Alrighty, then. I've finally installed my empeg + pcats tuner. All I can emoticon is

I have to admit, though, I'm *really* glad I took it to a shop -- Al & Ed's Autosound (on Lincoln). Three thumbs up for them. I knew they were the guys to go to, when, during my initial drop in, the guy at the counter knew what the empeg was by my description. They've installed about 10 of them, now.

As for the install itself, there were two problems -- one easy to solve, one not so easy to solve.

The easy problem to fix was that the five channel amp could only fit behind the back seat if I took out the jack. Not an option. That left under either of the front seats. Due to an odd bump in the floor under the passenger seat, it stuck out too far. The driver seat was even worse. I ended up going with dual amps -- a 4 channel, plus a bridged 2 channel

The not-so-easy problem is that the empeg wouldn't fit in the damn console! The HU that was removed was a dual DIN unit. The console moulding fit over top the edges of the radio. There's a little edge running around the perimiter of the hole for the radio, which is supposed to fit over top the stereo -- that's the way the after market mounting kit works, as well -- so all aftermarket stereos are supposed to sit under the moulding. The empeg, of course, due to having a handle and needing to be pulled out, needs to sit flush with the surface, so the cage needed to go on top of the moulding. Enter the next problem -- the top of the moulding had rounded corners -- the empeg wasn't going to fit without some major hacksawing. Installing at the bottom had its own difficulties. The only thing we could do was mount the Empeg in the middle, and lose the idea of having a map pocket. In order to get the cage to sit correctly, they ended up cutting part of the moulding, so that when the Empeg is in the cage, the Empeg sits flush with the little bit of moulding. So, now that we have the cage in, there were holes top and bottom that needed plugging. Well, we couldn't put plastic over the top -- that looked like crap. If we put the plastic in back, there was a gap of about 5mm between the plastic, and the sled. That also looked like crap. They painted the sled black to see if that helped. It did a bit, but not enough. They ended up putting the plastic on the back, then cutting more bits of plastic that fit the shape of the holes to fill the gap.

Aside from the slightly odd look of a single DIN stereo sitting in the middle of a double DIN slot, it looks pretty decent. Will post install pics if I can find someone with a digital camera...

Cheers,

PS... they started working on it at about 4pm, and finished at about 11:30pm. They probably could have finished about a bit sooner, but it was a 20 minute bike ride for me to get to the shop when they called asking what to do about the center console.

Edit: PPS... the other car in the shop while I was there was a Rolls Royce.