Long road trip, no radio...

[Lomenech]

Assuming we can overcome our various more essential electrical issues, can anyone tell me exactly how difficult it would be to install a radio in my ex MOD '97 300 Tdi 110? It looks like the MOD had about 35 radios plugged in before judging by the spaghetti spilling into the passenger footwell. Vincent said he would do it when I bought the car but I can't see one anywhere. I thought it would be simple, but then I forgot about antenna, drilling through the roof (?) and all those other things, because I am a girl and I just want to listen to the radio on a long road trip in 2 weeks time! I would be very happy with any old radio, if there are second hand places I can go but it's the installation I hear conflicting things about. Thanks!

[sharpy]

Hiya,

A radio/cd head unit is easy, if you want to avoid messing about with the spagetti, just create a new power source from youre battery, your head unit should have an inline fuse on it already, if it doesnt you will need to put one on the live red wire between the battery and the head unit you can connect the(permenant supply and ignition wire) yellow and red power wire from your head unit to the positvive on the battery and the black, negative to the earth side of the battery. The speakers should be pretty self explanatary, you will probably have 8 wires in 4 colours, one of each of these colours will have a black trace line on it, this needs to got to the negative on the speakers and the plain coloured wire to the positive. The book that comes with the stereo will tell you which is back and front for the speakers, i only have speaker in the front so have just used the front wires, at this stage you should be able to listen to CD's and if that suits, you can leave it there, if not you will have to get an aerial supply into the car to the rear of the head unit, so drilling may be needed, the only other thing i can suggest is to get an aerial mount that mounts in the gutter and put it through the door or window as a short-term fix if you really are worried about drilling holes, other than that you may be able to find an old hole to mount an aerial in and try and feed it thorough where the other wires for the car travel.

Cheers

Paul

[Andrew Chua]

if all else fails for now. get a set of computer speakers (12v if possible) hook it up to your 12v ligher socket and drop in your ipod. done. will work for that urgent trip.

[FridgeFreezer]

What Andrew said.

For the sake of simplicity, I wouldn't worry about wiring in a stereo to your truck just yet as I get the impression it's out of your comfort zone for DIY work, and car hi-fi installers are going to be out of their comfort zone and into their "taking the p*ss" pricing zone.

A cheapo car stereo bolted into an MDF box with a couple of cheap speakers as a standalone unit, and a simple 12v cable going back to the battery (with an inline fuse near the battery end, sorry Sharpy but a fuse in the stereo is no use if the cable shorts out on something passing through the bulkhead!) is a decent quick solution, you can get boy racer boom boxes (a carpeted box with a pair of speakers in) that would fit the bill for less than £50. Sound quality won't be crystal, but then that isn't really an issue in a Landy. A quick attack with the jigsaw, a length of twin core cable and an inline fuse and you're away.