Need Help! Removing Plastic Surrounding Headunit - ED Futura

tabletennisman · 23-08-2006, 08:39 PM

Hey,

I've bought some new audio gear and have installed and rewired the speakers, however i'm having troubles installing the headunit. I have to ground, and power the headunit, etc, however i can't work out how to get this plastic mould off! I've unscrewed every single screw i can see including the screws around the hand brake, however it's still stuck somehow! The more i try to work out how it's stuck the more frustrated i'm getting!

used:

Here is a picture of what i'm trying to remove. Hopefully it'll be something easy i haven't done. http://img213.imageshack.us/my.php?i...removalms8.jpg

Hope someone can help!

Thanks in advance.

reded · 23-08-2006, 08:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tabletennisman

Hey,

I've bought some new audio gear and have installed and rewired the speakers, however i'm having troubles installing the headunit. I have to ground, and power the headunit, etc, however i can't work out how to get this plastic mould off! I've unscrewed every single screw i can see including the screws around the hand brake, however it's still stuck somehow! The more i try to work out how it's stuck the more frustrated i'm getting!

used:

Here is a picture of what i'm trying to remove. Hopefully it'll be something easy i haven't done. http://img213.imageshack.us/my.php?i...removalms8.jpg

Hope someone can help!

Thanks in advance.

hmmm...ive done all the audio stuff for my ed falcon and i cant remeba it having a plastic mould in that area of the dash.....
if ur head-unit fits in with the mould i wouldnt take it out just incase it doesnt fit with out the mould.
with the grounding and powering it, there should be wires from the old head-unit for that so it should just go in???

hope it helps....dont think it will. lol

Allen · 23-08-2006, 09:07 PM

The headunit should slide into the mould that you are trying to remove. You aren't by any chance trying to install a double-din head unit?

tabletennisman · 23-08-2006, 09:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fairlane_ghia

The headunit should slide into the mould that you are trying to remove. You aren't by any chance trying to install a double-din head unit?

Yes, my new headunit fits in perfectly. But, i wanted to remove that mould so that i could get in behind it to ground/power the headunit.

I've never done this before so thought this is how i should be doing it.

If i do use the wires that connected to the old headunit, are they the same and will they work? The wires go into that plastic molex plug you can see down towards the bottom of that photo.

If i reuse the current wires, how should i do it? Pull the wires out of the molex plug, or, cut and join the old wire to the new wire on the headunit? If i reuse current wires, what colour are the wires that come from the battery? I know the black thicker one is the earthing wire.

Make sense? Hope So XD

Thanks for helpin!

Allen · 23-08-2006, 09:17 PM

Should look like this...
To take this panel out, there are also screws on the left side behind the glove box thingy, and under the centre console.

ROOSTA · 23-08-2006, 09:19 PM

Mate,

If you wish to remove that part of the dash.. the rest of the dash comes out with it..

There are slots at the cack where you can run the wires through..

Good luck with it though..

Cheers,
Nik

El_Poochino · 23-08-2006, 09:23 PM

You should be able to use the old brackets screwed onto your new headunit (be careful drilling the holes, I got a machineist I know to drill my holes) and it should slide right in. Worked for my keenwood.

If you need to take it off look behind it, there is probally a few screws or a clip hidden in a dumb spot.

Or you could chop up the plastic up, build a wooden box to hold the head unit and mount the box. That's if you can't mount it using the plastic.

Oh, and with the wiring you can use a little circut tester or make one using a torch light and some wire and a nail or something like that. Cut all the wires off the old plug and grab your new wire harness. Ground your circut tester on the body and test each wire until it lights up (thats your power wire). The big black one is your ground and from wiring up your speakers you should know all the speaker wires (from memory they are one colour for one speaker, with diffrent strips, black for negative and blue for positive i think). The last wire should control the power antenna (if fitted), you could find the power antenna by running some juice down it (I managed to short it out and activate it when I was snipping the wires cause I was too lasy to disconnect the battery

: ). Then just connect all your wires up to the new headunits harness ( all those wires should be labled) and it should be right to go.

ROOSTA · 23-08-2006, 09:23 PM

Way to prove me wrong.. LOL..

Cheers,
Nik

Dezza · 23-08-2006, 09:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by El_Poochino

You should be able to use the old brackets screwed onto your new headunit (be careful drilling the holes, I got a machineist I know to drill my holes) and it should slide right in. Worked for my keenwood.

That's what my cousin did when he installed my Clarion head unit. He just made the original brackets fit with the new head unit.

I also had that section of the dash out in my car recently. NL Power aka Gramps helped me (or I helped him - as he knew what he was doing, I didn't) take out the lower dash and replace it with one in better condition (as mine had a crack near the handbrake - courtesy of my left knee). The console had to come out, as did the glove box, and the small section around the handbrake. There are plenty of hidden screws. You'll also have to undo the screws above the glovebox , that sit behind the lid, as you'll need to get that section of plastic out of the way to get the lower dash out. Hope this helps

tabletennisman · 24-08-2006, 01:22 PM

oops, only just saw your edited post.

Quote:

Originally Posted by El_Poochino

Ground your circut tester on the body and test each wire until it lights up (thats your power wire).

I just found a little circuit tester i made quite a while ago, however am unsure of how it's going to work and how i'm going to ground it. Here's a little schematic of it:
----------positive wire-------[resistor 390ohm]--------|LED
----------negative wire-------------------------------|

1. Is this resistor strong enough for the voltage of a car battery? (have tested it on a series of batteries totalling 15V but would a car battery be any different?
2. How am i going to ground the circuit tester?
3. As there's only 1 wire (i think) that comes from the battery to the headunit, do i add the positive and negative wires of the tester to the power wire, or what?

Thanks

El_Poochino · 24-08-2006, 05:02 PM

Ok answers to your questions

1) 1 way to find out

2) Either clip it onto the ground wire or onto some bare metal on the body, there should be some close by. Have a peak around, I forgot what I used.

3) All you have to do is pick a lucky wire and make contact with your positive wire from your tester. If the tester lights up you have found the power wire. Make sure the battery is connected or you will sit there for hours and go

: loco bananas.

The power and the negative wires take care of powering your head unit (no more lines run to the battery). The rest are speaker cables, one more cable if you have a power anttena. And in my Fairmont there was an extra cable, but everything worked without it

:

Oh, and I had the joy of removing that same plastic piece out of my EB. It was not fun.

Good luck

DEVL-XR · 24-08-2006, 05:23 PM

its really easy once you know what your doing!take out the whole glovebox compartment and the mould around the handbrake (which you have done)!theres screws in the square box mould thingy!on the both sides also and two larger bolts under the bottom, take the centre console out too.it'll take a bit of looking around basically.

i should warn you tho, its not the easiest part to put back in!

cheers

efgiar · 24-08-2006, 05:53 PM

ur wasting ur time, u can feed a wire thru the back near ur hand brake and earth it to ur steering column cover (thats on ur firewall) make sure u sand/grind it to bear metal for a good earth.

Dezza · 24-08-2006, 05:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BradensEBxr6

i should warn you tho, its not the easiest part to put back in!

So true! Mine isn't in quite as tight as the old one. It's sitting a tiny bit lower on the passenger side than the old one. It's not noticable as it still lines up well with the glovebox lid. Even still, it looks heaps better than the old cracked and glued up section that I replaced.

Eu-GenixX · 24-08-2006, 06:05 PM

there should be a power wire.. and ground wire.. and an acc. wire...(power when you turn the key on)

then the speakers wires... i had all the wire colours written down somewhere.. but i lost it... no need to remove that piece of plastic at all... and if you are REALLY unsure.. i think most places only charge about 60 bucks for installation of a head unit... which could be money well spent in you situation.. you don't wanna short something and make more problems...

tabletennisman · 24-08-2006, 06:56 PM

Here's a diagram of the wires left over on the old harness, which i don't know what they're for.

I'm thinking that the blue/white thicker wire will be the power wire and the brown wire will be the acc. wire. How do i test to see if the acc. wire is what i think it is? Do i just try it and see?

Also, there's nothing wrong with cutting the old wires and soldering/joining them onto the new wires?

Thanks for sticking with me and my noobieness ;)

efgiar · 24-08-2006, 08:12 PM

brown wire should be ur PARKERS
blue/white is acc or ur arial from memory, to test just put a test light onto it and turn the ignition on, same with the brown

dont cut the plug off just incase u sell the car and u want to keep the stereo etc etc

you MUST connect both green/yellow wires into ur CONSTANT power because 1 of them has the power on it, the other is to run ur smart lock, no smart lock, ur car wont start

the grey/black is a speaker wire IIRC same with the orange and green they also used pink as speaker wires.

El_Poochino · 24-08-2006, 11:22 PM

I chopped the wires and added little male plugs, bout $2 from stupidcheap auto. Put female ends on your headunit plug wires. That way it is easy to swap headunits around.

The grey and orange ones are speaker wires, I think for the front ones. Remove the door cards (I hate doing this, door cards peeve me off) and check the wires so you don't mix up you left and right audio channels. I can have a look on the weekend if you don't want to go ripping off your trim.

Green with yellow strip should be the power, test it to make sure.

Blue is the areial, you can hook it up to the power cable and ground and if the areial pops up or down thats it, this works cause I activated the areial when cutting the wires and I still had the battery connected (I'm lazy) but it's easier to use elemination and leave this one till last.

Brown, I don't know. Didn't use it and I didn't have a problem. If you want to see what it does run some volts down it and see if anything happens.

The only wire that is probally left on your new headunit loom is a power control. It's for an amp so don't worry about that until it's doof doof time :Reverend:

So all in all you should have
1 ground wire
1 live/power wire
1 antenna control wire
4x pairs of colour wires (the ones with the black and the green stripe) for your speakers

These are all the wires you need to hook up your head unit.

At least your in there and having a go, good way to learn. Good luck with the rest of the install.

free-energy64 · 25-08-2006, 06:28 AM

For connection details on Molex plug simply look at the wiring diagrams posted in the technical section of this forum.
Cutting the Molex plug is not required as I have recently installed a new HU and simply crimped flat insulated pin type terminals onto each wire from the HU and plugged them individually into the correct Molex plug socket connection.
Makes for a nice install and removable too.

Theres always a number of ways to do something, aslong as the end result works, who really cares how you've done it.

lowltd · 25-08-2006, 10:59 PM

Tip for punters to lazy to remember speaker wires, you can use a 1.5 volt battery connected to the speaker wires to work out which speaker you are dealing with, it will emit a low distortion noise, don't do this a lot as it will eventually shag your speaker. Don't forget there is a wire in the loom for the autodim function on your head unit for when the lights are turned on. Definitley disconnect the battery on final install, seen too many stereos come back to the shop whe guys have let the smoke out on installation.

Christiaan · 25-08-2006, 11:42 PM

Just a warning, if you do want to put a double DIN stereo in, i.e: mount one underneath the cd player/dvd player in the dash, on the right hand side where you would screw it in, behind the plastic, is the BEM.

If you screw into that, you risk screwing up the electric aerial, dash lights, amongst other things.

So be careful.