This is about stage one of my radio project.  I replaced the Monsoon head unit and put in a Kenwood and a Sirius reciever.  Satallite radio is cool!  :)

Most people say this is more difficult than its worth.  That is *bullshit*.  Nothing worth doing right is easy and this car is most certainly worth doing right! 

My friend Kevin helped me.  He's a damn good guy to do so.  Mostly because any time I do stuff like this, although successfull, the road to get there is often quite difficult and bloody.  For instance, he stabbed me while removing the head unit.  :)

NOTICE:  Thanks to Little Red Wago for pointing out a possible (ok probable) flaw in the HowTo!  For the ANTENNA BOOSTER WIRE you should connect it to the antenna power wire on the KENWOOD harness, not the Metra one!  When I get my amp I will check it out as I will have to remove the head unit anyway.  Thanks again to LRW!  :)

• Kenwood Excelon KDC-X869 CD/MP3 Reciever
• Kenwood KTC-SR901 Sirius Satellite Radio Tuner
• Kenwood CX-SR10 Sirius Satellite Antenna
• PAC SWI-X Steering Wheel Radio Control Interface
  • As of 4/8/2003 this part will NOT NOT NOT work on 2002+ VW's with the double dins.  I had to return it to Crutchfield.  Both the vendor and Crutchfield have been notified and will correct their information accordingly.
• Enfig Amplified Antenna Adapter
• Metra Wire Harness 70-9003 for 2002-2003 Double Din's
• Volkswagen OEM Single-Din Pocket
• VW Fuse block wire OEM part 000-979-227
• 16 gauge wire
• Radioshack wire shrink wrap

I ordered the Kenwood stuff from Crutchfield, the Metra/Enfig stuff from Enfig, and the OEM wire from my local VW/Audi dealership .  The 16 gauge wire came from Kevin's garage.  :)

• Metra radio removal tools for VW's
• Torx sockets
• Phillips screw driver
• Wire cutters
• Soldering iron
• Radioshack multimeter
• Unlimited patience
• A case of Mountain Dew.  No...  2 cases.

The Metra removal tools came with the reciever from Crutchfield.  You can order them for $5 each from many different places though.  Be careful, they are sharp as a knife.  These are what Kevin accidently stabbed me with.... ;)

Ok, so now I have all this stuff on my bed, and it looks quite intimidating.  Tons of wires, tons of non standard hook ups required.  Ugh.  Should be fun though.....

That is the Metra harness on the bottom, the Kenwood adapter for the head unit in the middle, and the antenna adapter on the left. 

Head Unit etc:

*- This requires that you cut the VW wire in half and solder 16ga wire to it.  Plug the fuse box clip end into the fuse block and then solder the other end to the Kenwood harness.  This is how you get "the key is on" power from the car instead of full time 12v which means your radio is always on.  You can turn it "off" of course but according to Kenwood it still draws some amount of power and that's no good for your battery.

**- This requires that you find a wire that powers the dash lights.  This wire pushes voltage when the lights are on, and by splicing the orange wire to them you draw the power to the head unit which detects the signal and switches to "dimmed" mode.  This is a big step for making the installation look as professional as possible.  According to Kenwood a 12v signal is fine.  I used the middle wire on the dimmer control module.  Orange is ground, middle is 12v when lights are on, and the other end is the wire that sends back a reduced voltage to your console lights.  I'll use this wire for my boost gauge.  :)

Preparation:

Yeah yeah, just want to jump on into the install.  But there are some things to do first.  Like go to the VW dealership and get the fuse wire :P.  No really, I think its best to get as much done as possible before ripping your car apart.  I like to make sure I have everything that can be soldered done by the time I'm ready for the install.  Use electrical tape or shrink wrap around your solder connections to make sure they are insulated from any metal in your car or other exposed wires.  Even if you suck at soldering this is easy, its just connecting two wires....  Take your time, make sure to connect the wires properly for good power/sound.  Shitty connectors mean shitty music!  (Or blown fuses, fun fun!)  The best way to do it is to wrap the wires together as pictured.  Then, using a very hot solder iron (yes, it can be too cool) warm up the wire.  It won't melt...  Then use the solder on the warmed up wire.  By warming the wire up it basically just sucks the solder right in and makes a good connection.  That's what you want. 

Cut the VW wire in half and solder about 5 feet of 16 gauge stranded wire to it.  You can cut the slack, but this is what we are going to plug into the fuse block to make your head unit ignition switched.

Wires all tied up:

Wires nice and wrapped up (Used that shrink wrap stuff from Radioshack and in the process of melting them with a blow dryer blew out the breaker in Kev's room.  I'm quite the disaster apparently.  ^_^):

Now we are ready to do the install.  The only wires we will have to solder in the car will be the dimmer and power ones.  And that should be quite the pain in the arse...

Installation:

Ok.  First off it was worth it.  The head unit install wasn't that bad here, the Sirius was quite a bit more work than I thought though.  Even with the stock amp and speakers the system sounds TONS better.

With any soldered connections, it is implied that you securely wrap the results with shrink wrap or electrical tape.  That is kinda important....

Also when running wire any distance, WRAP IT UP.  Use wire wraps or whatever, to other wires, anything.  Just so it doesn't vibrate.

And away we go....  This is the original piece of doody.  Yes, its a piece of crap, trust me.  You can see the slots where you put the metra tools, they are horizontal slits.  The tool comes with directions as what end you use.  It is a pain to get off, I ended up ripping the face of the head unit off by accident and then just shoving the tools inbetween the clips (which you can see at that point) and pulled the unit out.

Next we took the drivers side panels and metal thingy off.  Yes, you will see what I mean by metal thingy when you take the panels off.  Take that off too.

Then we disconnected the battery.  We had to reconnect and disconnect it quite a bit depending on if we were hooking things up, testing for power in wires, or testing the actual units.  So, don't put the cover back on until you are done... ;)  There are two "buttons" on the sides of the battery cover, pop them off and then remove the red wire from the battery terminal.  There are two nuts you have to loosen, I guess one is for the engine and one is for the rest of the car.

Now take the side fuse panel out of its slot by removing two bolts.  Then pull it out and take the back off.  The fuse panel in question is the one on the drivers side on the left side of the dashboard.  You will see where it is, trust me...  You can also see that we took the face off of the dimmer toggle, because we will be using some wires to power the unit and tell it when to dim.

Ok, this is a fun part.  Find slot 31 on the fuse block.  For me it was in the top row of the center block of fuses, middle slot.  Empty.  Empty I say!  At least it was for us.  There is a power wire running to the block.  But no fuse!  Put a fuse in, pull the middle purple/pink block lock and pop in your wire you got from VW.  Then relock the purple/pink block lock by pushing down.  You now have a fused connection for your head unit.  Congradulations, this was the most daunting part of the HU install.  (no really, it was...)  We ran the wire OVER the steering column to the head units place in the center console.

It is the big yellow wire that looks sorta out of place in the middle.  That's the one we put in the block.

Center plunger pink thingy... Don't forget to push that in or everything can fall out of the block...

Ok, now that you have a power wire you should connect the dimmer wire.  Otherwise your install will be half assed.   Yes I'm a snob... ;)  Take the MIDDLE wire in the dimmer toggle connector and strip a bit of it off.  Then solder about 5 feet of stranded 16 gauge wire that will be run along with the power wire you just set up.  You now have a soldered connection with a wire that gets 12v of power when you turn the lights on.  And, your dimmer functionality on your head unit will work.  :)

Don't forget, when you put the toggle back together there are these two little metal clips that shot off of it when I took them out, put them back on.  :)

Here is where we tied the wires to behind and into the back of the center console:

Now you have to prepare the head unit.  There was a hole on the back that we put a screw in, cut the head off, and capped the black rubber piece on the back of the original head unit to it.  This fits into a slot in the back of the console that keeps the head unit from bouncing around.

This is a good time to plug the head unit into the wire harness just to see if it is working.  If you are not going to install a Sirius unit like I did then you are done now and just have to *carefully* put the DIN pocket and head unit back into the console.  If you *are* going the route I did and install the Sirius unit too, keep going....

Ok, well now its time to run the Sirius wire.  Gotta do that before putting the head unit into the console.  You can reattach the drivers side panels now if you want.  Then unattach the panels on the bottom of the passanger side, all the way to the back of the car.  There are screws in the panel in the middle near the seat belt spooler on the floor.  You have to sorta play with the panels because you have to slide the one in the middle inbetween the doors out, as well as some in the back.

Here is a pic of the Sirius wire, all wrapped up:

Then take the back panel off too, so you can access the bolts that hold the amp in the trunk.  We are going to mount the Sirius reciever under the amp.  Pop the plastic holders off of the three metal things on the rear deck, and then unbolt them so you can remove it.

Once you unbolt these the amp holder will be free to be removed, so watch it so it doesn't fall and ruin the amp or wires.  Kevin held the unit while I removed the bolts, then we removed the plugs (can be a pain) from the amp and took the amp out of the metal container.

Line up the Sirius unit on the metal container and drill the two extra holes so you can mount it.  We used the slots with some nuts and washers for the other side... No need to drill more holes than necessary.

Now we need to get a power source for the Sirius.  We used the 12 volt plug in the trunk.  Just spliced two wires off of it....  The orange wire is the GROUND.

Now connect the wires to the Sirius.  Ok, here is the utterly most horrible part of any install I have ever done:  running the Sirius antenna wires around the rear window UNDER the weather stripping.  It took us, oh, 90 minutes or more because you have to be really, really careful.  Put the antenna behind the VW mount, yes it fits if you cut the long rubber tail off of the Sirius.  Don't clip the wires obivously....  Now using plastic implements or a screwdriver with a plastic cover or something over the end, lift up the weather stripping and push the wire under it.  There is a notch that it will go under, you can tell when it happens because when you take the plastic piece out that you were holding the weather stripping with it snaps back shut like nothing is there.  I used the following method (sorry for the bad pic, hard to get a good one of this)

This was a pain in the ass, just take your time.  It is really the only way to do it.  If you find a better way please tell me so I can update this page.  ;)

Now put everything back together in the trunk, making sure everything is connected to the Sirius and the amp.  Put the rear deck back on, put the panels back on the sides, and make sure everything is all clipped in and ready to go.  I didn't take pics of putting it back together because you will have more than a good idea how to do that after tearing it apart....

Ok, after everything is together except the center console, stop and take a breath, you are almost done.

We had a hard time getting the head unit to fit, there are a LOT of wires and harnesses involved.  We were able to position everything so that we could fit the VW DIN pocket (which we cleaned out with compressed air first btw, it had fuzzies in it) on top and then push the head unit into the bottom.  It was difficult, be careful not to break your lovely new head unit....  But, it went in eventually.  Your cupholder might not work because of the pressure on the door from the DIN pocket, but as things break in more it will function normally after a bit.

The red matches perfectly, and the blues look good at night.  Not an exact match, but very complementary to the colors of the console.  So it works great.  :)