First of all, this was one of the easiest modifications/installations I’ve ever done on a car. Granted I’ve got quite a bit of experience with things along these lines it still was so simple it freaked me out. Usually something…anything…goes wrong. But with one tiny exception this went totally smooth. Scary!

Secondly, big thanks to my friend Moe for helping me out with this. Of course having two people work at the same time makes things go faster and smoother…especially when able to split duties.

I got the head unit (Sony CDX-GT300), mounting kit (Metra 99-6501) and wiring harness (Metra 70-1817) at Fry’s Electonics in Concord, California for roughly $190 plus tax. I picked the GT300 because I wanted a fairly simple stereo that would play MP3 CDs and could run satellite radio (if I choose to upgrade). They had Kenwood and Pioneer decks that had pretty much the same features but the Sony was a little cheaper and I liked the look of it. All of them had rotary volume knobs…which is what I prefer.

Tools Needed:
-torx screwdriver: This was the one problem I had as the torx set I owned wasn’t at the house at the time so I had to improvise with an old flat bladed screwdriver which ended up working perfectly.

-3/8 in wrench

-wire cutters/strippers

-electric tape

-philips screwdriver

-chisel, hammer, razor blade and block of wood: These were used to cut off the extra tabs from the mounting kit. More on that later

The first step was to remove all the torx bolts that held on the black dash piece.

As you can see from the pictures the dash piece is a largish piece spanning from the light switch on the far left to the HVAC and stereo on the far right. It was held on by a total of 8 easy to find torx bolts. However there were 2 additional screws holding the dash piece in place that I couldn’t get to…so off comes the panel below the steering column.

There were two screws holding in the panel, one on either side of the bottom. Those pictures were taken looking straight up from the floor of the car. The screw on the right was easy to find, the one on the left above that small metal piece and to the left of the hood release. You only need to undo those two…not remove the hood release handle or anything else. Once those two screws were removed the panel practically fell out. It is held in place up top by just sliding into little groves. Once the panel was removed we could get at the two remaining screws for the dash piece.

Above are the locations of the two screws holding on the dash piece. Once they were removed it was fairly simple to take off the dash. It did require a little twisting and turning to get it around the steering wheel but wasn’t a big problem.

This is the dash with the cover removed. It was pretty dusty up there (people used to smoke in this truck) so this is a great chance to get in there and clean it up a bit…including the vents. A wet rag did the trick fine.

Above is the stock head unit. It is held in by two screws….on the upper right, another on the lower left. Unscrew them and…

…the head unit pops right out. It does have a grounding strap…

…which is fairly easily removed by taking off the 3/8 in bolt on the back. It was a little tight but not bad. I held the stereo while Moe removed the bolt.

Moe tackled the wiring job while I took care of the mounting hardware. With the wiring harness he said it was an absolute piece of cake. He did have to consult the wiring diagram to make sure he got the right wires connected…but it was a no-brainer. Colors of wires may vary a bit from car to car so I’m not going to go into deep detail here.

The next series of pictures is prepping the new head unit for installation…

The black plastic surround needed to be removed. The tabs are small and fragile so be careful…don’t force it off. I used the same flat blade screwdriver to pry them a little. There were 4 in total.

Above is the new unit with the surround removed.

Here we are removing the mounting sleeve from the head unit. The sleeve is removed using the supplied tools with the stereo. You remove the sleeve and install it into the mounting hardware, then slide the head unit in.

Above is the stock head unit, removed from the car. Note the two mounting points (upper right and lower left)

Here we have the mounting kit. It is a generic kit for, according to the package, ALL Chrysler products from 1974-1995. It had a lot more tabs than we needed and couldn’t be installed with all those tabs still in place.

Above is the page from the manual that came with the kit that corresponds with a 1995 Dodge Dakota. It was easy to figure out which tabs needed to be removed using the stock unit and manual as guides.

Now I thought a while about the best way to remove those tabs. I’ve dealt with stuff like this before and used everything from small saws to dremel tools. But this method worked the absolute best…

A chisel and hammer! It made perfectly smooth and clean cuts and along with the razor blade (to make initial groves for the chisel blade) and the block of wood (so I could rotate the mounting kit to get at the various tabs to cut off).

Above we have the modified mounting kit. I left the tab on in the upper left, according to the manual. It made no difference having it on.

It slides in perfectly. The two tabs have a hole for the screws and a small plastic peg in the back that fits in a whole in the dash. It required a little wiggling to get in properly.

Above is the spliced together wiring. Moe said it was really easy, and I’m taking his word for it ’cause at the end it worked perfectly.

At this point it is a good idea to plug the wires into the stereo but do NOT install it into the dash. Turn on the stereo and try it out…speaker fade and balance, illumination, dimmer, everything. It sucks to have put it all in just to find out a channel isn’t working or that it doesn’t dim with your interior lights.

I don’t have a picture of the metal sleeve being put into the mounting kit…but it’s pretty straightforward car stereo install stuff…bend the metal tabs to hold the sleeve in place inside the kit. Personally I much prefer to have them screwed in but there wasn’t really any good places for that…so bent tabs will have to do. In the end it was pretty secure so I wasn’t concerned.

Attach the wiring harnesses together first, then plug in the antenna to the new head unit. The antenna wire was pretty short so do the longer wiring harness first. It took a little fiddling with but went in easily.

Here is the new stuff all installed.

And here we have everything back in place. Remember to put the black dash piece on before the panel below the steering column.

Done!

Installation Review: As I said above, this was extremely easy to do. It even ran perfectly on the first try…which blew my mind. All in all it took about an hour but probably would have gone faster if I hadn’t taken pictures and had the proper torx screwdriver.

Stereo Review: Considering this thing is running on stock speakers, the sound is excellent. Any deeper hard hitting bass will sound like crap, and it tends to be a bit too bright in the upper frequencies…but it is worlds better than stock. It isn’t super fancy but that helps keep running it simple. My only complaint is the radio “seek” function requires you to hold down the button to get it to search. I much prefer “push and seek”, but once I programmed in the radio stations I normally listen to it became less of an issue.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.