Stereo Wired

When I had the stereo head unit installed in my former 2008 Chevy HHR, I bought it from Best Buy and had Geek Squad install it.  They said that they had to dismount the entire dashboard to get to it and I can tell you that at the time, that was way over my head.  But the HHR had existing stock wiring for it.

My stripped down 1987 Chevy G20 Sportvan didn't.  It has an aftermarket fuse block and the radio fuse wasn't wired to it.  I ended up using a device that I inserted into my "Gauges" fuse slot.  It's kind of a like a SIM converter on a computer that back in the day, could turn a mother board with a 4MB total RAM slots and make it an 8MB.  This thing had two female fuse slots.  One was for the 20 amp fuse for the gauges and the other was for a postive wire extending out if it.  The second one could only hold a up to a 10 amp fuse, which was just enough for the stereo.

I got it wired like I mentioned before.  The gauges fuse port in the block was the only one that was wired to the ignition.  That became a problem later on.  But I got the stereo and rear speakers wired up.  I didn't do the fronts because taking apart the dashboard entailed dismounting the speedometer cable and I wasn't prepared to do that.  At this point, I believe that it has to be dismounted from the transmission.  Normally when it comes to doing something I don't know, I study the Haynes manual the night before I do something like this.  That way I get familiar with it in theory before application.

I wanted to move on to the aftermarket gauges.  But they too need a power source that is switched to the ignition.  Had that fuse been able to handle more than 10 amps, I could have done everything on the same positive wire.  But now, I have two choices.  I don't know the make and model of the aftermarket fuse block.  So, I can either unbolt it and go exploring, or I can attach a switch to it, which means that I would have had to bore another hole in the dashboard that I wasn't prepared to do. 

So, I stopped for the day.  I don't know when I'll get back to it?  The right rear speaker box has a short in its speaker wire inputs. 

The stereo wiring was a bunch to stuff in.  I had to make sure that it missed the seals for the interior engine hump cover, otherwise known as a "dog house."