Installing Sony Radio in my 348

This is a story of how one job leads to another. I had purchased a new radio for my 348 some time ago but only recently have had time to install it. The Alpine radio in the car was not very good and I wanted to upgrade to Ipod and Bluetooth capability. To do that I purchased a Sony MEXN5000BT as the ease of Bluetooth operation was considered to be excellent in reviews I had read.

Installing the radio was pretty straightforward once I figured out how to remove the old radio from the housing. To get access to the rear of the radio, I removed the passenger footwell fuse panel cover and then the side cover on the center console. After cutting the old wires, I soldered the connections to the new radio. By using the Alpine wiring diagram, it was easy to hook up the new radio.

For my '67 Porsche I had purchased a pair of Custom Autosound speaker enclosures that sounded much better than I had anticipated. With the Porsche currently at the body shop getting fresh paint, I had removed those speakers. I grabbed them off the shelf to see how they would fit in the 348 for rear speakers. They fit surprisingly well on the shelf behind the seats. Being black they blended in with the black leather quite well. I ran the wires under the black leather panels above the parcel shelf to the passenger side. I removed the vertical trim piece and the threshold trim pieces and ran the wire along the seat belt track and then fed it behind the side footwell side carpet pieces to the center of the car. After re-installing all of the trim pieces, no wires were showing.

To make the Bluetooth work hands free, a microphone had to be installed. I clipped it onto the driver sun visor, loosened both visors and the right clip for the targa roof. This allowed me to lower the upper windshield trim enough to stuff the small microphone wire behind the molding. I then ran the wire down the windshield post trim to the same carpeted area on the passenger side where I had run the speaker wires.

I hooked up everything and it worked well. The radio had 35,000 color choices with the amber color being a very close match to the gauges. Pairing my iPhone with the radio was easy and soon I was making calls to see how it worked. The reception was very clear. I was now able to wirelessly stream music from my iPod. Sony also has an app you can use with the radio which makes the transition form iTunes to Pandora very seamless.

At this point I did not replace the original door speakers and did not hook up the front tweeters. Last Saturday I drove the car to the Charlotte C&C and everything worked well except for some buzzing from the door speakers.
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