I've had my Grand Prix for around a month now. I love music and I hate advertisements and noisy signals so naturally the first thing that I have done to the car is upgrade the stock head-unit. The one I bought is a pioneer FH-X721BT. It has bluetooth, RGB screen (set to red and orange to match the dash lights) and no nonsense; perfect for someone who is easily distracted!
Installation was pretty straightforward, the usual with a couple of harnesses and a dash kit (the wrong one at that). My Car does not have steering wheel controls (a project for a later date). I will need to either get the right dash kit later (I thought I had bought the right one) or modify what I have to make it look nicer, but for now it holds the radio in place
I got a Scosche wiring harness with stock head-unit delete. Well, let me tell you that was a mistake, and being that this is my second W body, I have been through this headache before; I should have remembered that. It made all my gauges read zero along with the Driver Information Center failing to display the date. Sometimes the gauges would reset themselves, other times I had to restart the car. I quickly got my hands on a metra radio relocation harness which solved that problem. The stock radio fits rather well under the dash. The problem with this harness however is that it is not obvious where to get the voltage for the signal wire, especially if you want to use retained accessory power. The easiest place I found to hook it up is the sunroof fuse. I don't even have a sunroof so having that fuse there is pretty convenient!
The install is mostly complete. I have red LED strips in my foot-wells because I think it looks cool and makes the car feel more modern in my opinion. I also have a 12 inch Sony Xplod Sub powered by a Rockford amp at 150 watts at 4 ohms. It's more than loud enough in my opinion and really adds to my aural experience. I intend on adding steering wheel controls at some point and I'm also looking forward to the leather that comes with that.
If you have any suggestions on what I should do next, leave them below. Thanks for reading!
