Arg..... another setback....

The audio shop called today.... they guy that was going to install the stuff in my 97 had an accident and will be off work for several days.

Ergo..... no time/people to do the install.
So the next day (now) that they can fit me in is the 27th.... because now they are down a man, plus I gave up my spot on the 17th when they booked me in for Friday.
Argg....

So I phoned the place back and told them to put all the stuff/parts I'm going to need aside and I'm going to do it.

I'm not going to install the amp/subs.... but I am going to install the headunit and steering wheel controls.

Can anyone offer any helpful hints/tips advice?
(I've never done this before)

headunit should be pretty straight forward if you have the wiring harness and mounting kit. Wiring harness plugs into your one you have now and then you pretty much just match up the colors with the wires on your headunit and connect them together with crimpers, or solder, or whatever and then test it before you put your dash back to gether to make sure it all works. you will have to plug in your antenna adaptor to change it from mini to standard (just plugs together). dont worry about the steering wheel controls they will handle that for you and they will have to take out the headunit again to put in the remote and RCAs for the amp. its really not that difficult.

Save yourself $60-$80 and do it yourself. Most car stereo shops will do an half *** job N-W-Ways. You will need a car wiring harness for your car and an install kit. You could goto your nearest Best Buy and get both for under $20 + they have the flushmount kits so you dont have to have ugly bubble kit that they install at most car stereo shops.

The car install kit should have instructions if you can't figure it out yourself. Once that is installed, you take your CD player wiring harness and your car wiring harness (the plug and play wiring harness) and splice color to color. I have mine soderd and heatshrunk over the joints, but that is really overkill unless your really picky like me.

I found the daylight pics, a little late. :?

Did the install yesterday..... wow what an amazing headunit.

The install went fine, took us 2hrs.... we've never done anything like that before.
First hook up we didn't have sound at all... then we found out (by rehooking the old deck) that the mystery lone orange wire was required for sound, most likely an external amp we suspected. After that, mounting it stumped us for about 2mins, because the sleeve for the headunit came backwards on the deck. We first thought we had to screw something in behind it, but we quickly determined that wasn't the case.

Didn't get the steering wheel controls wired in...... couldn't find which wires to disconnect, or really howto take the wheel and/or stearing column off.

I'll try and snap some shots today.

orange wire = illuminator wire. many headunits do not use this wire unless the headunit dims with the headlights. the steering wheel controls are a little harder to install than a deck. glad you got it working.

My deck had 2 orange wires.... one with the harness... and one LONE WIRE....
The one with the harness was the illum wire.... the lone wire was the external amp.

Also..... one thing I did find out... it'* not the Pontiac CD deck that came w/ the car.
When we removed the old deck we noticed the install date is March 2001.... and the manufacture date is Feb 1999.
So it was replaced in March 2001...... kinda neat.