How to Remove a Car Stereo - By: Tauqeer Hassan

Most people find it easy and fairly cheaper to upgrade sound components in their cars. The most common components to be replaced are stereos or head units. If one wants to do it by himself then it would take almost gull afternoon. The first thing that has to be done to replace the head unit is to remove it from the car. Remove it depends mainly on the type of stereo and the type of car that one has.

Two methods are mainly used for removing a car stereo.

Spring Mounted Clips
With this method, the inside stereos that are held in place are four small clips that prevent the stereo from sliding out of the dash. A pair of DIN tools is needed for removing the radio. These are basically U-shaped simple tools. There are small poles at the top of the ‘U’ that engage the clips in the stereo. When they are properly inserted, a ‘click’ sound is heard and the radio will simply slide out of the dash.

Bolt-on
It is little more difficult to remove stereos that are bolted to the dash but there are no special tools required for it. There is a slight variation of this method which is to have brackets that are mounted to the stereo bolted to the car. A few trim pieces would undoubtedly have to be removed for accessing the screws or bolts that are holding the stereo. It can be tricky to remove the trim but it gets much easier with practice. Here is how it generally works:

- The front of the stereo is surrounded by two trim pieces. There screws have to be searched that hold because they are hidden from normal eye view. These screws would have to be reached through the glove compartment, ash tray or cigarette lighter part.

- Trim has always hidden clips as well; they have to be firmly pulled. They have to be removed from the clips. It should be taken care not to lose any clips because it may result in few new rattles while driving down the road. Trim removal tools can be bought to help in removing those clips without getting the trim plastic damaged. Using a large flat-head screwdriver is another alternative there can be a large risk of scratching or cracking the trim when a screwdriver is used for prying the trim away.

- When the trim pieces are removed from the front of the stereo, the screws or bolts holding it in place then have to be removed. After this, the unit would slide out from the dash.

- Now when the stereo is removed from the dash, the electrical connectors in the back of the stereo have to be disconnected. The antenna cable has to unscrewed first. It is usually the connection which is furthest towards the passenger side.

- The power connection should be removed next. It is usually the connector that is closest to the driver's side.

- The plastic connector for integrating all the wiring of speaker system into a single connection is called the wiring harness connector. This can be finally removed from the back of the stereo

- Now when the electrical connections are removed from the back of the stereo, it would come out completely free.

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You might also want to learn how to remove a bumper and if something has gone wrong with your automatic door, how to remove a door panel.

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