Volvo Owners Club Forum - View Single Post - Amazon:

dheming · Nov 9th, 2009, 18:55

I've seen a lot of interest for installing a CD player in an Amazon and I'd like to share my implementation. First of all I'm not a big fan of cutting and/or drilling into my vehicles unless it's for a good reason. The stock radio in my estate didn't really work very well but I used it enough to know that reaching way over to in front of the passenger to use the controls wasn't going to work for me. So after much thought I decided upon the least invasive way to mount an aftermarket CD player as close to the driver side as was possible.

Here's the stock setup:

Here's the layout for the new cutout. You can see that I located an edge on one of the old radio knob holes.

I drilled out the corners and used a small flat file to start the cuts enough to fit in the blade from a pull hacksaw, which was then used to do the rest of the cutting. Then a wide flat file was used to fine tune the opening exactly to the layout lines. This was labor intensive and slow but gave excellent results:

The locking tabs of the metal dash-sleeve that the CD player snaps into weren't designed to be installed directly into sheet metal. So I had to make a spacer from 1/4" plywood to keep things tight:

Here's it all put together. I fabed up a simple fake ash tray to cover the original radio hole. I'm planning on building a new instrument cluster later and this hole will be welded up then.

Of course I had to also upgrade from the crappy single speaker. To keep things simple I used some 4" wide range drivers I had left over from a computer speaker project. I didn't want to cut any more metal so I devised a non-invasive mounting method using longer bolts through the hood spring plates:

Overall I'm pretty happy how this all turned out. Since the 4" drivers are mounted open baffle there is no bass at all, but they do have a fat sound stage because of it. I'm going to install a small sub later so the lack of bass doesn't bother me too much right now. It's also very nice having the volume knob right by the shifter area.

Peace,
Derek.

P.S. I hope you guys don't mind all of the pics, I enjoy reading (and making) these kinds of threads. One of my best Amazon mods yet.

Nov 9th, 2009, 18:55	#1
dheming Member Last Online: Jun 29th, 2022 04:38 Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Corvallis, Oregon USA	Aftermarket CD Player Install I've seen a lot of interest for installing a CD player in an Amazon and I'd like to share my implementation. First of all I'm not a big fan of cutting and/or drilling into my vehicles unless it's for a good reason. The stock radio in my estate didn't really work very well but I used it enough to know that reaching way over to in front of the passenger to use the controls wasn't going to work for me. So after much thought I decided upon the least invasive way to mount an aftermarket CD player as close to the driver side as was possible. Here's the stock setup: Here's the layout for the new cutout. You can see that I located an edge on one of the old radio knob holes. I drilled out the corners and used a small flat file to start the cuts enough to fit in the blade from a pull hacksaw, which was then used to do the rest of the cutting. Then a wide flat file was used to fine tune the opening exactly to the layout lines. This was labor intensive and slow but gave excellent results: The locking tabs of the metal dash-sleeve that the CD player snaps into weren't designed to be installed directly into sheet metal. So I had to make a spacer from 1/4" plywood to keep things tight: Here's it all put together. I fabed up a simple fake ash tray to cover the original radio hole. I'm planning on building a new instrument cluster later and this hole will be welded up then. Of course I had to also upgrade from the crappy single speaker. To keep things simple I used some 4" wide range drivers I had left over from a computer speaker project. I didn't want to cut any more metal so I devised a non-invasive mounting method using longer bolts through the hood spring plates: Overall I'm pretty happy how this all turned out. Since the 4" drivers are mounted open baffle there is no bass at all, but they do have a fat sound stage because of it. I'm going to install a small sub later so the lack of bass doesn't bother me too much right now. It's also very nice having the volume knob right by the shifter area. Peace, Derek. P.S. I hope you guys don't mind all of the pics, I enjoy reading (and making) these kinds of threads. One of my best Amazon mods yet.