proof, dust proof, and shock proof.
You can then finally bind all the joints in electrical tape for further protection and bind all the excess wires to reduce the wire clutter.
Some people believe this to be over kill, this is the same technique I use on my boat and over 8 years of intense usage it has never failed me.
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Mute Wires:
If you install a Bluetooth kit and you want it to mute a stereo you can just simply connect the mute of the stereo to the mute of the Bluetooth kit. If your stereo does not have a mute line, you can connect up a normally closed relay with the coil attached to the mute and the switch in-between the ignition wire and the stereo ignition. Just leave the live wire as is, as it keeps your stereo memory alive. You will just have to read up on what polarity the Bluetooth kit works, my kit works on 0V (ground).
Make sure that you use 12V relays, otherwise you might damage the Bluetooth kit or burnout the relays. Also make sure that the relay's amp rating is the same as or more than the rating on the stereo's fuse.
Unfortunately this will switch off your stereo the same way that your stereo switches off when you turn off the ignition, when the phone call ends, the relay closes again and your stereo is turned on again. I have done this setup in a couple of cars and it worked fine.
If you do have a mute line, you will probably have to setup the muting polarity on your stereo’s settings menu.
This is the kit i got, the Nokia CK7W
It comes with its own speaker, microphone, button, wiring harness and a Nokia Phone link.
Now you have to be really careful when working with the microphone cable and button cable, if you break them you are boned! They are quite fragile so work carefully, you don’t want to go out and buy new ones. When you install a kit like this, the manufacturer will add extra slack to the cables so that they can be installed in most vehicles. All you do is loop the cables a couple of times allowing just enough slack for your car and tape it up. This will keep your wiring tidy.
Button and Microphone
As you can see, I placed my microphone on the steering column you just attach some Velcro to the Mic and to the column and stick it. I wanted to place the button on a hidden location but still allow easy access so I stuck it next to the fan control on the side of the dash.
As for the speaker, I just simply fastened it next to my steering column under the dash using cable ties, its really difficult to get in there and it almost took me an hour.
Stereo Installation
When installing a new stereo, think of all the possible devices you are going to add; buy them, and make one harness for all. For example, my Bluetooth kit connects to the radio, it also uses the same power lines, live and acc. I also have a subwoofer light, and TV screen which comes on when the radio is switched on. All these things need to be kept in mind when building a radio harness so that you won’t have to keep cutting and changing it every now and then.
When you have devices when need to switch on along with the radio, if they have a “soft power on” lead you can just connect it directly to the amp-power line. Soft power on is there to detect if the device should switch on, it doesn’t use any power.
Be aware that the radio amp-power line, is designed for soft power on, usually has a maximum current rating of 250mA. If you connect a device directly, you run the risk of damaging your radio.
In my case where there is no soft-power on for the TV and light you can use a relay connected to the radio’s amp-power line.
Some radios will also have an antenna power line, don’t use this, because then your devices will only be switched on when the radio is set to AM/FM.
The next step is to open the dash, be care full as some dashes have “Clip-On” panels, which can be damaged easily. It’s usually a good practice to get zip lock plastic bags, and put the screws in appropriate groups and label the bag. This is to help avoid confusion between screw sizes and threads, but mainly so that you don’t loose them.
Open Dash
Stock harness to radio connection
What wire does what on the stock connection?
Disconnect the Positive terminal of the battery; this is to avoid damage to electronic devices when they are unplugged. Remove all the appropriate panels, and devices. Once the radio is removed and disconnected, reconnect the live terminal and measure the potential difference between all the pins using a digital multi-meter.
Get a pen and paper to mark the pins on the connection. Find the live terminal by switching of the ignition, and then find the acc terminal by switching on the ignition. Now leave the ignition on and turn the lights on, and find the dimmer lead. The remaining pins are usually for the antenna power, speakers and a ground. You can set your multi-meter to the milliamp range and measure the current between the remaining pins and the live terminal, if there is a current flowing this is usually the antenna power. The speakers will usually follow some pattern in the socket or have similar colors for pairing.
Remove the positive battery terminal and then set the multi-meter to resistance, and measure between the suspect speaker pins, most vehicles have 4 speaker sets. Which means there needs to be 4 pairs of wire, measure the resistances between the suspect wires and if they are 4, 6 or 8ohm that means that you have found a speaker set. Make note of the locations of the speaker sets on the connector.
There are 2 ways to figure out which pair of wires is connected to which speaker. One is to remove and disconnect one speaker at a time, and measure all recorded speaker pairs and find which one is now an open circuit. The other option is to get a sound generator; I bought a simple 4 ohm alarm circuit. Connect that the speaker circuits and listen from which speaker it comes and mark it.
In most cases it is still better to remove the speakers as you will be able to find out which color wire is positive and which is negative. If these are swapped the sound will be negative to its origin and will cancel out or produce massive amounts of distortion.
Once you have all the pins mapped out, you have to match them with your new radio’s pins, usually the pin descriptions are provided in the radio manual.
Start making your conversion harness, by cutting out your original radio’s connection and fit your new connection.
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Stock Radio connection
JVC Connection
Nokia Bluetooth Connection
Radio Trigger Relay Harness
Radio & Bluetooth Harness
Once you have completed your harness inspect the wires for nicks or exposed strands, repair if necessary. Disconnect the positive battery terminal, install the harness and install the radio. Be careful not to pinch the new harness as you can damage the insulation. Return all the dash panels to their original location, reconnect the live terminal and check to see if the radio is functioning correctly.
My New JVC Head Unit
My collection of Remotes
TV Screen Instalation
One of the most important things about installing a TV in your vehicle is the legal aspect, in most country's it is illegal to install a TV which is visible to the driver.
If you are planning to use the TV as a GPS you will obviously have to install it in such a place where it is visible to the driver, but connect a line to the parking break switch and use that to disable any feed other than the GPS. So if you are pulled over by the authorities you show them that there is no way possible for you to watch movies etcetera while driving.
I just figured if I place the TV above the mirror, no one will see it driving behind me, and it’s completely out of my way. In the jeep all the holes are already there to mount it. I made a aluminum mount which also supports my Rearview mirror. The mount is fastened in the place of the “Tie Down Loop” and uses one of the hard top mounting screws.
I then made a plastic cover which keeps the wires in place above the sun visors. The wires run above the sun visors and across the roll bar under the padding. The wires then run under the carpet to under the seat where my AV switch has been installed along with the GPS.
JVC Loading Screen
JVC MP3 List
Forgive Me : I am still constructing the page!
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Page Index:
1.) About my Car
2.) Camping Trips & Duning
3.) Sound System & Bluetooth.
4.) Effects and Neons.
5.) Magna Donnelly Rearview Mirror.
6.) Power Windows & Central Locking.
7.) HID Xenon.
8.) Garmin GVN-52.
9.) Auxiliary fuses.
10.) Custom Side Mirrors.
11.) Custom Electronics & Wiring.
12.) NV4500 Conversion.
13.) Performance.
14.) Custom Power Top.
