Moke America (Electric Moke) Stereo Upgrade

[Moke]

There's very little info on head unit (radio) upgrades for the Moke America so here goes.

First, I have quite a bit of experience with custom car audio and no problem cutting harnesses and trim bits. I ran a custom shop for a few years in the late 90's.

This upgrade was incredibly easy but, if you screw something up trying to follow this, don't blame me.

I love the Moke so far but the Bluetooth option is, IMO, an absolute rip-off. The JSD 8808 (aka SWM 8808) radio that came with it is available on AliExpress for $9. The speakers are CCRY CS600's at $34/pair. The first day I had it, one of the buttons pressed in and stayed there. Broken already. The remote was missing. The Bluetooth connection worked for a minute and then never again. The sound is dismal. The button layout is moronic. It loses station presets and all other memory when you kill the Moke's power The display is invisible in the sun. The FM tuner stinks. There is nothing redeeming about this "upgrade" and I'm being generous with that assessment.

If this was an upgrade, how bad does the base system have to be?

The upgrade was $600 for $43 of complete garbage. Cruise Car ought to hang their heads in shame for this.

To make matters worse, when I called them to get some information on the wiring harness, the guy said, "I don't know, we use a few different models and the Bose is the only one I'm a little familiar with". Uh, what he meant to say is Boss and Boss is not Bose. Boss is flea-market quality. Slight step up from the junk I got but stop calling it Bose.

Rant over. Suffice it to say, it all needs to get replaced and Moke America wasn't helpful.

You absolutely should not have to call a pro for this one. If you have basic wire cutting skills and a few common tools, you should be able to do this.

This will be a story in multiple parts...

[Moke]

Step 1 Panel Removal

The trim panel is very easy to remove without damage. It's so easy that you can probably get away with using any soft flat piece of plastic and some blue painter's tape to protect the paint on the dash as you pry under the edge of the panel. You may even be able to use your fingers on this one. If not, grab a trim removal kit.

Credit to Moke for using metal clips here and fairly robust plastic. This panel can be removed and replaced multiple times without breaking.

Speakers are easily removed with the pick tools that come with the trim removal kit. You could alternately use a paper clip. Just don't punch a hole in the speaker. Duh.

Remove the grill from the woofer and then unscrew the four screws to take it out.

For the tweeter, just pry the tweeter out of the plastic basket. The basket is then held on place with 1 screw and a nut.

[Moke]

Step 2 What Fits?

This is a single DIN head unit but it's not exactly standard so you'll need to make sure your new radio will fit.

Trim panel opening w x h

Cavity behind trim panel (max head unit dimensions) w x h x d

Woofer opening 5 5/8" diameter x 6"depth. Mounting holes are 4 1/4" on-center apart

Tweeter opening 1 7/8" diameter x 3/4" depth

Note, crossover is mounted behind the woofer with double-stick tape. This will need to be removed or replaced when speakers are changed.

(Post is still a work in progress)

[Moke]

Edit from above (editing timed out).

Trim panel opening 7" w x 2" h - could be modified but you will need to rework the entire trim panel - a lot of work.

Cavity behind trim panel (max head unit dimensions) 7 1/8" w x ~6" h x 5 5/8" d

Width can be increased to 8 1/4" by cutting the mount tabs ( bad idea). Depth can be increased by about 3/4" by cutting the metal at the back of the opening (that metal is there to support/protect the factory wiring harness so, again, bad idea).

Long story short, use a single din radio with less than 5 5/8" depth including any wiring harness that plugs in the back on the left side.

[Moke]

Inside of the factory BT radio. This is painfully cheap design.

[Moke]

I'm at the beach so I want a marine radio and I'm depth limited so the two I found are a 4" deep Kenwood and a 5" deep Fusion (Garmin).

The Kenwood is probably okay for someone looking for a radio that's easier to use and just better than the factory radio. I don't think I'd trust it for long at the beach.

The Fusion has sub outs, decent power, a nice display, and a Bluetooth app that looks okay. It's also IPX7 rated (front panel) . I've seen their radios last years on boats in salt water. Also important, it's supposed to retain programming and settings when the Moke's power plunger is off. Fusion it is.

[Moke]

Ready for install.

Quick connects are admittedly not the best but they're reliable and they make future work easier.

Voltage meter can be skipped if you already know which wire provides power. Unfortunately, Moke removed the factory radio's wiring diagram sticker and the wiring does not match the few diagrams I found online.

Nut driver is 5/16".

Will also need some zip ties or Tesa tape to clean up the wiring (not shown).

[Moke]

Take pictures of the wiring harnesses for the buttons and the backup camera so they can go back to the same place.

Remove the factory radio.

There are now 2 wire harnesses and an antenna cable. Could be different for other Moke radios?

The harness with the stripped wires is power & ground. The harness with solid wires is for speakers.

[Moke]

White wire with purple was 12volt power. Black was ground.

Other 2 wires were unused for this install.

Speakers are:
Left + red
Left - green
Right + yellow
Right - blue

Other Mokes may have different wiring so double-check it. You can look at the back of the speaker or on the crossover for wire polarity.

[Moke]

Speaker wire polarity check

Pick the cover off, remove screws, look at crossover inputs.

Use two hands on the screwdriver and avoid using a drill. Don't slip and punch holes in those sweet CCRY's.