A few years ago I replaced the factory stereo in the BugEater with a Clarion DVD stereo. I thought it would give me some better quality tunes with the aftermarket speakers I had already installed and the ability to watch some DVD's as well. It turned out that the sound quality sucked and I ended up buying an amplifier to help things out. The first picture below shows the Clarion and the second shows the amp and some Bose speakers I added.
The sound quality improved immensely. The stereo was still a pain though. It wouldn't read my Ipod correctly and often times wouldn't see the Ipod at all. So I returned it to exchange it. Well, even the second one gave me grief but I lived with it. One of the other issues with the stereo was the fact that it had no stereo Aux plug to hook other devices like my laptop to. Well the other day it finally took a dump on me. I have a stereo built into my Kobalt toolbox (and a Fridge) so I decided to hook that up in the BugEater. When I get more cash I'll replace the stereo in my toolbox. I installed the same model stereo that's in my Toolbox in my wife's 4-Runner a few years ago and we love it. The problem is that it is a single DIN stereo and the opening in the BugEater is for a 2 DIN stereo.
So I had to fabricate a plate for the opening. Below are some pictures of the process. After all was installed and complete, I was very impressed with the sound quality of the stereo. I can watch DVD's on my laptop and there's still an extra Aux connection if I need it. The Ipod works flawlessly with this stereo too. Sometimes more money isn't the best option. Now I just need to give the BugEater a long over due cleaning. An additional bonus is that the blank area above the stereo affords the opportunity for more switches.
