As I mentioned here, I was looking for a new car stereo. I ended up buying a Panasonic CQ-1300U for Mary for her birthday. Yeah, her birthday was a few weeks ago, but we are just now getting to the installation. Well, this morning, I got out the box, read the instructions and had at it. I bought it from Crutchfield, on the recommendation of my friend, Paul, as they have great customer service and they provide you with detailed installation instructions for your specific car. Well, Mary has a 1993 Ford Taurus (given to her by affore mentioned friend and his wife), so we got instructions for it.

The removal of the old receiver went very well, thanks to this great DIN tool, which made the removal simple as anything. When I got everything disconnected, though, I noticed that the plugs were different: the ford had two flat plugs, while the panasonic wanted a single plug. I looked in the boxes, and, sure enough, there was a plug that would fit, but it only had wires on the other end. So, I got out the instructions, found the technical support line and called them.

While I was on hold (not long at all; another kudos to Crutchfield), I noticed that there was another set of wires with plugs that would fit the existing ones. Ta-da! I had an adapter! All that was needed was to solder the two plugs' wires together and I could just plug it in. Well, I figured color-to-color, which looked about right, except there were a few wires that didn't have partners. A guy came on the line and, very politely and helpfully, guided me through the pairing of the wires and told me which ones didn't need to be attached. Mary and I sat down and soldered the wires together, alternating turns, since it was so much fun. Then, I put some electrical tape on them, and we took the newly built adapter to the car.

At this point, it was trivial to put the new radio into the dashboard, and we connected the negative pole to the battery again (did that at the beginning to keep myself from setting the car on fire), and the stereo came on and we listened to Cat Stevens' Teaser and the Firecat.

Now, we are ready to take the car to Annapolis this weekend for my friends, Jeannie and Todd's, 5-year wedding anniversary party!