Hey Folks,

So I wanted to get BT audio in my car and also wanted to upgrade the amps, speakers, etc.
I did a bit of a kluge job for the moment but will be circling back to clean it all up and get it all pretty but I wanted to let those that are wanting BT audio and do not want to change the stock stereo in on what I did to get around it.

I don't care about the stock stereo as I exclusively only ever use media from my phone and if I did really want some form of radio, there are apps for that. If you are reading this, I am assuming you don't care either.

So I bought myself a couple of aftermarket amps and also one of those free-standing BT adapters that can be powered from USB and also a USB to 12V socket adapter.
I also installed some new speakers in the rear quarter areas (coaxial) but that's for a deeper stereo discussion. I ran new speaker wire to those but tapped into the original speaker wire in the car to get power to the front speakers. Bit of a challenge finding the proper wiring schematics for that but I did figure it out.

So at this juncture, I have all the speakers wired to new amplifiers and powered via a small fused panel I also purchased online. The amps are fed of course by the freestanding USB device which works flawlessly. So that was all pretty straightforward for me. The only conundrum I faced was turning the amps on and off and I was contemplating installing a power switch from the center console to the trunk to trigger the 12V relay to turn the amps on and off. The potential here of course is forgetting to do so and coming out to a car with a dead battery. The factory amplifier and CD changer were pulled and discarded and then I realized what else could be binned and that was the horrible power antenna that is so butt ugly when it is up, I had finally disconnected it. My little eureka moment was when I realized that there is a 12V trigger wire to the antenna that is fed from the head unit of the stereo and since I didn't care about the antenna going up or down anymore, I harvested that trigger wire and used it to become the new trigger fro the amplifiers in the trunk. It works flawlessly and now the amps turn on and off with the stereo whether manually through the power button on the head unit or simply keying off or on the car. I don't have the wire color for you at the moment but that should be easy enough for anyone to figure out.

So basically, the head unit of the car is now simply a glorified power button for the aftermarket kit I installed.
Hoping that this little gem is useful to others who simply want to grab audio from their phones as opposed to the head unit but it only applies to those who are installing aftermarket amps. There are plenty of other posts on the forum for those wishing to plum BT into the cars existing stereo amplifier setup but I think this is just way too much trouble to get audio into what is a low power, kinda crappy amp anyway. Once I finish the entire install, I will post some pics and also some wiring diagrams on how I did the entire thing.

I also plummed power for the BT device from the rear area too. I was originally tied into the same 12V trigger to power the BT via the USB to 12V adapter but that took too long each time I powered up the stereo as the BT lost pairing each time and it was just a hassle waiting for things to boot. I decided that the current draw for that little BT adapter was very small and decided to leave the thing powered up all of the time. So far, I have left the car for an entire week of sitting and the battery doesn't even notice the draw so I am good with it.