My new stereo is installed!

[Ghoulish Delight]

Well that was painless. 2.5 hours (plus about 30 minutes of prep work a couple days ago) and I've got a brand new stereo head unit installed in my car, complete with steering wheel control adapter! And it sounds fantastic, lightyears better than the factory unit. Screw those dopes on the Mazad 3 message board who ridiculed me for being disappointed with the factory sound. Without adding an amp, and keeping the factory speakers, this new head unit sounds out of this world.

And the whole install was so freaking easy, thanks to crutchfield.com. What an awesome site that is. If you're in the market for anything they sell, I can't recommend them highly enough. Their prices are pretty standard retail, with a few small discount here and there...but you get so much more than retail.

If you're shopping for car audio, for instance, if you identify the make and model of your car, they will show you only products that will fit in your car. It will tell you things like, "If you have factory sattelite radio and you install this product, you'll lose use of the sattelite radio". It tells you exactly what additional accessories you'll need (e.g., wire adapters, cables). And, if you find the right deals, they include some of those necessary accessories. When was shopping shipping was free.

What made this install particularly easy was that A) they provided an adapter specifically for my car. That way I was able to do 99% of the wire cutting and splicing in the comfort of my home instead of crawling into my dash. Brilliant. B) They provided excellent documentation and support. Besides the manufacturer instructions, they've complied complete, photo illustrated installation instructions for seemingly every model car. Couldn't be simpler. And, in case you do get stuck, they have a customer-only tech support line. I had to call once, and they were fantastic. Got right through, and got exactly the information I needed.

Heck, I'm almost annoyed it was so easy. I was looking forward to this as a project to do, but it went by so quick!

[Snowflake]

congratulations!