For the past few months, my car stereo has been acting up. When the inside LCD lost a line of pixels, I shrugged. When it lost all lines of pixels, I frowned. When all buttons stopped working, I soldered, sweated, and then finally shopped.
I almost bought a $250 Pioneer iPod-compatible receiver at Fry's. Fortunately, when I went to ask for the unit, the salesperson told me that the store closed 20 minutes prior and that I should vacate the premise. I say "fortunately" because, that night, I discovered the JVC KD-NX5000.
At first, the $999 price tag seemed a bit steep. However, I was swooned by the GPS capability and overall great reviews of the product. Since I was considering a separate car GPS unit anyway (around $500), the price seemed fair.
Curiously, in a rare anti-Ricci moment, I decided to shop around to find the best price. A few hours later, I stumbled upon this bargain at Overstock.com. Stacked with an 8% off coupon, I ended up getting the unit for $690.
Horror struck a few hours later: upon reading the online installation manual, I realized that I would need to locate the Vehicle Speed Sensor wire in my car and attach it to the GPS receiver in order to obtain accurate navigational assistance. For car audio gurus, this is probably an easy task. For me, this is probably a good way to electrocute myself.
Nevertheless, I decided to instigate the Great VSS Search. Armed with my ALLDATA®diy.com account and my swiss army knife, I set off into the bleak wilderness that is the apartment parking garage. As usual, getting the dashboard off was the tricky part (As usual, I was a complete wimp and didn't apply enough force). Once that was complete, I moseyed on over to the Driver Information Display region. On a higher-end Pontiac 2000 Grand Prix, this area would host a Trip Computer, which means it would need a VSS wire. My hope was that the cable would be there even though the unit was not. Alas, a stripped screw stymied my advance. Defeated, I decided to move on.
The next stop was the Body Control Module, which is located under the driver's side fuse box. Due to the cramped nature of the area, I decided to only use the BCM's VSS wire as a last resort.
Finally, I decided to check the wiring behind the dashboard information panel (the speedometer needs a VSS wire in order to calculate speed). Success! Not only was the VSS wire easy to locate, there is plenty of room to make the splice and hook in my own cable for the GPS unit.
Unfortunately, the sun was starting to plummet over the western mountains. I decided to call it a night and splice the wire tomorrow.
Some pictures of the wire: