Hey everyone, I just bought a 1998 Honda Civic SI (EX in the US) and it has a Checkmate KD-200PC (by KDI) alarm system installed in it. It also has the stock radio and cd player (separate units) installed. I want to change this to my sony deck (and completely remove the stock cd unit) but don't want to mess up the alarm system. I have the installation instructions and it doesn't seem as though the alarm is connected to the radio in any way, but I just want to make sure so that I don't end up with a noisy mess. If you have any knowledge of this system or know car alarm systems in general, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

 

i dont know alot about car alarm systems, but i am pretty good with car audio. I have hooked up alot of head units and many of them on cars that have had alarms and there has never been a connection between the two. So I think that you should be fine with just following the instructions to install it. which is pretty easy you just take the color wire from the head unit and attach it to the same color wire in the wiring harness. (eg. take the purlple wire with a black line on it from the head unit, and attach it to the purple wire with a black line on it in the wiring harness)
hope this was helpful

 

Thanks man, that's awesome!

 

The aftermarket alarm should have nothing to do with the stock radio. But I think on those the dome light is controlled thru the stock radio. When you go to an aftermarket radio you need to splice two wires to bypass that so the dome light will again come on when you open the door. Instructions are posted somewhere on this site.

 

I dont think this is always the case. Because i have never ran in to this problem. And I have installed hu's for awhile. But i do know that it is possible, just not always.

 

I thought it was the '96 to '00 models that did that, but no direct experience with it. Anyway if you unplug the stock HU and the dome light quits working you have one of them.

 

Hey everyone, thanks for all your help. Installing the stereo wasn't too much of a problem, the only problem with the alarm was that it went off as soon as i reconnected the battery terminals again, which just required theReset sequence to be entered and everything was fine. I did also run into the dome light problem which was easily remedied using past posts on this website (just used a jumped cable, didn't even need to cut or splice). The system is sounding great, and everything seems to be working still, thanks again!