I narrowed my choice down to a Sony head unit (no particular model) plus the CDX-U404, a Sony, 10 disc CD-Changer which has a 3 second digital buffer which I thought would provide even better anti-skip behaviour.
I thought the Circuit City price must have been a misprint, but I went to the store anyway, and they had one unit left. Without even thinking, I bought the radio and a Mazda wiring harness ($18). Later that night, I went through the Crutchfield catalog and realized that if I got the changer and radio at the same time from Crutchfield, I would get a $50 discount. Plus Crutchfield throws in a free wiring harness and mounting kit, and also for the next few weeks, they had free 2nd day Fed ex shipping.
I called Crutchfield and ordered the same radio plus the Sony CDX-U404 changer. With 2 day shipping, I would get it on Wednesday.
I noticed that the Sony radio came with an interesting wired remote control "pod" the size of my thumb. A remote control would be cool to mount on the center console if my radio was in the trunk, but since I was doing a normal radio-in-the-dash installation, I left the remote in it's little bag.
I saw that the Unilink connector that sends control, power & ground signals from the head unit to the cd-changer was quite thick, about the size of the wire for cable tv. The plugs were even bigger. Wondered whether this would pose a problem when I attempt to route the cable from the dash to the trunk. Hmmmmm.
Okay. Background information first. This was probably my sixth or seventh car radio and/or speaker installation. Yet with this much experience, I was still dreading what I was getting myself into.
I'm a klutz. When I untighten philips screws, they have a tendency to be repelled by a magic force emitted by my fingers and fall into the nearest unreachable crevice. I tend to get easily frustrated. I make mistakes that usually results in having to do something completely over again.
I followed the instruction sheets from Crutchfield describing how to remove the radio. Removed my Voodoo shift knob, removed the ashtray, removed the stuff from my glove compartment, removed 2 philips screws in the glove compartment, 1 screw under the ashtray, 2 down at the bottom of the console t the front. Piece of cake. I slipped the center console forward and up (to clear the trunk and gas cap release) and immediately noticed a bunch of connectors underneath the console. I disconnected several of these, and identified some as part of my Clifford alarm system (I was too chicken to do this alarm installation). My alarm has a proximity sensor and the detector part of the alarm had been velcroed to the underside of the glove compartment by the installers. Wow, cool. I would have never thought of putting it there.
There was one, factory-installed, foam-wrapped connector that I just could not disconnect. I spent several frustrating minutes trying to find exactly where the connectors separated, but I gave up, and decided to leave the wire untouched, and I flopped the console upside down and rested it on the passenger seat, being careful not to stretch the still-connected wire too far.
Next came the front console.
Eyeball vents. Uggh! From miata list discussions and the Enthusiasts Manual, I knew I could either pop them out by pulling them out with string or pry them out with a screwdriver or similar tool. I went to a closet and found an old pair of shoelaces. Found some forceps. I fished the laces in and out of the left eyeball vent using the forcep, and satisfied I had a good grip, pulled. Nothing. Pulled harder. Still nothing. Used both hands and stuck my foot against the dash and pulled. Nothing. Except, now both my hands have deep, painful shoe lace impressions embedded in them. Frustration took over as I got out my screwdrivers.
From the Enthusiast's Manual, I remembered that the authors warned of putting dents in the dash when using this method to pry out the vents. I started with a very wide flat head screwdriver, and stuck an old shirt between it and the dash to prevent leaving a mark. Proing! The left vent made a horrible plastic-breaking sound as it popped out. I checked for damages. None on the vent, but, darn it, a small, little gouge mark from my screwdriver was now on my dash.
Next the right eyeball vent. This took me 15 of the most agonizing minutes of the entire evening to pop this out. I leave several marks from various sized flat head screwdrivers that I used, around the vent. I'm sweating, my blood pressure is very high, and I want to kill the Mazda engineer who spec'ed out such a high tension for the retaining clips for these vents.
Unscrewed one philips screw from each of vent holes. And the 4 screws which hold the Mazda radio bracket on the dash. Unplugged two connectors to the radio, and the antenna wire, and unscrewed the ground wire from the back plane of the radio.
I begin connecting the Crutchfield wiring harness to the head unit. The Sony head unit has it's own wiring harness: one end of all the wires terminate in a plug that you plug into the backplane of the radio. The other end is loose, wire with a bullet connector on the end. I snipped the bullet connectors off the Sony harness and connect it to the appropriate wire of the Crutchield wiring adapter. I soldered the connections and wrapped the exposed area with electric tape. A minor glitch developed when I couldn't determine the location of antenna remote wire, when I read the instruction sheet that came with the Crutchfield wiring adapter. I broke out the factory manual (boy I'm glad I have this!) and found the correct wire. Another glitch came when I needed to attach the ground wire that comes from the Sony head unit, to the old ground line that came into the Mazda radio. It turned out that the Mazda's wiring harness doesn't have a ground signal coming out of it. Instead, there's a separate ground line ended in a lug nut that was screwed into the back of the Mazda radio. So I had to splice and solder the ground line from the Sony wiring harness to the factory ground line that came from the dash; it was a slight pain, since I had to do the soldering while in the car.
To test it, I plugged the new wiring harnesses into the factory plugs in the dash. The smaller of the two (containing headrest speaker signals) slid together easily. But the larger one didn't fit at all. What the hell??!!
I checked the pins on the male connector and the plugs in the female connector and found nothing wrong. After 10 minutes of plug, fiddle, plug fiddle, I went back to the Mazda radio and looked at the male connector on the back plane. I noticed that the pins on their connector was leaning a bit lower than the ones on the male connector from the Crutchfield harness. With a small screwdriver I carefully bent the pins on the Crutchfield connector until they matched the approximate location of the Mazda radio connector. Tried the harness again. Bingo! Perfect fit this time.
I unwrapped the plastic from the Sony radio, plugged it into the harness and nothing happens. Duh! It needed a faceplate. Found the faceplate pop it into the radio and, yay, the time shows up. Spent the next 20 minutes playing with the radio, and checking left and right balance (to make sure I wired the connections correctly) as well as front/rear balance. Also verified the tape player works.
I grabbed the CD changer. It comes with about 12 feet of a pair of RCA patchcord wires for the audio signals, and the Unilink connector for the control,power,ground signals. Popped a CD into one of the slots of the CD holder, slipped the holder into the changer, closed the changer slide door. Pressed "CD" on the head-unit and, yay! music came from the CD changer. Cool! Turned off the system, unplugged the changer and wondered how I could route the cables from the head unit and into the trunk.
The next hour was spent fishing the audio and the Sony Unlink wires from the dash to the trunk. I had to remove about 5 plastic push-on to get to the area under the carpet which covers the rear deck. Behind the passenger seat, underneath the rug, is a small metal plate which covers, what looks like, an acces hole into the trunk. Without even thinking, I began unscrewing one of the numerous 10mm bolts that holds down the plate. As my luck would have it, I dropped the bolt, and I had no idea where it ended up. After a few minutes of looking around, I found the bolt hidden behind a metal box near the base of the passenger seat. I guess that must have been the engine computer. Realizing there were a whole bunch of bolts remaining to be unscrewed, I gave up thinking of removing the plate. I began poking a long screwdriver into cracks around the perimeter of the metal plate. At one location, (at the lower left of the metal plate, as you're looking towards the back of the car), the screwdriver went all the way through. I stuck my head in the trunk and sure enough the I saw the tip of the screwdriver sticking out. Success! Using a piece from a metal hanger and masking tape, I snaked the wires through this crack and into the trunk.
Back to the head unit. I unplugged the radio from the wiring harness, and began work on installing the radio bracket. The bracket that comes free from Crutchfield is black, made of metal. I took the din-sized jacket sleeve that was came with the radio and after a few wrong attempts, figured out the correct way to attach the sleeve into the radio bracket, the radio into the sleeve. With an L-bracket that came with the Crutchfield installation kit, I connected the back end of the radio to metal "tongue" that's on the bottom of the radio bracket.
I began the process of putting the radio into the car. I plugged the connectors, and antenna cable into the back of the radio, and as I was screwing down the 3rd of the 4 philips screws which hold down the radio bracket, I became bothered by the sliver trim of the top part of the din-sized jacket sleeve that was showing behind the plastic black trim of the radio faceplate. Everything on the front of the dash was nice and black, and that tiny strip of silver showed clearly. I briefly thought about justing inking that strip with a black indelible marker, but decided to spray paint the entire din-sized jacket sleeve black.
Unplugged radio. Dismantled bracket, removed radio. Removed sleeve. Found black spray paint. Sprayed jacket sleeve. It was about 11pm by then, so instead of logically going to bed, and letting the paint dry overnight, I decided to press on, with mounting of the cd-changer in the trunk.
I began by cutting a piece of plywood about the size of the changer. I screwed down the CD changer, in a horizontal orientation, on the wood using plastic L-brackets that was supplied with the changer. Not wanting to deal with actually screwing down into sheet-metal, I went the easy way out and used velcro strips to attach the plywood to the back of recessed area in the trunk. Fortunately I attached the hook side of the velcro strips to plywood platform, and I happily discovered that the trunk liner is sort of made of loop material, so the velcro strips on the plywood firmly holds onto the carpeting. When I screwed down the spare tire, I also discover that the tire presses down slightly on the top right corner of the changer, I was pretty confident that the changer wasn't going to move. I used some plastic wire loom to cover the Unilink and audio wires all the way from the changer to the area behind the spare tire, where I had bundled the excess wire. The wires looked much cleaner and professional with this plastic covering I also cleaned up the carpeting on the rear deck - reattached the 5 plugs back into place.
Back to the head unit. The paint on the jacket-sleeve had dried sufficiently and I began reassembling the radio back into the front dash. After I screwed down the last of the 4 philips screw, I began to mount the center console piece back into place. Then, I suddenly hit a major brick wall. No matter how much I pushed and pulled and jiggled, I just couldn't get the front console piece around, and past the radio bracket. Something was blocking it's way, and that something seemed like it was the din-size jacket sleeve. Out of futility I began filing down the locations on the parts of the center dahs piece that was hitting the jacket sleeve. Tried it again. Nope, no go.
It was about 1am and I was quite exhausted at this point, and I should have gone to sleep and thought more about the problem. Instead I pressed on. Once again, I dismantled the radio bracket, and removed the radio, and began playing with the fit of the front console piece around the radio bracket.
I discovered that if I took the din-sized jacket sleeve and shoved it through the front console piece from the front, it would fit great, and then I could slide the bracket piece from the back, and attach it to the sleeve, and everything would work out. Satisfied with a solution, I dropped into bed at 1:30am.
Back in the garage, I shoved the radio into the radio bracket which was already attached to the front console piece. As I got inside the car and began the act of attaching the front console piece on the dash, a shiver went down my spine. Since the radio bracket was already attached to the front console piece, there was no way to access the four mounting holes of the radio bracket, in order to screw in the 4 phillips screws which hold the bracket to the dash. I sat there dumbfounded for a few minutes minutes. Suddenly it became clear what I had to do. I had to remove the excess metal from the front left and front right sides of the din-size jacket sleeve.
I dismantled the radio once again and removed the jacket sleeve. I looked around my toolbox for metal cutters, realized I didn't have any so I drove off to the Home Depot hardware store to pick up a pair.
When I got back, I trimmed both left and right sides of the jacket sleeve, and sanded it down with a sanding attachment on a drill. I had to respray the jacket sleeve with black paint again, because with all the cutting and sanding, a lot of the black paint was scrubbed off. While waiting for the paint to dry, I began to clean up my garage workbench, which by now had sawdust, itty bitty pieces of wire shielding, nylon tie wraps, miscellaneous screwdrivers, pliers, wrenches, rags, and packing material.
I waited about 45 minutes and begin reinstalling everything. Before putting the center console back, I bent the retaining clips for both eyeball vents, so they had less attaching force. So next time I have to remove the vents, I won't have to resort to gorilla-like prying forces with a screwdriver to remove them. This time the center console cleared the radio and snapped cleanly into place. Things were looking good I thought, as I was screwing in the phillips screw in the left eyeball vent. Suddenly, I lost grip of the screw and I heard it clank down to into some hole Geez! Fortunately, the screw was still visible and I manage to retrieve it with a magnetized screwdriver. The reinstallation of the center console went uneventfully and I was finally complete.
The time was 9:45 am. A total of 11 hours spent on the total installation.
The Sony XR-430 radio has some really cool features. You can program an 8 character string and attach it to radio stations, so when you punch preset button #2 you'll get a string like "KCRW" on the display. You can also attach a string to a CD disc, so when you play disk #3 for example, the string "SINATRA-52S" will be displayed. Symbology consists of uppercase letters, numerical digits, and some miscellaneous punctuation marks (no spaces though). The radio has 2 LED colors: green and amber. It has Dolby B and C. 8 watt RMS to 4 channels and 25 watt peak power. When the tape or CD changer is used, the Mazda antenna goes down. The radio has a removable face plate, and when you park and turn the ignition OFF, it'll begin beeping at you for a few seconds, as a reminder for you to remove it.
The CD changer has a 10 disc capacity. It also has a 3 second digital buffer, what Sony calls "Electronic Shock Protection" or ESP. So far, it hasn't skipped yet.
All in all, I'm quite happy with the installation, despite the time it took me do it. If I had to do it over again, I would probably look into purchasing a radio bracket which had cubby holes (the one from Crutchfield didn't come with one).
Finally, don't let my experience prevent you from installing your own radio. It was actually not that hard, assuming yoe have the right tools, the right directions, and the right attitude. Happy installing!