There are already some great pages out there on the web about how to install a stereo in the z32. This is not one of them, lol. These are some miscellaneous photos and possibly helpful tips from my stereo install. I was down to one functioning speaker on my OEM  Bose system. I wanted a replacement system that made use of all the stock "holes" for the speakers and head unit, and had some decent, clean power. Nothing too fancy, and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice any of the meager storage space we have in our cars.

Here's all the "stuff" sitting in my apartment, ready for the install:

Top row: Inifinity Kappa 2-way 6.5" speakers for the rear
Middle (L to R): Infinity Kappa Perfect component 6.5" speakers (with tweeters) for the front; Alpine CDA-9811 CD/MP3/WMA head unit
Bottom, on floor (L to R): 2 packs RCA StreetWires Low Noise cables; Infinity Reference 1030w 10" sub woofer, final price $9.99 after Internet misprint rebate which I did not install; OEM Nissan front speaker brackets to replace the Bose boxes in the doors, Rockford Fosgate 551X 70W X 4-channel amplifier, Rockford Fosgate CP8Pi amplifier wiring kit. Not shown are the Nissan wire harness, the Nissan antenna adapter, and a bunch of 16 gauge StreetWires speaker wire.

Cost of this system was right at one thousand bucks, shipped. Shopping around saved me a lot of money. Crutchfield's price on the head unit was as good as anyone's, especially when they threw in free shipping, the harness, the antenna adapter, some excellent written instructions, and lifetime tech support. Otherwise, I just went with whichever on-line vendor had the cheapest price, and I saved hundreds.

I drove over to Bernie's house in Alexandria, Virginia for some help and moral support.

The pile of junk is actually my car's interior pieces sitting in Bernie's garage.  The Vee-Dub in the background is history. 

Here is the rear hatch area with most of the trim pieces out - the red dot is over the windshield washer reservoir. The driver's side rear speaker box was sitting over the part of the wheel well marked by the yellow dot, but it has already been removed. The green dot is over the infamous Spiderman Super Wall Climber Kit, otherwise known as the headlight aiming tool kit that freaks noobs out when they stumble upon it. The Nissan bag contains the most important tool of all, a service manual.

Moving toward the front of the car, this is my trick for not losing the screw that goes through the outside door pillar, underneath the small, round, plastic garnish piece shown by the green arrow.  The round garnish piece pries off easily.  The screw underneath has to be removed to get the interior door trim off.

Simply make a little ramp out of some curled cardboard so if the screw falls at any point, it slides out. If it falls in between the body panels, it can be very difficult to retrieve. 

As you may notice, the screw in the photo is not stock because I lost that OEM screw-bolt in the body panels long ago, which is how I learned my lesson, lol.

I broke off one of the trim fastener posts that held the door panel in place with my usual delicate touch, during the removal. The white glue is original. The wet looking, clear stuff is the quick setting 2-part epoxy I used to fix it. Fascinating, isn’t it?

Here's Bernie helping me. By the time he got out of bed, I had the front and rear interior out and ready for the install, lol. Suffice it to say that he and I are on different biorhythms :c) His help, space and tools were invaluable. Thanks as always, Bernie.

After the door panels were removed, I finally figured out I could finger tighten the upper seat belt bolt on each door back into place. This accomplished two things: it kept the umpteen washers and spacers on that bolt from falling off and getting lost (mine fell apart and were rolling around a Home Depot parking lot) and it made the seat belt useable and legal for driving.

This photo shows the modification necessary to the OEM front speaker replacement brackets. The bracket on the left is for the driver's side.  The corner circled in green had to be cut out with a Dremel tool on both pieces, so that it would fit around some cables and wires already in the door. The bracket on the right has not been cut yet, for comparison.  The backs of the brackets are shown.  

This photo shows the same bracket installed, and why the cutout was necessary. Those cables and wires don't have anything to do with the stereo, but they do prevent the bracket from lying flush, unless you cut it. I used Dynamat insulation wherever there was metal touching metal on the back of the mounting bracket to eliminate any potential rattles or buzzes.

Clearance problems are very common when installing new rear speakers in the stock factory boxes. I went through the trouble to buy '90 speaker boxes because they have 6 1/2" round cutouts for the speakers. All the remaining z32 years used a much smaller, 3 1/2" round speaker in the back. However, even low profile aftermarket speakers can and will rub the trim piece that goes over them.

I found the easiest and cleanest solution was to take the tops off the boxes and put in a flat soundboard instead. This eliminated the port in the speaker top, but the aftermarket speakers were not designed to be ported anyway. Plus, you can cut whatever shape and size speaker hole you want in the board. This fix also makes having to obtain the '90 boxes a moot point, since you can do this mod to a rear speaker box from any year. The photo shows the old top to the speaker box. The bottom of the box with the new speaker and top can be seen installed in the car, in the background.

The crossover for this rear speaker was hidden under the interior body panel shown circled in green, and then in a close-up. The crossover was held in place with a single, plastic cable tie. I stuffed some poly-fill around it for padding and to prevent any rattles, for a nice, clean, tight, hidden installation.

Here are the wires leading to the rear speakers as they originally existed in the car, a '92 TT.   The wiring can be a little confusing since the OEM Bose speakers each had their own amplifier.  This meant there four wires going to each speaker.  There is a screwdriver under the speaker wires to isolate them for the photo. The speaker wires were white with a green stripe, and brown with a white stripe. They were also noticeably smaller in diameter than the remaining two wires in the bundle that went to the amplifier.  The colors of the amplifier wires can be seen under the screwdriver as solid brown for one wire, and green with a white stripe for the other wire.  You do not use those.

The wires are shown plugged into a clip that came with the '90 speaker boxes. The blue part of the clip (the car side) had to be shaved slightly with a Dremel in order to fit into the white part of the clip (the speaker box side).

Of course, you can cut off the blue and white connectore shown in the photo above and splice directly into the proper colored wires.  The speaker wires that came with the '90 boxes were blue with a yellow stripe, and brown with a blue stripe. The amplifier wires were solid dark brown, and solid orange, and are shown taped off.

The next two photos show a neat little feature of the rear speakers. The tweeters were angled, and could be aimed by simply turning them. They had a built in ratcheting, swivel mechanism. I did the obvious and aimed the toward the front.

Here's a little piece I had sitting on the shelf for awhile. Seemed like a good time to throw it in, since the rear strut towers were staring me in the face :c)

This photo shows the front passenger side, seat removed, door panel removed, and center console removed. The new, front speaker bracket is in place and the amplifier is sitting in its new home, to be hidden under the passenger seat. I'm trying to figure out where to put the front crossovers. The amplifier came with endcaps that I did not use since it made the amp quite a bit wider. Without the endcaps, the size of the amp was H=2.358", D=9.847", W=9.766", and it fit nicely under the passenger seat. With the endcaps, the unit was aprox 2 ¼” wider, or longer since I had the ends pointed toward the front and back of the car.

Just in front of the amp, the power cable from the battery and the wires from the head unit can be seen exiting the carpet. That hole in the carpet was already there. If you look at the gearshift plate, bottom right bolt, that is where the ground wire from the amp is connected. The RCA cables exit the back of the amp, go under the panel that is behind the passenger seat back, then up through the center console between the seats to get to the head unit.

The thin, straight metal rod in the above photo, between the amplifier and door sill, is a flexible grabbing tool that made snaking wires under the carpet much, much easier. In fact, I did not have to lift any carpet or cut any holes thanks in large part to this tool. Here is a close-up of the working end of that tool. The tool is a few feet long, bends, and has a plunger on the other side that works the "claw" shown. Worth the few bucks it costs at Sears or any auto parts store.

The crossovers to the front speakers had removable lids.

I tried everywhere but I couldn't get the door panels to reinstall properly with the crossovers mounted behind them. The crossovers were too thick. I was thinking of hiding the crossovers elsewhere in the cabin, but they are supposed to stay as close to the speakers as possible. So I mounted them with their lids removed, "open face" against the door. The pic shows the green back of the crossover to the right, and the new speaker and bracket to the left in the passenger door. 

Since they were not water tight even with their lids on, and they are flush up against the plastic, I'm hoping that this still gives them all the protection they need from the elements.

Here are the front tweeters. Notice that I have them angled so that they are pointed straight at the driver's ears. These tweeters could be swiveled within their mounting brackets, which was a great feature. At first, I installed them just pointing straight out from their holes. Aiming them in the way shown made them sound noticeably better.

driver's side door open, side view, front of car to right

view from the driver's seat with the door closed

the passenger side tweeter, view from the driver's seat

I opted not to go for the "stealth" install with the tweeters behind the vents after trying it that way first, and talking to quite a few experts. The high notes from the tweeters are directional, and are effected very much by the objects around them, or in the case of the A/C vents, in front of them. The high sounds are literally the opposite situation of the low frequencies from a subwoofer, which are omnidirectional. A sub can be placed almost anywhere within the listening environment and the sound quality does not suffer appreciably. Tweeters should have a clear sound path to your ears.

Nice, clean, tight, install of the head unit (HU), thanks to Bernie modifying the mounting brackets with new screw holes, so that the face plate was flush with the DIN opening.

My Carbing rear strut bar installed with the hatch trim back in place. The "layer" between the cut out in the trim and the bar is the soundproofing material that was glued to the underside of the trim piece. I removed it, flipped it over, and folded it back onto itself to fill the hole, help with the sound insulation, and pad the bar a bit. I like the finished look it gave the install, too.

I'm very happy with the sound from my new stereo, although just like the car in general, I got used to the new amplifier pretty fast, and am already wishing for more power ;c)