Does anybody have experience in replacing car stereos with aftermarket products?

You might find a person who’s skilled at this and can do it in their driveway or garage. I haven’t had it done for probably 20 years (as my last few cars the stereos have survived ok) but I used to buy an aftermarket replacement stereo and have a friend do it. At the time, I’d probablly pay 100 dollars for the labor. A thousand sounds high – not sure if you need new speakers installedd too. That’s why I’m suggesting you might find a friend who’s good at wiring – that’s basically what it is – removing the dashboard and doing wiring.

I should add that as far as the stereos went, as far as them being successful replacements, they were fine. They were good brands like Blaupunkt.

If you need speakers installed, it’s removing the door panels which involves clips (clips that fasten the panels to the metal) and wiring. The clips can be tricky, from what I used to be told.

I used to work at a service center for a major American electronics manufacturer, and the service center did a lot of radio installations for local police, FD, ambulance corps, etc. and so I would get first hand info about the complexities of the work.

Also when my friends would install my stereos and speakers, I’d always express interest in how it went, which was how I’d find out about the clips being tricky, etc.

Here’s the real problem. The 20 year old car has a wire harness that was state of the art back in in 2003. Voltage, connections to the speakers, and so on.

Twenty years later, my guess is that the entire wiring assembly is different and incompatible. Yes, your shop is quoting you $1000, but my guess is that once they start, they will either find that they can’t deal with 20-year old technology or the price will magically double.

If you’re going to go ahead with this, don’t do the fancy stuff; just get a simple 1:1 replacement, with older technology and less likelihood of incompatibility.

For one thing, when the car finally falls apart in 2024, you won’t be out the $1000 that you would have paid today.

Part of that $1K is the backup viewing capability. I’m older than you & when I was in a similar situation, I went to Best Buy for a legit purchase & just happened to walk past the radio section. I found a radio that had a CD player & an mp3 player. It only cost me about $200 for the radio & Best Buy installed it for about $100…$300 total. They are familiar with compatible cars & have various wiring harnesses that fits most older cars. I discovered that the mp3 player was a LOT more convenient because I didn’t need to store any CDs in my car. It took some work to turn my CDs into mp3s. Fast forward a decade or 2, I bought a car that indicated it played mp3s but there was NO source to plug my flash drives into. I purchased a device off amazon for under $30 that plugs into my cigarette lighter & I tune my car radio to a particular AM station & the device to the same station & it plays over the radio. It accepts a flash drive or a micro SD card. I simply transferred my mp3s from my computer to the SD card & I’m good to go. It will also work to answer your cell but with my stroke people can’t hear me talking to them so I Never use it for the cell. I can see where it might be convenient, but I prefer to continue to use my Bluetooth. Anyway, in the last 5 years, I’ve dfinitely gotten my $30 worth out of this player!!! Others who have bought it have said that it doesn’t matter the age of the car as long as you have an AM radio & cigarette lighter in the car.

Thank you everybody! That is all congruent with my own thoughts.

It’s probably right, but as @LadyMarissa wrote, a big part of the price will be for the rear camera. But you should shop around if you want to get the best price. Last time I did this was about 2018. I went to a small shop and browsed models, and got some explanations about stuff. They were pretty expensive to do the installations, though. I ended up buying from Best Buy.

I was pretty satisfied, and it was well under $1000, even though it does Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, Bluetooth, etc., but I had no camera added.

It was not a problem that the car was nearly 20 years old.

The worst part was I got a Sony, and didn’t realize it would behave obnoxiously by design. That is, it always lights up its screen when you turn on the car, and shows an animation/ad for itself, and it takes several menu-navigating taps with delays (one of which IS ABOUT HOW YOU SHOULDN’T DRIVE WHILE DISTRACTED BY SCREENS!!!) to get it to just be a black screen. And if you don’t do that, it will start showing you ACTUAL ADVERTISEMENTS FOR SONY SHIT!

The last time I installed an aftermarket player in my car was for my red 1987 Integra. Bought the unit from my friend’s dad, who worked at Clarion so got an employee discount. Then I had to get an adapter to go from the loose wires from the unit to the main stereo connector specific the car. The biggest pain was mechanically attaching the unit to the dash – where could it get bolted in?

Nowadays dashboards are so packed and screws are so hidden that it would be a much greater pain the butt to remove an old unit and swap in a new one. I can see how it would take many hours of labor to do it for your RAV4, costing several hundred dollars. I concur that for $1000 they would be running wires to the back of your car to set up a backup cam and then hiding the wires under all the trim.

You can get a wireless backup cam for less than $200 but the video will be on its own screen, not the built-in unit. I have one on my VW Sportwagen.

@RocketGuy In the old days I swapped out CD radios myself as well. But they were much less complicated.

I have, it was my job in the late 1990’s when I was in tech school. I still do all my vehicles but they’re all 15 years old or more. Newest vehicle I have done is a 2010. Not much reason to upgrade the very latest vehicles. New wire harnesses are still completely compatible. It’s a standard. I have new Bluetooth radios in all my vehicles that are less than two years old. It was still just as easy as it was 20 years ago. FYI a new cd head unit is crazy cheap compared to the past. $1000 sounds high, but you can do this work considering you have already had an aftermarket one in it correct? If so, you just need a new head unit. You can reuse the vehicle side adapter wire harness. Your new radio will come with one for its side. The color code has not changed. Honestly, Sony sucks these days, Kenwood head units are still great.

I got a basic Kenwood CD player with AM/FM radio for fairly cheap. (Installed in my 91 Nissan pick-up) Cheaper than $1000 by a long shot! Best to reconsider your needs and wants for that old car of yours.

For DIY, it seems that Crutchfield has a good selection of units and vehicle-specific installation kits.

Last time I did something like that was in 1976 on a 1966 Econoline van I picked up for about $200. I had a friend (sadly, now passed) who was also “tech savvy” for the time. Of course, there was no CD radio, but rather a CB radio! I had some home made speakers that could be moved out of the vehicle (long wires!). Our choice for music was AM or FM radio, and since the technology was transitioning , we had both 8-track and audio cassette players. We had to upgrade the generator (not alternator), but we had a sound system to compete with any other van at the time!

@kritiper If I still had a ‘91 car it would be really easy. Unfortunately, I have a much more complicated system.

@RocketGuy Yes, I have a friend (on GSF—BD) who did a DIY Crutchfield installation. I’m not entirely sure I’m that interested in doing it myself. I have to look to see what Crutchfield’s cost is vs my getting it at a shop and having it installed. And I’m actually interested in the backup camera as I don’t have one.

I have ordered from Crutchfield. When you order, you put in the year, make, and model of your car and it tells you which new units would need harness adapters or an “spacer” because what you are ordering is smaller than the original. You order all this at the same time. They send you the new stereo along with all the extras, step by step instructions on replacing the stereo, etc. You can generally swap out a stereo in an hour or under…generally under.

Thanks. How much is it? I wouldn’t get the backup camera but that’s okay

@Caravanfan Go to the Crutchfield website and check. It really varies depending on what you want and how much it is. But it is always, to me, cheaper than having someone put one in, unless you can get the Geek Squad from Best Buy or someone put it in for free (with purchase). Every time I looked to have someone install, it would have cost me the price of the stereo, the parts, and the labor. With Crutchfield I pay for the stereo and the parts, and there is no mark-up on the parts.

Crutchfield is usually pretty spot on with their install instructions.

@seawulf575 I just got off the phone with crutchfield and they have a system that I could use for just over $500, which would be $500 cheaper than having someone else install it. My one concern is that it uses the factory amplifier and that could be what is blown. @RocketGuy and I just had a chat and we found the amplifier fuse—I’m going to check that later.

Thanks again for the help.

@Blackwater_Park And I have other friends who are about as technically saavy as I am who was able to self-install a Crutchfield with their instructions.

You have a Bose system?

@Blackwater_Park No. JVC.
Honestly, I’m not interested in upgrading the sound. I just want it to work.

You had a rav 4 right? I think those were JBL. That will be a PITA if it had all the external bells and whistles. USB ports and things like that… you’ll loose functionality on some of it. An alternative would be to find an exact replacement part on eBay. Today’s vehicles have all but killed the aftermarket audio craze.