Sprinter van: New stereo system

Since we bought this van for a 5-week road trip, we knew we wanted music. The factory radio wasn't going to cut it. Maybe it was the 6-digit code on the radio we'd always have to enter after disconnecting the battery's negative cable. I could never remember it. Maybe it's the little 4" speakers. Maybe it was the fact I've always enjoyed working on car stereos, including our past Corolla, a '91 Toyota pickup, and our RAV4. Oh, I know what it was! The fact I'm a certified Car Audio Expert. Yeah, so says the sticker that came with some gear I bought from Crutchfield a couple years ago.

(Umm, the watermark is because I didn't want to spend $44.95 tonight on retro scanner software, but couldn't pass up the opportunity to display my stereo prowess)

Expert or not, it was time to roll up our sleeves and install a stereo. Before we could, I took another trip to Crutchfield. Since college, I've bought nearly all of my car audio from them. For this rig, I chose a combo of Pioneer and Kenwood gear.

• Pioneer SPH-10BT: we wanted a nice Car Play double-DIN receiver, but they don't fit the single-DIN opening of a T1N Sprinter and the flip-out screen receivers are still too expensive; this was a nice hybrid and seemingly the only one of its kind, allowing us to control the unit with our phones as an extension
• Kenwood KFC-1066S: these speakers may make it clear we're not into spending a fortune on a new stereo, as well as no matter how we cut it, 4" speakers are really small but what fit in the dash openings
• Kenwood KFC-6966S: with a healthy low-frequency response dipping down to 35Hz, these will provide the boom we'll be craving sans subwoofer; the only catch is, there's no where they're supposed to fit in a Sprinter so we'd have to make them fit
• Kenwood KAC-M1814: there is absolutely no point installing a car stereo without an amplifier, so I was glad my wife granted me permission to splurge on this little monster; the difference an external amp makes is so significant if there's any doubt, just re-read my previous statement

Worth mentioning: when an option, I always go for Crutchfield's open box or scratch-n-dent. All but the receiver was one or the other. In fact, the amp wasn't available and only became so when someone must have returned one. On checking stock, I caught that there was an open box, saving us another fifteen bucks (read: score!).

The original stereo left something to be desired…

All of the stuff showed up a couple of weeks ago. Some of it was for the upcoming electrical work we have to do. Regardless, it was really time to get to work.

I'm just going to say, this was a pretty fun install. Like the truck, we had to fabricate some stuff which is always good times. Rather than those speaker boxes, for our Sprinter we had to create full-on rear cargo door panels for the big ol' 6x9s. Which meant a combination of good ol' Dollar Tree $1 Kraft paper templating and some late-night jigsawing.

We wanted a natural wood look. In fact, for our conversion, we're going with a few materials, one of which is (surprise!) natural wood.

Oh wait, since speakers didn't exist back there I also had to cut holes for them in the door panels.

Since we have a toddler, we end up doing a lot of work at night after he's asleep. Apparently, our next-door neighbor didn't really appreciate it. If you listen closely, you'll hear us getting scolded as if we're in a college dorm room above him and he's armed with a broomstick.

Side story: we've only had a single conversation with this guy and his wife, maybe a year ago now. I had just finished up running and passed the two of them struggling to get some furniture out of their Jeep. I asked if they needed any help. We made quick introductions (K and I had moved in six months earlier) and the dude slipped into the conversation how, uhh, 'We look down on you.' I thought it was an odd thing to say. Indeed, their porch is slightly higher than ours. Between that and being yelled at for working outside at night, nothing.

Back to installing this stereo… In order to figure out where the hole in the sheet metal was to cut the same hole in the panels, I drilled and cut out to the edges before retracing the oval from Kenwood's template.

The door wasn't deep enough for the 6x9s, so I also picked up some liftrings. 

With the panels finished, we had to snake the speaker wires. This wire worm came in handy. We ran it through existing holes in the doors and rear cargo panels, along the upper side walls, down the front door pillars to the driver's seat pedestal where we'd be installing the amp. I used some grommets and split loom tubing I had lying around from previous stereo installs for the gap between the door and van.

To ensure the panels wouldn't rattle, I stuck some leftover window insulation around the edges.

Rattling notwithstanding, we had to actually attach the panels. Last month, my friend Matt sent me a box of van buildout leftovers. In it were a bunch of rivnuts. So I bought a rivnut tool. The existing holes drilled in the cargo doors would fit the M5 nuts. It was a pretty simple procedure to install them.

A couple of nuts stripped and I had to drill them out before redoing. Not a perfect system. I also added a few holes since the factory van didn't have panels that covered the entire door. Once the panels were screwed into the rivnuts, I was able to screw in the liftrings. They took some special M5 screws I picked up at the local Stan's Merry Mart.

It was a simple matter of crimping on some female spade connectors and then screwing in the speakers.

In hindsight, the rear speakers were kind of the easy part. Now for the receiver and amplifier. One reason I have always bought from Crutchfield is they include everything needed for an install. For this one, that meant the two keys required to pop the factory stereo out of the dash.

Surprisingly, behind that factory stereo was a perfectly good trim panel. We got the new receiver's mounting bracket fit in place.

Crutchfield also provides instructions and any wiring harnesses/adapters necessary for a successful install. Oh, and their customer service reps are all awesome. Seriously.

Okay, next we had to snake a lot of wires: RCA cables, power, ground, accessory and such. The dash looked pretty awesome.

One thing I've appreciated about working on a giant van is, well, it's giant. There's room. Lots of room. To run cables and to stash cables. Oh, and with the Sprinter, there's power in the cab under the driver's seat. No having to run a power cable to the battery through the firewall. It's known as the EK1 feature, or the X145 terminals. 

They're super cool. Here's why:

• The yellow/black wire (Terminal 15) provides power during ignition (when the key is in but the engine isn’t running); it’s a 15A/180W maximum current draw.
• The red wire in the middle is the gem… 12V constant power! It has a 25A/300W maximum current draw. The amp has a max 400W draw, but I'm betting we don't pull that much power from it (if we do, the fuse should blow before the amp does, which also has its own 15A fuse -- and I crimped a 15A fuse on the battery cable to the amp)
• The blue/yellow (Terminal D+) provides power when the engine is running; it has a 10A/120W maximum current draw. We'll need this when we install our DC battery charger soon.

The amplifier needed the 12V constant power along with a ground. I was stumped not finding a ground anywhere in the cab, so I looked on the ol' Sprinter-Source. That site is an i-m-p-r-e-s-s-i-v-e collection of all things Sprinters. Umm, sure enough, there was a factory grounding point in the driver's seat pedestal I had just overlooked. Once I cleared out the wire rat trap, all the brown Mercedes ground wires were a dead giveaway. Boom.

Perfect! Then it was just a matter of snaking (and re-snaking) more cables. I ended up choosing to mount the amp to the back side of the pedestal. It fit perfectly under the seat, but there didn't seem to be much support on the interwebs for putting an amp in there. On the back of the seat, it'd get air circulation. After all, for our test, the amp got a little hot. Granted, I had turned it up a bit just for fun.

I tidied up the wires coming from the dash with zip ties and taped them down with metallic tape.

Then put the dash back together.

The last little bit was installing the receiver's microphone. With it, we'd be able to tell it what to play, along with other voice controls like maps, texting, and making calls. Using one of the blank dash buttons as an outlet, I drilled it, stuffed the 2.5mm plug through a grommet, and wired the mic up.

Oh, those dash speakers? They were by far the easiest thing of this install. As in, I plopped them in the holes left by the factory speakers. Installed!

To test, we shut the doors, downloaded the Pioneer app, and fired everything up. I have to say, it sounded pretty legit. Despite some Rattletrap in the back doors, they were still rattling. We may try to fix that in time. For now, we're going to move on to bigger things.

Up next: our van's entire house electrical system…