Hey guys-
A friend of mine has a 2001 2.4L 5 speed coupe with what I believe is permium sound. I don't know a whole lot about Dodges, but I believe it is premium becuase it has a tweeter and the mid/low as 2 different speakers all the way around. However, she has the stock tape deck in there, which I thought was strange for premium sound, and wants to swap for a cd player. I have done this a few times and thought it would be no problem until I noticed 2 things: The first is the speaker setup. I'm assuming I will have to bypass the stock amp, which shouldn't be a big problem, but is it possible to hook these speakers up to a aftermarket CD player? I havn't done anything like that before and don't know how I could make that work unless the cd player has seperate hookups for the tweeter and the mid/sub. The other thing-Has anyone managed to mount it in there without having a huge ugly hole in the dash becuase the stock tape deck is twice as big? How can I do this and make it look good?

As a side note, this system is one of the better stock systems I have heard, and it sounds very good for stock and has some power behind it and I really don't want to lose that. For her, she dosn't care how loud it goes as she dosn't turn it up often but does care about sound quality and it matters to me how it sounds, especially if I'm going to be installing it. So if you guys could help me out here, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

 

One word....Crutchfield. You can't go wrong with their products and service. First of all you wont even need to worry about her speakers. You get the CD player and they include the harness. Connect the color coded wires from the CD to the color coded wires on the harness. Snap it in where the old cassette harness went and complete. The stock tape deck is a tad large but they also include the mounting kit which fills the extra space and makes it look perfect. If you have problems they offer free technical support and they also have free shipping. For like $129 shipped you can get the Alpine 9843 complete with the harness and mounting kit. That's what I'd recommend.

 

Ok, I have talked to a few people and installing it in the dash I'm no longer worried about. The only question is can I hook up the head unit to the factory amp? Thats the only way I can see a aftermarket cd player sending the right signal to the tweeter and mid/low since they are different speakers. I've just have had bad luck trying to hook up cd players to stock amps (eventually I had to bypass the amps on the vehicles I installed the cd palyer on, which isn't going to work becuase of the speaker setup on this car i believe). That was on a Ford Explorer and Contour, and I don't know much about Dodges, but I'm sure they're probally different so I can see it being possible.....