Hi, professional installer here. Hope I can help without making too long of a story.
First, www.the12volt.com is an excellent reference for the novice installer, and also has a message board with a good number of professionals who will try to answer any questions you have.
Summary about your car:
- The actual radio removal is super easy.
Pry off the circular ring around the keyhole.
Remove ignition key from your keyring, insert only the ignition key, turn key on.
Set parking brake, move gearshift to low gear (to get it out of your way).
Entire panel around radio and climate controls can be simply pulled off by hand. Really, it’s just clipped on, and comes right off.
Unplug wires behind hazard switch and cigarette lighter, lay dash panel aside.
Remove two (or is it three?) 7mm screws alongside radio, remove radio.
Seriously…maybe one minute, two minutes at most, the radio’s out.
- The various adapters available for purchase simply plug into the Pontiac’s original wiring harness, with no need to cut or splice into the car.
However, the wires from the adapter harness need to be connected to the corresponding wires to the plug that goes into the back of the new radio.
The wires carry industry-standard color codes, so you don’t need to test…red goes to red, yellow to yellow, and so forth.
But, you do need to have the ability to connect wires securely. There is much disagreement as to whether you should solder and heat-shrink every connection, or use electrical tape in place of the heat shrink, or if simple crimp-on butt connectors are acceptable.
At any rate, the basic part is that you need to be able to do a good, neat job of connecting those wires.
If you don’t feel up to assembling the harness, but you still prefer to do some of the work yourself, you might stop by some random car-audio shop, talk directly to one of the installers if possible, and offer $15-20 cash if they’ll just wire up the harness for you.
- Parts needed:
Metra is probably the most popular of the Big Three brands of install kits. The others are Scosche and American International.
Their site doesn’t allow me to provide a direct link, but to go www.metraonline.com, then select the low-speed version of their site, and then there’s a large yellow icon “Find kits for your vehicle here!” Then you’ll have part numbers to do some shopping.
You’ll need:
Dash kit 99-2003: This is what allows the radio to be mounted to the large hole in the car.
Antenna adapter 40-GM-10: The GM’s antenna connector is different. This allows you to connect the car’s antenna wire to your new aftermarket radio.
Wiring harness: As you’ll see on their site, it depends if you have OnStar, and if you have the Monsoon audio system (look at the face of the factory radio for the Monsoon logo).
If you can live without the chimes, and without the retained-power feature that keeps the radio on until you open the door…the Metra 99-2003 basic harness (not listed there) will work. However, the Pontiac carries no switched on/off power in its radio harness…you have to manually splice that in behind the ignition switch.
Pricing: Best Buy is going to charge you the absolute most. Maybe $20 for the kit, $12 for the antenna adapter…$20 for the 99-2003 harness or maybe up to $80 for the one that retains the chimes.
AutoZone has these things a little cheaper, but I don’t think they carry the chime-retention piece.
Wal Mart has very competitive pricing, and I think they have a Scosche chime piece for under $50.
Other comment: The factory radio is fairly shallow. Behind the factory radio is some brittle plastic stuff. The aftermarket radio is deeper than the original.
The dash kit usually comes with a spacer to bring the radio forward if necessary, although it’s ugly. I prefer to break the plastic behind the dash so the new radio can fit all the way in and look good…but it’s your car so that’s up to you.
Should you pay for professional installation?
Naturally I do this for a living and make money from it, so I may be a little biased.
I would think a beginner who’s handy with tools and knows how to connect wires could easily do this job in a couple of hours at a leisurely pace.
If you don’t already own the correct tools, you’ll have to figure in the cost of buying (or maybe borrowing) them.
Also, while the $50-60 to get the unit professionaly installed might not seem like too much, also consider that most shops will only use the parts they sell you (because they want the markup on the parts, naturally). If your plan is to buy the parts at Wal Mart and then have a local shop do the install…be sure to ask first, some will do this, many won’t.
So basically…you go to Wal Mart, spent $60-70 plus an afternoon…or couple hundred at Best Buy or a local shop while you wander around the mall for an hour or two while they do it.
I really enjoy working on my own car and do so as much as I am able to. But that part’s up to you.
Chris
