I can not for the life of me get the stock bose radio out of my FD. I made my own tool for releasing the spring clips and I stick it in there and push out and yank on it, and it comes out ever so slightly, and its now loose in the housing. both the CD player and radio. Except the CD player has no spring clips on the right side, and that also happens to be the side that wont come out on the CD player. ( I have the faces off the both of them right now) On the Radio I can nudge it out a bit so that its loose and i'm fairly sure the clips arent engaged, but it just will not come out. any tricks you guys know of for getting these suckers out? or how to at least remove the CD player since its where I'm trying to put my gauges. The radio I'm just trying to figure out why its not getting any power, but kind of hard to check for that when its in there.

 

lol...yank harder... If you used both clips on the sides. Then you just have to pull really freaking hard

 

make ur life easier by pulling the instrument cluster out and unscrew the piece around the cd player

 

Well I've already broken a few tabs. and I've pried on them with a screwdriver and the sucker is just not coming out. I'm going to pull out the surrouding piece tomorrow and see if I can get more leverage on it with one screwdriver on each side. My interior is a mess right now and its sad cuz I've only had this car for 8 days now. Simple stuff, is just never simple I guess.

 

Buy the tool at your local auto parts stored. Its the Ford / Mazda radio removal tool. Its $10-20. Read the instructions too. Much cheaper than replacing broken interior panels.

 

I may do just that if taking off the interior panels doesn't help. fortunatley the tabs I broke can be superglued back on.

As a second question, anyone have any idea why the radio wouldn't get power even though all the fuses are intact and presumably it is grounded? My horn buttons do not work either, so I wonder if it could be related to that somehow??

 

^^^^Where are you at? If you are local, I maybe able to help you. I know you bought the car in Everett area. I live about 1 mile from that place.
Maybe you can post pictures of the radio and people can see.

 

Hold it!
I did remove the stock bose stereo unit (and CD player).
The reason why they are not coming out is because they have a screw in the back hooked up to a metal brace that is part of the dash's substructure.
When I removed mine I was aware of this, but when I unlocked it with the "and made tool" and pulled, I was able to take the unit out because somebody sometime before I bought the car had gone through this and had never re-connected the rear screw.
As for how to get to it, I don't remember what I had read at that time. Having said that, I have recently installed a gauge style boost controller and I think that if you remove the little flat trim panel sitting right beside your right ankle/shin when seated at the driver side, you should be able to get decent clearance to attack that screw.

 

What about the cables attached to the back of the radio on the right side as you look at it?

 

Let us know what works for you. This is something I'm planning on doing relatively soon.