1979 Chevy C10 Stereo Install - Hidden System

The trickiest part of wiring up the speakers was to "fish" the wires through the doors and into the cab. We used stainless-steel bailing wire attached as flush as possible to pull the speaker wires through.

Another key ingredient to a clean install is good plumbing. We popped out the factory blanking plugs to use the holes intended for a truck factory equipped with courtesy lights. Later down the road these holes will also be used for power windows or door locks.

Clarion advised running a dedicated hot wire from the truck's battery. We used 10-gauge wire and fished it through (routed) the inner fenderwells, where it couldn't be detected. Remember, cleanliness is next to godliness.

Just out of sight, we mounted a 15-amp circuit breaker inline with the 10-gauge battery hot lead.

From the inner fenderwell, the 10-gauge hot lead was routed into the cab via an existing hole in the firewall intended for a heater hose or something...anyway, we didn't have to drill a new hole.

Looking at the wiring schematic for the Clarion DXZ475MP might have been a little intimidating if we didn't sort out the wires we weren't going to use and bundle the wires we were going to need (above the hand and wrapped in lavender tape...yes, lavender). The wires we needed were identified and marked with masking tape.

Can we say butt? The yellow hot leads for the Clarion head unit were butt-spliced into the black 10-gauge hot lead, and then the rest of the wires were butt-spliced and wrapped into a bundle with tie-wraps. The finishing touch for the Clarion's wiring harness was to wrap it with Painless Performance's Power-Braid, which can be opened up and easily added to at any point in the future.

We don't know how happy the folks at Clarion will be about us hiding all their high-tech components except for the head unit from sight, but we sure are happy with the sound quality of the Clarion DXZ475MP; it's way better than what one usually expects to hear in a classic truck.