Well, actually, the radio is fine, but now my HVAC led display will not dim with the headlights.. According to my GM service manaul, the dimming signal to all the rest of the led'* is a variable voltage signal, depending on where you set your dimmer.. However, the HVAC gets its signal from the factory radio, which is no longer in my car.. Therefore, my HVAC is at daytime brightness no matter what. Anyone else have this problem, and if so, how did you overcome it? Mike

i have done about a dozen of these cars now... i run the stock radio to the trunk and leave it mostly hooked up. i run power, ground, and any dimming/data wires back to it. you can get multiple conductor wire similar to phone wire, but you want stranded conductors, not solid conductors. it ends up being about 7 wires that i run back there. you don't need the power antenna, or speaker wires or any of that. there'* normally plenty of room to stuff the thing up in the quarter panel, behind the jack box, or in the spare tire well.

there'* got to be a better way to do this, but that'* how i do it, and it ALWAYS works.

I had thought about tearing the factory radio apart, I would need only the main board, the radio chassis, CD unit and tape deck could be removed, then tuck it up under the dash, and run the wires. In my case, I would need only the variable voltage in (grey) and the dimming trigger (yellow) and the dimming-signal-to-HVAC, the white/purple, and the ground. Maybe the constand hot, but I'm not sure about that yet. Keeping the radio totally intact would be nice, however, since that radio will go back into the car at some point, so I kinda like your idea better. So I should get my hands on the wiring pigtail from a wrecked car.
But I agree, there really should be a better way, and Crutchfield was stumped. Heck, they had a neat infrared repeater so I could continue to use my steering wheel buttons with my new stereo, but no one could help with my HVAC dimmer. Mike.

Find someone with the factory shematics and see where the HVAC gets it dimming sigal from and just jump the wires fi you can. Running the radio to the trunk is kinda ghetto.