they offer free fitting on stereos
the guy at halfrauds had a look in my car to see what connectors i need... it was all in wires which had been cut and tied.

He tells me they cant do the job.. it has to be in a connector which is ready to plug in. only then can they fit the stereo... basically they charge u to connect them to the ready-made harness stupid c|_|nts...

even i can do that job... bt i havent got enough time and it gets dark by the time i am free

 

When I bought a headlight bulb the other day I was offered fitting. They charge for that obviously, with it being a big job.

 

Headlight fitting not too bad going on the Fifth Gear (i think) report it took over an hour to do on a Megane!

Knew that was the case with the stereos though. Wouldn't want someone like that pulling my dash apart and breaking lugs etc.

5t.

 

I don't blame them really underworld. I've seen some really crazy stereo wiring in my time. You have to remember that the general public are thick. Just imagine the sort of wiring nightmares they'd get given. The customer would expect a 10 minute job, but it could take a long time if some monkey has buggered about with it.
Anyone that cuts the standard loom to fit a stereo should be shot.

 

I think I'd rather get bummed than let a daft teenager from Halfrauds near my pride and joy!!

G

 

Neelesh... the you don't have to cut the wires or anything like that. You need this connector ( Subaru Impreza CD/Radio ISO Wiring Harness Adaptor Lead on eBay, also, Terminals Cabling, In-Car Entertainment GPS, Cars, Parts Vehicles (end time 19-Jan-09 20:41:52 GMT) ) Just connect your stereo iso lead to the lead then the other side to the connector attached to the car. Works fine like that. No need to cut wire

 

I wouldnt let touch my car either, They snapped a door card corner on my MK2 16v golf.
Everytime you go near Halfrauds in my town now the little tent thing you park under to get work done is mobbed by clearasil dodging cloned haircutted, replace TH with F on allmost every possible word, youffs.

I use Home Page now. No way I could let the saturday boy break another one of my cars.

 

I've put loads of radios in cars and friends cars over the yrs. the amount of dead/spare rubbish wiring under dashs is staggering.

esp with old cars where people once had fogs, but have removed them, CB radios, seperate amps/graphic equalisers etc.


must admit you can fit a radio in the dark- prob find yr car has an interior light which comes in handy

 

Have a closer look at it. Whilst it's possible that someone's cut the ISO lead off, maybe they hacked in a loom adapter.

It's not terminal anyway. Assuming you can get enough slack in the leads, fit a new ISO plug/socket. Shouldn't take more than an hour, I'd have thought.

J.

 

when i was a teen, i took my car to halfords to have an amp wireing kit fitted. anyway the ***** wired it so the fuse for the power cable was in the boot. when i went down a proper audio place, they told me so i wrote a letter and got 150 from halfords.

 

Those halfrauds tents make me cringe. I pity the fool that lets a halfrauds employee loose on their car bodywork

 

I use to work at halfrauds years ago, we had a really good guy on the ripoff speed department and he would quite happily wire in a stereo with the loom cut off

 

Been there and done that. Not quite an hour, but the Megane bulbs are behind a round cover which is inside the wheelarch, and you need the dexterity of a prostate doctor to change the damn thing.

 

OP

Wire in a little connector block and let them sort the rest out.

 

After youve wired-in an ISO connector I cant image that theres a deal to sort out (beyond plugging it in and sliding it in).

 

they charge £20 . . Cant they do a 1hour job? Or 2. . That cmes up to £10an hour. . That means £20 for a 10min job.. Just do the harness and thats it. . Lol . .

 

 

To be honest anyone who chops off the OE connector when fitting a new radio is a fool.

Its easy just to splice into the wires in the loom feeding up to the connector, so the OE connector remains and the OE radio can be easily refitted (or aftermarket radio with a DIN adapter to the model specific connector), by just cutting off the new wires, insulating them and re-using the OE connector.


Failing that just splice in a set of DIN connectors off the loom upto the OE connector, so it has both DIN and factory OE connectors. For the sakes of £3 or free if you rip the connectors out of an old Vauxhall or Renault in a scrap yard.

Or am I talking too much common sense?

 

Precisely. If you can wire the connector in you don't need one of those numb nuts to do the rest.

 

After spending what was probably nearly an hour changing both the dipped bulbs on my missus Mitsi Colt it did almost seem worth it to get the Halfrauds monkeys to do it. However if I struggled I would almost expect them to **** it up completely so I probably did the right thing.

To get to the dipped bulb you go up through the wheel arch through a flap they kindly provide, then fumble around in the back of the headlight for ages trying to get the stupid bulb to seat properly as you can't actually see what you are trying to do

I had grazed knuckles after

 

lol my 10YO brother knows the main fuse gotta be nearest to the battery

 

I think there are clubs you can go to that cater for that sort of thing, you don't need to hang around Halfords

I took my 3-series down for a new stereo and the bloke told me the loom had been cut at some point and was a mess, but that if I bought another connector (about £3) he'd put it all back together if I left the car for a couple of hours, then he'd fit the new stereo.
All for free.

No complaints from me.

But you have to take into consideration most people work at Halfords because they didn't try hard enough at school and can't get a proper job, so you're hardly likely to get WRC technicians.

 

Youve titled the thread 'Halfrauds Dumbness': but I have to ask what exactly yuo expected for the small fee? I think that your expectations were far from reasonable.

 

It is quite the opposite I think, most of the lads in there are either in college doing A levels or in Uni doing Degree courses, hence why most don't care as it is just beer money for them.

 

They'll do it if they can fit a connector block cause you cant fek the job up. They wont allow employees, no matter how competent they think they are, to mess with cut wires incase they wire it up wrong etc... Its not in their job description to be messing around with Multimeters etc... I can fully understand why they wouldnt do it, PITA at the best of times.

 

true, I worked there while doing A levels. you got a discount there and at Boots - which pleased my mum!

 

I dont blame him!

Cut and shut wiring could cause an electrical fire, and if it did you'd blame halford in heartbeat.

 

Been there; I did a beer-money job to fit a Parrot Bluetooth into mate of a mate's pickup truck.

Its basically plug and play via the DIN connectors, the truck had a Sony aftermarket radio. So I thought cool, will already have a DIN adapter, so its a 10min job.

Upon my horror I found the radio had been wired in by Mr Bodgit by chopping off the OE connector and crimped on a load of uninsulated blade connectors, all shoved in the socket on the back of the radio - of which most pulled out when I removed the radio; With the permanent live wire dropping down behind the dash and shorting out on the bracing tubes, blowing the fuse.

So what was a 10min job turned into a hour whilst I made the wiring good and safe, rummaging round to find some DIN connectors to wire in, find/replace relevant blown fuse, test and find each relevant wire (power, lights, speakers etc). Solder them, insulate, test...and THEN fit the bluetooth.


It wasn't worth the beer.

 

The modern way to play with the wires is to fit an adapter/extender loom from the likes of autoleads, then bodge that. At least that way the original wiring and connectors are untouched.

J.