Hey I have a unit on the way (I pray) and i'm planning on putting in my 2000 Viper GTS. I was talking to a guy at the local stereo shop and he said he wasn't sure it would fit. something about how they haven't made pull out radios in awhile and he doesn't know if the opening is large enough in the Viper for it. I figured the folks at empeg would have been smart enough to take that into consideration and made a slightly smaller box so that the chassis would be din sized with the box fitting into it perfectly. Luckily the Viper comes with a nice 200 watt amp so it should be a pretty simple swap job. Anyone have thoughts on the subject? I plan on documenting my steps for the site!

Make sure to get some nice shots

the fact that it is a pull out shouldn't matter it isn't any bigger than a regular car stereo. the clarion I installed with the empeg is longer.

Indeed the chasis conforms with DIN standards. Unfortunately car manufactures don't always appear to. It should be as easy as any other head unit to install the chassis into your car. It wires up the same and has the same wopping great bundle of cables as any high end head unit.
I'll stop myself here and say that you should be reading the riocar FAQ's to the answer to many of your questions.

That's just cool Make sure you post some pictures!

"I was talking to the guy at the local stereo shop"

That's cool, and I did the same thing when I was awaiting my empeg. However, my "guy" seems more knowledgeable than your "guy"

Unless he knows something specific about the Viper and has worked on a few before, he should know that the empeg will fit. Tell him it's a standard DIN and then see if he tells you whether or not the "pull-out" will fit. However, as someone said, dodge may have a wierd setup in there.

I think the advantage I had was that the guy I was dealing with had already done an empeg install before (at the time, August 2000, this was extremely rare), so he probably knew that the empeg was of standard size.

while the empeg is of standard DIN size, and will almost certainly fit in the viper, your install guy may have been referring to the dash opening trim. many manufacturers use a standard size DIN bay behind the dash, but make the opening slightly smaller for asthetics. many of us have had to carefully expand the trim opening with one of several methods (file, rasp, dremel, etc).

the end result usually comes out looking great, but you can't back out the install without replacing the dash trim. i'm pretty sure the FAQ has more info on this topic. good luck!

--dan.

I talked to the shop I got my system installed today and got basically the same song and dance. Apparently the old school pullouts had slightly oversized faces or some junk and didn't match up correct. They also went on that the sleds didn't conform to ISO din because they couldn't be mounted with the side mounting brakets that modern cars use. I won't know for sure if they'll actually be able to do it till I bring the unit in (Fedex says it's in town now, just waiting for delivery I guess)

Car stereo shop + empeg = confused people

The guy here in aberdeen i buy stuff from just shakes his head and mutters something about it not being a car stereo when i show him a new trick with the empeg. Learning a pioneer remote control and being able to map the keys to what i want really got him. I think wireless will be the next trick i shall show him when i get it.

They also went on that the sleds didn't conform to ISO din because they couldn't be mounted with the side mounting brakets that modern cars use.

This was exactly the case with the install in my '96 Camry. I watched the guy as he showed me how it didn't fit right. He wanted to mount it without the sled, but I explained to him why that wouldn't work.

He ended up pulling out the handy dremmel. After about 30 minutes of that, the empeg fit nicely.