'00 Outback Wag. - Easy to replace Head-Unit of stereo?

[Madison MacLard]

Hello,
I am on the verge of buying a new Head-Unit for my '00 OBW
because Subaru was too backwards to put a cd player in my car when I bought
it. I would like to know if it is easy or not to replace the stock stereo
with the one that I will purchase? I'm not interested in paying for the
whole installation.

Thanks.

 

[Nicolas Dore]

Hello there!

Did it on my 2000 Legacy wagon (same basic car...), took me 1.5 hour to do
it, .5 inside and one in the car. I then installed new speakers as the new
radio showed how defficient the stock speakers were... I used the
instructions here:
http://www.butkus.org/subaru/outback_stereo/outback_stereo.htm

One thing: Spend the money and get a wiring harness for the car, which cost
me 10$US at the local car radio store: Your new radio will come with a plug
that's different than the one in the car, so you buy a female plug that fits
with the car and connect that with the new radio's male plug so you can just
plug the new radio in as if it were made for the car . May sound silly
but I much preferred matching my new radio's wiring with the harness' wiring
on the kitchen table than cutting and splicing tha car's wires.

Nicolas

 

[Jon Macey]

Hello,

I recently did that in my 2001 LL Bean. I had an Alpine cd head unit and a
12 disc changer I had removed from another car. Bought the wiring harness
from Crutchfield. They sent me their "Mastersheet" with instructions on how
to get into the dash and all that. Did speakers through them also.

One thing: You may find that after installing your head unit that your
radio reception is really really bad. Mine was. Apparently in some Subies,
the antenna has to be 'amplified' by a 12 Volt power source. Use the power
antenna lead in your wiring harness. Connect this as if you have a power
antenna. I did not at first since I do not have a power antenna, but then
tried this and it works perfectly. Found that hint on the nsioc site I think
it was.