Getting this installed next saturday...
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Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 265
From: California
Getting this installed next saturday...
http://www.al-eds.com/product.php?pr...cat=272&page=1
Giggidy.
Normally I'd tackle an installation like this myself, but the wiring harness just scared me...
And for 2 hours labor, I have it installed professionally and the work warrantied.
I'm going here to have the work done:
http://www.lotts.com/
A late merry Christmas to me!
Check next weekend for a review!
Giggidy.
Normally I'd tackle an installation like this myself, but the wiring harness just scared me...
And for 2 hours labor, I have it installed professionally and the work warrantied. I'm going here to have the work done:
http://www.lotts.com/
A late merry Christmas to me!
Check next weekend for a review!
Registered User
iTrader: (10)
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 2,498
From: Dublin, California
Car Info: 09 STi, 10 Cayman S
You know its really not that bad. I just got a wiring harness from bestbuy that was for subaru, and it had the harness at one end, and all of the stray wires at the other. I plugged the harness into the harness coming out of the car. And then I had to twist up and cap the loose wires from the subaru harness to the loose wires from the kenwood harness. At least I think thats how I did it, but it was something along those lines, and it was literally just matching colors. Super easy. Its really not as scary as you would think. Some places want a few hundred to install this stuff and its not worth it by any means.
Thread Starter
Registered User
Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 265
From: California
You know its really not that bad. I just got a wiring harness from bestbuy that was for subaru, and it had the harness at one end, and all of the stray wires at the other. I plugged the harness into the harness coming out of the car. And then I had to twist up and cap the loose wires from the subaru harness to the loose wires from the kenwood harness. At least I think thats how I did it, but it was something along those lines, and it was literally just matching colors. Super easy. Its really not as scary as you would think. Some places want a few hundred to install this stuff and its not worth it by any means.
They're charging me 2hrs labor to install it, with a vehicle lifetime warranty on their work...piece of mind alone is worth it to me.
I'm stoked! I'll take some pictures and give a first impression on Sunday!
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Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 265
From: California
Well I gotta say that this deck is pretty sweet, REALLY sweet as a matter of fact...
Very cool interface, fast...and the Full Speed iPod integration is awesome, you'd never even know that it was pulling the songs off the iPod it's so quick. The interface is just like the iPod in terms of playlists, artists, songs, etc... There is one annoying feature that I've found so far, and that's you can't simply go "Back" to the previous screen you were looking at in the iPod menu, you have to go all the way to the top. So, if you were listening to a song within a playlist, and wanted to play another song in that same playlist, you have to go all the way back to the top menu and find your way back to the song. I haven't confirmed 100% that this is true, but I haven't found a way to do it yet.
The Navigation is awesome, simple to use, and has some neat telemetry that it stores. Max measured speed, average speed, current speed, etc...I'm not sure of the accuracy, but I was eyeballing the current speed and comparing to my speedo, and it seemed pretty darn close. You can view the routes any number of different ways and it's pretty customizable.
The panel autodims and brightens depending on the ambient lighting conditions, and has a neat little feedback when you touch-select an option. The installer said that it's a little bit of electricity produced by the unit and sent into your finger. Kinda unnecessary, and you can turn it off if you want, but neat nonetheless.
It can also synch through bluetooth to your mobile phone. Originally, I didn't care too much about this feature, and almost told him to not even install the mic, but thought what the heck. It works great. Another minor irritant, the deck's features are pretty limited when you're on the phone... you can't eject a disc you were listening to, or much else.
One overall complaint, they weren't able to completely flush the deck, it sticks out of the dash about 1/4 inch. They said that it was due to the larger size because of the docking GPS feature, and the tilting feature of the screen. I'm not completely convinced that this is the case, and was thinking of taking it over to my friend's interior shop to see if he has any ideas. It's not a huge deal and I barely noticed after an hour or so in the car, but it doesn't look 100% clean like it came from the factory that way.
Overall, I give it a 8.8/10. Great, simple to use deck that's not overkill on the features, with a slick interface. Minus those annoyances that I discussed above, and it'd be just about perfect.
Don't know if anybody read the whole thing, but eh...it killed 15 minutes at the end of my shift at work
Very cool interface, fast...and the Full Speed iPod integration is awesome, you'd never even know that it was pulling the songs off the iPod it's so quick. The interface is just like the iPod in terms of playlists, artists, songs, etc... There is one annoying feature that I've found so far, and that's you can't simply go "Back" to the previous screen you were looking at in the iPod menu, you have to go all the way to the top. So, if you were listening to a song within a playlist, and wanted to play another song in that same playlist, you have to go all the way back to the top menu and find your way back to the song. I haven't confirmed 100% that this is true, but I haven't found a way to do it yet.
The Navigation is awesome, simple to use, and has some neat telemetry that it stores. Max measured speed, average speed, current speed, etc...I'm not sure of the accuracy, but I was eyeballing the current speed and comparing to my speedo, and it seemed pretty darn close. You can view the routes any number of different ways and it's pretty customizable.
The panel autodims and brightens depending on the ambient lighting conditions, and has a neat little feedback when you touch-select an option. The installer said that it's a little bit of electricity produced by the unit and sent into your finger. Kinda unnecessary, and you can turn it off if you want, but neat nonetheless.
It can also synch through bluetooth to your mobile phone. Originally, I didn't care too much about this feature, and almost told him to not even install the mic, but thought what the heck. It works great. Another minor irritant, the deck's features are pretty limited when you're on the phone... you can't eject a disc you were listening to, or much else.
One overall complaint, they weren't able to completely flush the deck, it sticks out of the dash about 1/4 inch. They said that it was due to the larger size because of the docking GPS feature, and the tilting feature of the screen. I'm not completely convinced that this is the case, and was thinking of taking it over to my friend's interior shop to see if he has any ideas. It's not a huge deal and I barely noticed after an hour or so in the car, but it doesn't look 100% clean like it came from the factory that way.
Overall, I give it a 8.8/10. Great, simple to use deck that's not overkill on the features, with a slick interface. Minus those annoyances that I discussed above, and it'd be just about perfect.
Don't know if anybody read the whole thing, but eh...it killed 15 minutes at the end of my shift at work
Thread Starter
Registered User
Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 265
From: California
haha, well considering it would have taken me 6hrs and probably shorting power to ground at some point and either killing myself, the deck, or the car's electrical system in the process, I consider it 150 bucks well spent 
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neillmatic
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Aug 22, 2005 04:14 PM