Hidden Stereo Installation

[wcballance]

I still have the original Blaupunkt AM radio in my 914 and like the way it looks so I don't want to remove it. I do, however, want an updated stereo radio with FM and CD so I'm looking for ways to install one so that it can be hidden, retaining a stock look. One thought is to put one in the glove box with a product like the hidden stereo glove box from JC Whitney. They are designed for early VW's. I'm wondering if the same box will work for the 914. Anyone know if they'll work? Any other ideas?

[Tobra]

That should work, the cardboard glove box out of a 914 is very similar to one froma bug, I have put them side by side.

I did not see dimensions listed, try and get the details on that prior to buying it.

[Halm]

Hey Will! No help on the radio, but when did you buy a Teener??? I bought one too! Let's talk at PCA tomorrow.

[Grantsfo]

I mounted a Sony unit in my glovebox. It had a remote control and worked great. I fabricated bracket that held stero unit in place. Drilled a big hole in back of the glovebox. Looking at the car you would have had no idea it had a nice stereo as the original radio was still in the dash.

[wcballance]

Hal, I bought one. I found it on eBay and picked it up in Stow, OH, and drove it home. Click my web site link and check out the photos I took when we stopped in West Virginia on the way home. I'm interested in hearing about yours so we'll definitely have to talk tonight.

I placed an order with JC Whitney yesterday to get their glove box replacement. I was told that if it did not fit then I could simply return it for a refund so I only stand to lose the money it takes to ship it. I'll let everyone know how it turns out.

I want to install a Blaupunkt Bahamas MP46R CD/MP3 Receiver so if the glove box fits then that will be my next order. My plan is to mate that with some Blaupunkt speakers behind the original kick panels. I understand the original speaker size is 5x7, but many modern speakers are closer to 6x8 so they don't work. I'm hoping I can find some 5x7's that will work, though. Otherwise I'm looking at 4x6's with an adapter plate.

[Brother]

Blaupunkt makes 5x7's. They are sold on the site that you linked.

I like that they have an iPod adapter. To bad that it costs just about as much as that head unit.

[toman]

With a bit of work, it is possible to mount a detachable faceplate to the inside of the sun visor, and then you can mount the head unit anywhere you like. Under the dash, in the console, glovebox, whatever.

[Brother]

Who makes a remote faceplate head unit?

[toman]

No company makes one, a standard detachable faceplate head is used. Just the faceplate is mounted in the visor, then some sort of wiring harness is fabricated and installed to connect it to the head.

[wcballance]

I removed the kick plates in the car to look at the speakers that were already there. I found 4x6 speakers mounted to paperboard adapter plates. The plates were secured with little metal clips that fit over the mounting posts. The side of the plate facing the grill was covered with a paper-like cloth. The speaker was glued to the other side. I carefully peeled off the cloth and speakers so that I could re-use the plates. The mounting posts were roughly 4.25" apart both vertically and horizontally. Given that the mounting posts were at the edges of the mounting surface, I would say that 5x7 speakers would not fit. Based on what I found, I decided to order some Blaupunkt THx462 speakers. I just need to find a replacement for the cloth for the plates (the cloth that was on them needed replacing).

I'm wondering if I should find a way to create new plates using the old ones as templates. I found a guy on eBay that seems to be doing just that but I don't believe he is selling the plates alone. His eBay store is Appearance and Performance. He's selling speakers already mounted to plates and covered with cloth, but the speakers do not appear to be made by Blaupunkt and that's what I want even though I'll be the only one who knows what's in there once they are installed. His mounting hardware is a little different than what I already had in the car, though. He also has custom kick plates to install larger speakers but I want to keep the stock look.

The remote faceplate idea sounds interesting but I'm still holding out hope for the glove box intall. My head unit will include a remote control so I plan to use it.

[Dave at Pelican Parts]

Send an email to the App&Perf guys. They sometimes show up here as "amity914", and they're good people. I would be surprised if they wouldn't sell you just the adaptors.

--DD

[wcballance]

I created a lovely CAD drawing of the adapter last night using the free software provided by eMachineShop.com. I had the software quote me a price to produce the plate and found out the job isn't cheap! Two pieces made out of MDF would cost close to $200. Bumping the quantity up to 10 pieces got the price down to less than $30 each but that's still quite a bit of change considering what you get and I don't need that many pieces. There must be a cheaper way to produce these things and I guess amity914 has found such a way. I must admit, though, that the software and video guides provided by eMachineShop.com are really good. I spent a few hours using it and produced an exact copy of the adapter. I used a digital caliper to take measurements of the adapter I removed from my car and carefully reproduced the item with their software. When I was done, I printed out a copy of the drawing and laid my adapter over it. It was perfect! I'll be happy to provide a PDF copy of my work if anyone wants one.

[wcballance]

The glove box arrived today and so did the head unit. It looks like the glove box might be a little on the wide side, but I need to figure out how to remove the existing glove box first to tell for sure. I checked out the parts diagrams on this site but it didn't help. Anyone want to give me a clue how to remove it?

[Dave at Pelican Parts]

There's a metal strap around the back, held on to the back side of the dashboard frame with two nuts. IIRC, the outboard one was a pain to get a socket onto.

--DD

[RJMII]

Originally posted by wcballance
I created a lovely CAD drawing of the adapter last night using the free software provided by eMachineShop.com. I had the software quote me a price to produce the plate and found out the job isn't cheap! Two pieces made out of MDF would cost close to $200. Bumping the quantity up to 10 pieces got the price down to less than $30 each but that's still quite a bit of change considering what you get and I don't need that many pieces. There must be a cheaper way to produce these things and I guess amity914 has found such a way. I must admit, though, that the software and video guides provided by eMachineShop.com are really good. I spent a few hours using it and produced an exact copy of the adapter. I used a digital caliper to take measurements of the adapter I removed from my car and carefully reproduced the item with their software. When I was done, I printed out a copy of the drawing and laid my adapter over it. It was perfect! I'll be happy to provide a PDF copy of my work if anyone wants one.

I'd like a copy of it. =o) I'm constructing my own CNC router and need some parts to practice on.

[wcballance]

A little update... I spent some time with my 914 yesterday and finally figured a few things out.

Getting to the glove box requires a bit of effort but it's not too hard. I first removed the knee pad from the dash (it's screwed into place along the bottom and has one screw on each side). I then removed the AM radio so that I could access the nut holding in the metal band that goes around the glove box. The band was fixed on the other side so the one nut was all that I had to remove. The glove box then slid out. I tried replacing it with the new one and found that it did not fit. It was, indeed, too wide. While I had things disassembled, I removed the door to the glove box so that I could put some fresh 3M Super Trim Adhesive on the back of the dash face material covering it (it was peeling away) and that worked beautifully. I made sure to mask off any areas that might catch overspray and it was a good thing I did! I replaced the door and had a heck of a time getting the little springs back in place until I remembered that I had a hook and pick set that would help. I put the top of the spring on the door and used the hook to pull the lower portion of the spring down to its anchor spot. So now my door looks better and the springs are both hooked up. I'm going to look for another glove box because the one that was in the car when I got it had some holes in it, not bad but as long as things are apart I figure I can make it look better.

I've changed my plans for the hidden installation. I'm now leaning toward just replacing the AM radio with my new one. I just need to find a face plate that I can use and get some dash face material to make it all look right. The speakers have turned out to be a little challenging too. The center of the speaker sticks out beyond the rim of the rest of the speaker so I'm going to have to make an extra thick adapter plate to get them to fit behind the original grills. It's turning out to be much more of a project than I expected but I'm determined to get it done and have something that looks as correct as possible.

[wcballance]

Final update...

It took a while, but I completed this project a little over a week ago. I went through the box my speakers came in and discovered that Blaupunkt gives you most everything you need, wire, screws, adapter plates, and grills. I had previously found the adapter plates that fit on the top of the speakers, but it wasn't until I dug around a little (I can't believe I waited so long...) and found the adapters that fit on the back side of the speakers that I discovered I could sandwich the speakers together between the adapter plates and mount the speakers diagonally using two of the posts on the back of the speaker grills (see photo below). I did have to buy some small bolts, washers, and nuts from Lowes to put it all together. I don't have the sizes handy, but I can tell you that they were metric so that the threads would be right for the posts. Probably the best discovery, though, was that I could re-use the paperboard adapters that I had previously removed. I had removed the original speakers from them as best I could so as to preserve them for later use. I also removed the paper-like cloth that was on the face of them. It was the paper-like cloth I wasn't sure I could replace until I thought of the perfect solution. I remembered that I had some leftover landscaping fabric in my garage and it was almost and exact match of the material that I had removed. I sprayed some adhesive onto the face the adapter and stuck on a piece of the landscaping fabric. I cut away the excess and was very pleased with the result.



I found the dash plate I needed on eBay, sold by David Lee of Rennenmetal.com. I sanded it down and sprayed it with some black Rust-Oleum Rust Reformer paint. After drying, I applied some dash face material (Pelican part PEL-INT-DFM) with some 3M Super Trim Adhesive and trimmed away the edges and a rectangular section from the cut-out. I left a little excess in the cut-out area to fold over to the back. I stuck the dash plate onto the dash using the adhesive strips that were already on the back of the plate. At that point I was already pleased with the look of things. I managed to get the mounting cage supplied with the stereo stuffed into place. I originally thought it wouldn't fit but I kept trying until I made it work. I used crimped connectors to wire everything up. I was a little puzzled at first on where to tap into some constant power from the battery but after searching the forums a little I discovered that I could grab some power from the fuse area. It turns out that there were a number of open posts onto which I could connect a wire with a female spade connector. I made sure it was on the battery side of the fuse by testing for current with a multi-meter. After I had the wiring figured out and tested, I slid the stereo into place and connected everything up. I tidied up the wiring later using zip ties.

I had trouble finding a replacement glove box so I decided to fix up the one I had. I taped off the holes on the outside of the box using paper tape similar in color to the outside of the box so as not to be so obvious. I cut some red felt that I sourced from Wally World into three pieces that would cover the inside of the box. The sides were cut together so that they were mirror images of each other. I cut a little and then placed the pieces inside the box to see if anything needed tweaking. I repeated this process until it looked good. I applied a spray adhesive (lighter stuff compared to the 3M Super Trim Adhesive) and put the pieces into place, sides first and then the middle. I think it turned out great.

The finished product....

[RJMII]

Will, that looks really good!