[MickRC3]

Well, the bad weather here in eastern Nebraska kept me from doing the install until today.

Step 1: Remove The Negative Cable From The Battery. The air cleaner enclosure must be unlatched and moved to gain access to the terminals on the battery.

Step 2: Remove The Center Console Bezel. There are two screws, one in each A/C vent. Rotate the vent until the vanes are exactly horizontal. You should be able to see a notch in the bottom center inside the vent. If you can't see it, rotate the vent around 180 degrees. The screw is a black standard phillips head and isn't the easiest thing to see in the dark. A flashlight can help. I worked on my car in the bright sunshine and still needed a light to help. The screws are really tight, so use a screwdriver with some grip to get them started. A magnetic screwdriver helps to get them out of the vents. Once the screws are out, then there are 9 press fittings holding the bezel in place. There are two at the top, above the vents, two on the sides even with the vents, two on the sides even with the radio, two on the sides below the heater controls, and one centered at the bottom. I started at the bottom and using a slow steady force pulled the bezel loose, working my way up the bezel to the top. Now only the various cables hold the bezel on. Start at the top. Remove the clock cable by pressing down on the release on the plug on the bottom side and pulling the plug out. Next is the power windows cable. There is a red plastic lock on this plug. The lock is pushed upward (not away!) from the bottom side of the plug to release it. Once unlocked, the release tab on the right side is pressed and the plug can be pulled out. The defroster-hazard cluster cable comes out the same way as the clock cable. At this point, if you are working on the radio, you don't have to remove the heater cables. I didn't remove them so if you need to get the bezel completely out of the way, you will have to figure that part out yourself.

Step 3: Remove The Old Radio. The four torx screws on the corners hold the radio in place. Use a T-15 torx head driver. The radio comes right out. There are three cables on the back: the antenna wire and the two radio harness plugs. The harness plugs each have a press release on the top while the antenna wire just pulls out.

Step 4: Mount The New Radio. If you are putting in an aftermarket radio, you have to install your harness and get power from an unswitched source. Since I put in another Mopar radio, I didn't have to do anything.

Step 5: Install The P.I.E. AUX box. I got the P.I.E. AUX box out of the packaging and plugged it into the wiring harness. That went easy. Then I plugged the cable into the back of the new radio. That didn't. The P.I.E. cables required so much pressure to lock down I was afraid that I would break the connector solder points on the circuit board. To reduce the flexing, I stuck a flathead screwdriver blade into the gap between the connector and the radio case to prevent the insertion pressure from flexing the board. Run the AUX connector and cable down behind the plastic beam at the back of the radio compartment and fold the harness and P.I.E. cables side to side to allow the radio to fit in the space. Attach the antenna cable. Screw the new radio into place. At this point I found that the part of the cable that goes to the P.I.E. AUX box was too short to go out the bottom of the center console like I had planned. Since there is a big molex connector on the end of the cable, cutting a lareg enough acess out the side of the console didn't appeal to me. I looked it over and instead decided to make my cuts in the cubby shelf insert (kudos to the guy that put the Mac Mini in his, it gave me the idea). It is just press-fitted one on each side - with the console open you just push the insert towards you and it pops out. Then comes the surgery. The plastic is very soft and cuts easily. I started with a hobby knife and sawed a rough oblong which I slowly widened using a whittling motion. I did make a mistake since I cut the hole in the top of the insert, and only then realized that I couldn't get my hand in there to plug in the connector. So I continued the hole down around the corner of the insert to the back. That gave me the room I needed to plug in the unit. If I hadn't already installed the harness I might have been able to get by with the top hole only but I didnt' think of that until later. I mounted the P.I.E. unit to the inside of the insert using some self-tapping PC fan screws I had lying around. They cut through the plastic of the insert and into the holes on the side of the unit.

Then I simply pushed the insert back into place, reconnected all of the cables on the bezel, snapped the bezel back on, and hooked the battery back up. I added the RCA to mini-din cable, hooked up my XM radio stowed the excess line in the cubby.

Everything works great. There were no issues with anti-theft codes and the new radio works and sounds better than the single unit ever did. The EVIC still works great, and the RDS shows radio station call letters and the names of the songs. MP3 CDs play without a hitch.

Now, for the P.I.E. unit. There is a screw adjustment to level the signal from the device to the radio. To use the unit, you select satellite radio. It shows satellite for a moment and then shows the P.I.E. name. The sound through the unit has a bit of background hiss, which can be reduced (but didn't seem to go completely away) by turning down the adjustment level. I'll have to play with it some more before I pass judgement on if the unit was worth the cost and effort.