Well I ended up picking up that Pioneer Head-Unit for the Forrester. Its a Pioneer DEH-P4650MP that Sounds rather good.. (in the USA its known as the DEH-P4600MP, because of the different FM Tuning Set.)
After they had arrived (Both Hannah’s and my-own), the next hurdle that we had to overcome was their installation! Now it is seriously easier in some car’s than in other’s but we decided to steam on ahead anyway.
Friday afternoon was my first attempt trying to get to the cavity in my Subaru. It looks hard, and let me tell you it took a little while to work out exactly how you are supost to remove certain panels, however i eventualy succeeded in removing enough trim for me to gain access to the screws holding the DIN Cage in place.
On the Internet there is little to no information on how to actually go about removing panels to get to the head unit, but now that i know how to do it, it would be a simple process to do it again.
The next hurdle after getting the old unit out is what to do with the existing wireing. Basicly every car manefacturer has their own plug that only works with their headunits. There are basicly 2 main options that you have.
1. Cut of the manufacturer’s plug and solder or crimp on a new connector for the head unit, in this case the one suplied by Pioneer for their deck.
or
2. Go down to an auto store like autobarn and ask in the store for a Wireing Harness. Basicly its an adaptor that converts from the Car Manufacturer’s connector to the ISO Standard Plug. and then a second one that converts from this ISO Standred connector to the Head-Unit manufacturer’s Unit.
By the By, Option 2 is the easier option, and its the one that I took! The connectors I eventualy picked up were made by AerPro, specificly model numbers APP090 and APP8PIO.
After all that, it was just a matter of screwing the unit into the cage and re-assembling the dash of the 1998 Forrester, somthing made quite easy by Subaru’s use of snap-click metal pop in tabs.
The next day and it was onto the 1998 Peugeot 306 which, after we worked out how to get old unit out of the dash was quite an easy install. Once again purchasing an AerPro adapter, this time however only having to get an APP8PIO because Peugeot, in their wisdom use the ISO Standard plug config in their cars! (Nice move Guys.) We did also however have to buy an aerial adapter, to convert from the European aerial plug to the USA/Japanese plug.
Once we had the conectors it was just a matter of sliding in the metal suround and then sloting in the actual head-unit. Much easier to install that in the Subaru, however an easy install also means that its easier for a theif to remove, not something that I really want to happen, but we all know does happen all to often.
Well thats all from me atm. Catch.
