Interior Stuff

Car Stereo Installation

Cassette Head Unit

The head unit was pretty much a standard install. Any aftermarket Chrysler faceplate kit for 95 and later vehicles will do, as well as the factory Chrysler radio wire harness adaptors. (That little silver circle on the top right of the radio is a 3.5 mm stereo input jack that is wired to the "Aux" input of the Kenwood switching unit.)

The ten-disc changer was mounted to the Chrysler six-disc changer mounting plate using rivets. The plate can be picked up from any local Chrysler dealership for about $40. I had to modify the plate to accommodate the Kenwood changer, as well as the forward console.

Since this unit went into a convertible, there is the possibility that somebody could come by and swipe my CD magazine if my ride is left unattended with the top down. The stock 6-disc changer had the neat feature of disabling the Eject button to prevent the casual passer-by from stealing its magazine. I thought this was a really neat idea, so I modded my 10-disc changer to do the same thing. The mod uses a small 12VDC relay to complete the Eject circuit, which I bypassed using wire-wrap wires, a sharp knife to scrape away a little bit of the PCB circuit path, and the switched 12VDC ignition wire feeding the radio. The mod works almost as good as stock; unfortunately, there is no "one-minute wait" with this mod that the stock CD changer had before the Eject button disabled.

10 Disc CD Changer with Additional 1 Disc CD Player

The above picture is from the installation in the Stratus. Notice that it also had an auxilliary CD player installed below the ten-disc changer. Unfortunately, I incorrectly assumed that since both my old ride and my new ride had identically shaped forward consoles, the changer assembly would fit into the new ride as it did in the old ride (which would be only logical since both are cloud cars). However, as you may have guessed, the vehicles are not the same. The convertible has somewhat less room in the cubby bin area than the Stratus did. I had to take out the auxillary CD player to fit the unit into my convertible. Oh, well...