New Radio

I decided recently to replace my perfectly good stereo in my 2003 Expedition. I have put new radios in both of the BMW's I've purchased recently and sort of like the ability to play a CD with upwards of a couple of hundred songs on it. The radio in the Expedition was able to play only Audio CD's and Tapes, no MP3's.

I ordered the radio from Crutchfield. I've had excellent service from them in the past and did again, except for one little thing. The kit they send to adapt the stereo to the opening had a broken tab on it that is used for mounting the radio to the chassis. I didn't want to wait for a replacement, I know that Crutchfield would have sent me one, so I fabricated one out of a piece of sheet metal. It seems to have worked OK.

You can see in this picture where I fabricated the tab out of sheet metal (lower left).



Crutchfield sends you all the instructions you need to remove the old and install the new stereo. For the first time, the instructions were a bit confusing to me. I had to call their tech support twice during the install. Once to clarify how to wire the plug to the new stereo into the wiring adapter. I followed their instructions and found that my unit was a bit different. After another call, they helped me figure out that I only needed one of the plugs that came out of the old radio, apparently the second plug was for a CD changer that I didn't have in my car.

It took me a bit longer than I expected to do the install, but in the end it all worked out good. The only thing that I need to fix is the tab I fabricated needs to be modified. The radio is sitting just a little crooked in the opening. It isn't that noticeable, but it will bug me until I fix it.

Here is a picture of it installed, you can see it is a little higher on the left side.