Phew, ok just spent about 4 hours taking my car apart just to install the rear speakers and run a 4 gauge cable from the battery to the stock subwoofer storage area for when I install my mono amp for the sub. I did the front speakers and head unit last weekend so I thought I'd put up some pictures.

Originally I wanted to yank out the stock speaker grills in the back because they are ugly and replace them with these:


But after taking everything apart, it just not going to be possible because the holes in the plastic finisher don't line up with the speakers (same problem with the front speakers though). I attached a picture of the installed speakers with the stock grills removed. I think it looks kinda ugly the way it is, so I'm probably going to end up glueing the factory grills back on.

 

Here is a pic of my headunit. There is a problem with this headunit (pioneer deh-p840MP), as it doesn't work perfectly with the metra kit. Since it has a motorized fold down face, the little divider in the metra kit between the din hole and the storage box sticks out far enough to interfere with the sliding face. The choices are:
1) Sand down that divider
2) Pull out the head unit a little bit more and screw it down.

I didn't have any sandpaper and didn't think it would look too good, so I went with choice #2.

 

Another Pic

 

Another Pic:

 

As I mentioned, I ran a cable from the battery to the back area to power my amp eventually. I poked a hole through the rubber grommet right by the battery, fed the wire through, and voila, the wire was hanging down by the passenger footwell. It was easy to get the sides taken apart and run the wire to the back area, it was just time consuming because I had to take out the glove box which is like a billion screws. Anyway, by the battery I didn't hook it up yet, I don't think its a good idea to have a hot wire going to the back of the car and not be hooked up to anything, so I just attached it to the fuse holder and zip-tied it to one of my grounding kit wires by the battery for now. You can kinda see it there:

 

Last thing to do is to get a custom enclosure made for the back. Cartoys said they'd do it for $300. I have an infinity Kappa Perfect 10 to drop in, and a Bazooka el-1500 to power it.

One thing to look out for when installing the rear speakers is that on the left side the wire with the stripe is the negative terminal, and on the right side the wire with the stripe is the positive terminal. Good thing I have service manual.

 

I used the same head unit in my install...it sounds AMAZING ! Mine is a Premier DEH-P840mp.

Yep, I had the same trouble with the metra kit, and chose option 2 as well. I really felt that a filed down trim part/storage area below the head would look terrible, so I pulled out the chassis of hte Pioneer, and made a 3/16 trim ring for mounting the chassis into the metra kit. THe install still looks good, and sound 5,000x better than that crappy bose/clarion head unit. I am not used to the blue lights yet, and maybe they can be changed to amber ???

I am curious about an led swapout, do you have any info ?

By the way, nice head unit...

 

ehh...I like the blue lights even though they don't match very well. I think an LED switch would be way more trouble than its worth.

 

I can deal with the lights, especially after comparing what the new head unit sounds like compared to the BLose...it's amazing ! After all, I didn't install a Pioneer Premier head unit for its lights, but for its features and excellent sound quality...