Paid $240 to have a guy do my headliner, it was the only eyesore on the truck and now looks great.
I had him leave parts of the rear panels loose and I installed a pair of JBL speakers. ( shallow mount )
I put some of that plastic fiberglass looking packaging sheets (it's about 1 1/2" thick) behind the speakers/panels.
Metra 72-6512 speaker wire connectors fit right . I had also paid to have a new volume switch **** solder in on my stock
AM/FM CD cassette player . So glad I found a new console/armrest top from a member here last year, those things are hard to find for my truck !
At this point I can't un-own my Dakota that I had for almost 26 years now.
I also paid my favorite garage to replace my original water pump a couple months ago.
Probably be changing the oil soon , I only put 3k miles on it the last 12 months.

 

That's definitely not up to date! Get a stereo that will play MP3's. You will forget all about cassettes and CD's.

 

Yeah, I know ... but my cassettes have sentimental value ( my son burned a lot ) and I have hundreds of CD's. I could always cast to a bluetooth speaker also.
I was looking at other aftermarket units and after reading reviews, I see people having problems with this or that or they quit working after a year or two.
On another note , the other thing that was bothering me was my wiperblade arms were starting to get rusty, damn what a pain getting those off . They are all sanded and ready for primer and paint today.

 

You can take music from any source(tape CD record etc) and make it into a MP3. Then load the MP3's on a memory stick. Now you have large music library to listen to any time. No swapping CD's or tapes. No skipping or slow playing of tapes in cold weather. It's hard to beat! My head unit had blue tooth but I never use it. It's close to 15 years old and still works.

 

To me, there's nothing like that friendly VFD in the dash day and night. I have a Bluetooth to FM modulator thing (it'll use aux as an input too if I want) that will do all the cellphone tricks or I can use an iPod but I generally just use the local radio stations.

I agree there is a bit of a sound quality boost using MP3 without the trip over FM, but it isn't enough for me. I do see lots of folks swapping head units, but I'm not planning on that. (Too many other projects for the truck ahead of that anyway!).