Thread: 2007 Saturn Vue: Infill G4 Worklog

I didn't bother to get many "before" pictures of my VUE since they are all over the net, and if you own one you know what it looks like. But here are some shots of some initial measurements I took.

This gave me my first peak inside my brand new dash, and gave me a rough idea what the cables looked like. More importantly, it gave me an idea how much space I had to work with. With the restocking fee, if I bought the G4 it was going in one way or another. After posting incessantly in the mp3car forum, 12volt forum, saturnfan forum, and reading forums on everything from Hummers (GM) to Corvettes (GM), just to name a few, I was getting worried how many people were saying that a double din stereo COULD NOT fit inside my car. I was shocked, disappointed and stubborn, so I went back out and remeasured everything.

I could not find in any way why a double din would not fit, so I moved on to locating install pieces I would need. This way by far the hardest part. After way too many hours wasted driving around, calling, emailing and even speaking with various manufactures I learned of and found a GMOS-LAN-06 for my OnStar equipped vehicle. This was to be my $109 wiring harness. Whatever your thoughts are on OnStar, it's a smart buy for other reasons.

While I am on it, another thing I have been told countless times is that I can NOT use the OnStar antenna for my G4's GPS receiver. I haven't given up on that, but just unsure how to make this useful.

Let me back up and talk about taking off the dash, something I did a few times a week over this period of time (took a week or so for my G4 to arrive, get it's upgrades and arrive cross town [Baltimore] to me). Getting it off isn't too hard, I've posted how elsewhere, but when you take off the little change pocket above the shifter leave the lower two 7mm bolts in. Just loosen them up and leave it loose until you are all done. Getting them on and off is a pain and you WILL drop them, and they never come back out.

Ordering time came, and on the 4th of July I declared by independence from my factory head unit. Cheesey, I know. One week later it arrived, so I came home a bit earlier than usual from the office to play with my new toy.

Although I had an evening appointment, I knew this was my best shot at installing it. So I heated up the soldering iron and got to work. After a few minutes I was back in the car taking the dash off again while my wife and daughter nervously looked on.

Now it was time to connect it (after disconnecting the battery, or course) and reassemble everything. The one (read: first) glitch I ran into was these nubs on the top of the Metra 95-3302 install kit had to be cut off. I heated up my razor blade and lobbed them off easily enough. I had to first disconnect the top cluster with the airbag light, hazard light switch and dimmer switch to get the install kit to fit right. I later learned, that it was in fact the stereo's 7mm bolts that had to come out, bolt the kit and stereo in and snap the bezel into the dash & Metra kit.

Now for the only real issue I ran into, I couldn't figure out the best way to get the G4 to sit in the dash. I wanted it as "factory" looking as possible. It was easy to install it with it sticking out 1/2 inch. I could even get it nice and flush, but then the screen wouldn't open. With my appointment quickly approaching I took of the install kit and mounted it all in place without it.



When I got back home, I grabbed the flashlight and went back at it. I ended up trimming the install kit, roughly and not to good of a job, but it looked much nicer than the gaping hole around the screen.

(I'll get a nice picture and post it soon)

I also ended up cutting out that back wall seen below the air vents with the wiring coming out. I didn't "need" to, but I wanted to. I knew if I didn't now I'd always think about doing it later. I was just nervous how tight the airflow might be around the G4's heat fan.