cd player installation

[Soma576@xxxx]

Hello All,

this weekend i successfully installed an Alpine 7861 CD Deck in my '82 
DeLorean. i know this has come up every now and then so i'd like to share 
with you my experience, now that i'm older and wiser!!

to start with, i bought a precut radio bracket off of ebay last winter that 
is cut for any DIN-style aftermarket stereo. this is important because if 
you don't get one of these, you'll have to cut your bracket yourself (which i 
was not prepared to destroy!). anyway, in order to remove the old bracket, 
you must take out the entire center console including window switches, gear 
shifter, shift boot, AC panel, vents, etc etc. major pain in the butt!! it 
was pretty scary to finally remove the stereo bracket only to find a giant 
pile of wires behind it!! fortunately, finding the stereo wires was pretty 
easy. there's a single harness that goes into the stereo, plus a couple of 
power wires on the back of it, as well as the antenna wire. i didn't bother 
to buy a wiring harness because first of all, i knew that i would never find 
a DeLorean conversion kit, and second of all, i've installed a handful of car 
stereos before so i'm pretty handy with a crimping plier. so i went to the 
hardware store and bought about 24 insulated wire plugs to interface all the 
new wires with the old wires. total cost, about $8.50. i snipped all the 
old wires off and put female ends on them. i was able to find the constant 
12V wire (yellow) and the ignition wire (purple). also the ground and 12V 
were labeled at the factory! nice! the best part of wiring it all up was 
that on my ASI stereo there's a sticker on top of it that tells you which 
color wire goes to what speaker and whether it is pos or neg. so i just had 
to match that with the wire diagram on my cd player and presto! simple 
enough!! they made it very easy!! well i put my car all back together only 
to find that i screwed up two things. one, i reversed the wires on the cigar 
lighter - so the light was always on and the lighter only functioned when the 
ignition was on. oops. that was an easy thing to fix though. also, i 
realized that every time i turned the car off, my clock and stereo settings 
would reset. damn!!! somehow the constant 12V source got messed up! i think 
i'm just going to get a fused wire and hook it up right to the battery 
instead. i've been trying to figure out what i did wrong and i can't decide 
what. oh well.

but anyway, the deck looks great, and if the D had a decent soundstage, it 
would sound really good too! the previous owner put MTX speakers in the car 
last year, but it still sounds like crap because 3.5" and 5x7's don't have 
much bass..... guess i'll have to put some subs in now! anyway, the total 
installation time for the deck was about 5 hours. and i did it nice and neat 
too though!!

if anyone has any questions on installation, feel free to drop me a line!

Andy

Soma576@xxxx
1982 DeLorean DMC-12 VIN#11596
Fargo, ND 58102


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