Installing an aftermarket Head Unit

[jimmyd17]

Car - 2001 VXII Acclaim
Task - To remove the factory head unit and replace it with a better aftermarket one.
Reason - Because the standard head units in VT-VX's are bin worthy.

Tools / Consumables needed
an old coat hanger
side cutters

the following tools aren't needed if you buy an adapter plug
wire stripper
solering iron
solder
electrical tape


REMOVING OLD HEAD UNIT

1. Make two U-shape tools out of an old coat hanger.


2. Insert these tools into the four holes on the old head unit. You may need to push these sideways to unclick the mount. It should fairly easily pop out.


3. Slide the head unit out far enough to get your hand in to undo the loom plug (you'll need to press the little tab for it to come out) and also pull out the antenna plug.


INSTALLING NEW HEAD UNIT

1. Push the bracket for your new head unit into place. It should be a pretty tight fit. If it's not tight, you will need to fix it into place with screws or rivets. Mine was tight enough, so there was no need to screw or rivet it in.



2. Feed your loom plug and antenna plug through the bracket.

From this point on, you have two options...
Option #1 - buy a loom adapter to suit your brand of head unit and your car. This is a much easier option and should only cost $20 or so. Most places that sell car audio stuff should stock various brand adapters to suit commodores. If you go for this option, you can skip the next section.

Option #2 - cut into your existing loom and join/solder the wires needed onto the head unit wires. This is what I did. Read on...

CUTTING INTO LOOM AND SOLDERING THE NEEDED WIRES

1. First of all you need to determine which wire is which and which ones you'll need to cut. I decided to leave the factory plug attached, so that if I ever wanted to put the factory head unit back in, it wouldn't be too hard. For the wires I did need to cut, I cut them about an inch from the plug so there is enough wire to strip if ever needed to replace back to stock. For the wires that aren't needed for the new head unit, I did not cut them.

Factory Holden Wire Colours (thanks to Tasmaniak VK-VZ Stereo wiring colours.)
Accesories - Yellow
Constant - Orange/White
Illumination - Brown/White
Earth - Black/White
12V OUTPUT - Yellow/Red
Radio Mute - Yellow/Black (VT onwards)
Antenna up - White (VR onwards)
Antenna down - Blue (VR onwards)
Illumination OUTPUT - Grey (VT onwards)

Speakers
Front Left (+) Tan
Front Left (-) Grey
Front Right (+) Light/Green
Front Right (-) Dark/Green
Rear Left (+) Brown/Black
Rear Left (-) Yellow/Blue
Rear Right (+) Blue/Orange
Rear Right (-) Blue/Black

2. Next, You'll need to know which wires from your new head unit plug corrosopond to the factory wires. If you've bought a new head unit, it should come with a wiring diagram explaining which wire is for what.

For my JVC head unit, the wire colours were:

Accesories - Red
Constant - Yellow
Earth - Black
Antenna - Blue

Speakers
Front Left (+) White
Front Left (-) White/black
Front Right (+) Grey
Front Right (-) Grey/black
Rear Left (+) Green
Rear Left (-) Green/black
Rear Right (+) Purple
Rear Right (-) Purple/black

3. Once you have determined which wire is which for both the car loom, and your new head unit, you can start cutting the loom wires you'll need to connect to your head unit.

4. Strip your earth wires first and twist the ends of them. Then twist them together so they are facing each other neatly and solder them together. Wrap some electrical tape around your solder so that you won't short out your power wires on the earth and blow a fuse.

5. Strip all the rest of the wires you'll need and twist them all together.


Note: In the above photo, I have joined, soldered and taped the Earth, Accessories & Constant power before I joined the speaker wires. Make sure you do these 3 one at a time so that they can't short out on each other! For the speaker wires, its not as critical, so you can do them all at once.

6. Twist the rest of your speaker wires together, and solder them all up.



7. Wrap electrical tape around all your solder joines to make sure none of them can short on each other.


Okay, thats all your wires done!


FITTING YOUR NEW HEAD UNIT

1. Get your new head unit (without the detachable face attached) and plug in your adapted loom plug, and also the antenna plug.

2. Gently slide your new head unit into its bracket mount. Make sure it firmly sits where you intend it to stay. If its not a tight fit and there is too much movement, you may need to screw the bracket mount into place first with self tapping screws. This is also a good idea to make it harder to steal.



3. Fit your surround and fascia on.

4. Clip into place a storage tray to fill the gap underneath. I bought mine from Autobarn for about $20

5. Enjoy the much better sound quality!


I also decided to replace the factory speakers, however I was surprised at the massive improvement from replacing just the head unit, but retaining the factory speakers. it sounded 100x better even with the stock speakers. In my opinion, the head unit really was the weak link of the factory sound system.

Hope this guide helps. Feel free to add any constructive critisism, advise or tips.

Cheers,
James

[C-Shell]

Thanks heaps for the write up jimmyd17, They truly are rubbish head units haha

[kyriacandro]

do your steering wheel controls still work after putting in a new head unit ?

[HarmlessMuffinMan]

They wont Kyria, but I heard you can get special adaptor thingymajoobie to make them work?

[kyriacandro]

ah weak thats one of teh only things stopping me from changing my head unit i love the controls on the wheel lol

[jimmyd17]

C-Shell - no worries. haha yeah the factory head units suck! before i did mine, i did a search on how to do it but couldn't come up with much apart from the wiring colours (which was very useful!), so i thought i'd take some quick pics while i was doing it and share what i did

kyriacandro - unfortunately the steering wheel controls are made redundant after swapping to an aftermarket stereo, however this is more than made up for by the difference in sound quality!

[cracker]

would have been good if i saw this yesterday... oh well no loss, good write up though

[C-Shell]

ah weak thats one of teh only things stopping me from changing my head unit i love the controls on the wheel lol

I know JB Hi-FI sell little adapters that will enable you to still use your steering wheel controls, i like mine too haha

Not sure if they support all head units or not though, nor any idea on price

[tdirago]

I have the exact same headunit with a more red back light.
Oringaly bought the adapter but on the two adapters i tried the right rear speaker didnt work, so i hardwired.

Piss easy to do. Take negative off the battry (to be safe) And make sure all wires are covered and dont touch while battry is connected (i was so noob when i did this) blew two fuses : 7.5amp and a 10amp

[vnathanx]

ah weak thats one of teh only things stopping me from changing my head unit i love the controls on the wheel lol

some headunits will have a connection already for steering wheel controls. i know alpine does

[kyriacandro]

so your steering wheel controls work with your alpine deck thats sweet

some headunits will have a connection already for steering wheel controls. i know alpine does

[vnathanx]

indeeed it is. saw it on there website the other day

[cezza]

Hey, I'm having trouble pushing my single din pioneer unit into place. For starters I tried screwing the bracket into place but then i couldn't slide the head unit in as screws were in the way, then I tried with out screwing the bracket in and i could only slide the head unit in half way then it wouldn't budge any further!!

Please help?

[ls1 tiga]

force the mongrel in!
i actually put mine in today, and was having trouble about 1/2 way too. but slowly pushed her in with a bit of resistance, but she aint going anywhere now!!!

[andrewbbez]

hey great work with the thread. i just used it myself with putting a sony aftermarket unit into my VT.
all the wiring colours matched up perfectly.

the only difference i did was used krimping tools etc, im not that great at soldering.

thanks again

[jcuz]

I just received a new kenwood U449 head unit for my vx II
The vx loom has a total of 16 wires but in this example you only use 12 of the vx wires.. what to you do with the rest?
will i be able to use all wires for my head unit?
Wiring set up for head unit

Black - ground
Yellow - Battery wire
Red - ignition wire
blue/white - power control wire
blue - motor antenna control wire
brown - mute control wire
light blue/yellow - steering remote control wire
Speakers
Front Left (+) White
Front Left (-) White/black
Front Right (+) Grey
Front Right (-) Grey/black
Rear Left (+) Green
Rear Left (-) Green/black
Rear Right (+) Purple
Rear Right (-) Purple/black

[MY_84_VK]

Just to let everyone know, Aeropro just released a new Control Harness for the vt/vx commodore. It enables the steering wheel controls to still function only if your head unit has the output for it. The part number is CHVTVXA and you can order them through you're local super cheap auto for about $120

[VTS5]

Just to let everyone know, Aeropro just released a new Control Harness for the vt/vx commodore. It enables the steering wheel controls to still function only if your head unit has the output for it. The part number is CHVTVXA and you can order them through you're local super cheap auto for about $120

Yes,but,that loom alone isnt enough..You'll need secondary loom (connects primary loom to after market unit + brand dependent link cable),all up approx. $150.

[MY_84_VK]

But it is enough? The only other thing you need is a loom to go to whatever stereo you are installing, otherwise its just plug and play

[benckie]

I recently brought a VT wagon after my ford was written off by the insurance company before they picked it up i removed all my stereo equipment out of the ford after finding this thread, i put the commodore speaks in the ford with a cheap CD playing i had lying around and thought ill install my stereo gear into the VT.

Since the VT had the stock double din stereo and speakers it was a supper easy install of the head unit took me about 10 Min's max to test and install my single din pioneer DEH-7250SD head unit, using pioneer ISO and a VT/VX ISO wiring harnesses with single din plastic pocket brought off eBay with express shipping, postage was about 3 days to w.a, it did cost me just under $50 for the two ISO harnesses and the plastic pocket with postage but it saved me hours of work, cutting, soldering, heat shrinking and finding wires like i normally do.

To connect my pioneer 6 inch speakers in the doors of my VT wagon only took about 1.5 hours (new to VT,s and there door locks) the speakers where a direct fit with no problem and i used male electrical terminals for the VT speaker plugs in the doors so there was no cutting of the stock speaker wires in the VT I just made up short leads from my pioneer speakers with these terminals circled in red and plugged them into the Vt,s speaker plugs.



These are the parts off eBay i used and i can recommend.

eBay Australia: Buy new & used fashion, electronics & home d

eBay Australia: Buy new & used fashion, electronics & home d

Other VT/VX stereo gear

eBay: 1stopcaraudio


You could of done it a bit cheaper then i did if you only used a VT/VX wiring harness with plastic pocket and soldered your after market stereo harness to it, but i was happy to spend the extra to have a quick plug and play hassle free stereo install.

The finshed product.



Now it sounds 1000 x better then the stock unit and stock speakers, we can charge and listen to music from our iphones plus the stereo auto mutes when you receive a call, plus the added features and we have more dash storage space, the only problem was with the pioneer ISO wire harness to it did not have the orange/white wire from my pioneer stereo that dim,s the stereo lights when you dim the dash lights like i had it wired up in my falcon, i could of added the wire myself but i didn't not think it was a big deal.

And now when we sell the car we can just unplug the pioneer head unit and slide the old one back it and every thing will work as is as i didn't have to cut any wires up and out of all the stereo installs Ive done this is the first time Ive used ISO wire harnesses, yes they might cost you a bit more to start with but save you a load of time, its so simple just plug and play and if you decide to sell the car just unplug and plug back in the original unit.

The hardest part of the install for me was finding a old wire coat hanger as we only had plastic ones, but i used wire curtin hangers, the eBay store i brought the ISO harnesses from had them forsale but i didn't think it was worth it but they did have some kits that includes them.

P,s i have nothing to do with the eBay store I'm not a friend nore do i own or run the store i live on the other side of the country i just found there prices where cheaper then the local store who did not have my head units ISO or a VT harness in stock.

Great thread thank's for the inspiration

[Farqhed]

Unsure is anyone has found this or if its normal but my VT executive didn't have an Orange/White wire for constant. It has an Orange/Black instead.

+ Cheers, this helped me alot. Specially the coat hanger trick.