The last 3 photos have also indicated the path that my rear view camera wires ran as they went to the front of the car. I used a combination of a coat hanger and some string to route the wires under all the carpet and trim pieces. Maybe 30 minutes to do this. You also need to route your Reverse Sense wire with the camera wires. It connects to a wire in the tail light. You can find that particular wire in
someone else’s install.
Lastly, you will need to remove the fuse box cover and carpet so you can route the wires behind that. Now you will have your wires at the front of the car.
I did not want the GPS and XM antennas exposed so I decided to mount them underneath the windshield wiper cowl. Remove the battery cover and take off the two plastic pieces beside it. Remove the battery. There is a flat metal area next to the cabin air filter. The antennas are magnetic, so I stuck them there. Then I routed the wires to my right trying to avoid running the wires over anything that might rub or abrade the wires.
There is a rubber grommet behind the battery.
There is nothing on the other side of this grommet that you could damage unless you tried to push a crowbar through it. Just make a little hole and you can run the antenna connection through here and you will be directly behind the stereo. Others have used the grommet near the clutch pedal, but there are so many wires going through there that I did not feel comfortable trying to cut through this grommet for my new wires.
Now for the iPod wire, I wanted to put it in the glove box in the useless CD holder thingy. So you need to take out the glove box. Start by opening it and then underneath, there will be 2 silver screws that hold the cup holder contraption in place. These are a bitch to get out. I believe they are #25 hex screws but it is very difficult work a screwdriver in there. I ended up sticking the hex screw bit up there and turning it with a pair of pliers. Once you pull that out, you can start removing all the screws that hold the glove box in. There are probably 12 or more. I think you have to pop out a little piece of trim on the right end of the dashboard. Once it comes out, there are a couple of electrical connections you can undo so that you can work freely on the glovebox. There are 2 screws holding the CD holder in place. Once it is out, there are little “releases” on the side to pop out the things that actually hold the CD’s. Then you are left with a couple of springs in the bottom of this “cassette”. I just pulled them out with a pair of needle nose pliers. Drill a hold in the back of the cassette and run your iPod cable through. Reinstall.
I stuck the Bluetooth module behind the A/C control unit and I put the XM module up in a pocket that is located in the upper right hand side of the passenger footwell. The wires that connect all these things together were just tucked behind the carpet.
Now to the actual stereo. I HIGHLY recommend both the trim package and the canbus package from ebay. If you order, ask them for an invoice and they will combine shipping saving you $35. The directions will come in Japanese.
Gogoallen had these translated in one of his posts. Basically, you just need to match the colors of the install kit wiring harness to the colors of the wires for the Avic wiring harness. They all match up. I believe there was an error in gogoallens translation of the canbus harness. I did not follow it exactly. I just kept matching up wire colors and I think I did not use 1 of the wires on the canbus harness.
Now you need to get your old stereo out.
Follow K-man’s article on the PCM install. There are 4 black bolts that hold the stereo in. K-man talks about a very difficult method or turning them and holding down some lever at the same time and made it a 2 person job. Just simply turn them with an allen wrench and the stereo will be loose. Simply connect the Avic’s wiring harness with the wiring harness in the car, and connect your antenna’s and iPod cable and you are done. Turn on the car and make sure everything works. If it works, you need to push the stereo into the dash. This is difficult because there are now so many wires. The ebay kit will come with a mounting bracket. Attach this to the Avic and start sliding it in. It will be VERY tight. You will need to kind of reach around back and work some of the wires down and out of the way so you can get the stereo all the way in. Slap on your trim piece and reinstall everything and you are done.
I did this over the course of two weekends. The ebay kits cost over $500 and I probably could have had it installed professionally for that amount. But, there are no splices into the factory wiring behind the dash and everything can be uninstalled just by unsnapping the wiring harnesses. I would think that an installer would just splice everything together. I also think that the trim piece you get from ebay is nicer than what most installers would fabricate just by looking at some of the other installs I have seen on the board.
I find the Avic D3 to be a nice piece of kit and well worth the money. There are however 2 things you should know about the products that I purchased. The Avic (and all current pioneer units) populate their phonebooks via Bluetooth from your phone. Some phones may not have the appropriate Bluetooth profiles to accomplish this (like my iPhone). So you think, “No Biggy, I don’t have that many numbers I need so I will just manually input them”. Well, not so fast. There is NO way to do this. You can input 6 “speed dial” numbers (without the associated names) and that is it. All other numbers you will need to manually dial from the Avic or your phone. And when someone calls you, the caller id number will show up, but not the name even though you have them stored in your phone. I think this is a HUGE oversight on Pioneers part.
The other thing is my review camera unit. There is a lead from the actual camera unit (short) and an extension lead that routes to the front of the car (long). You connect these two together. The wires are tiny (24g?) and the connectors are too. The connection WILL fail. Very flimsy. The manufacturer said they did this so you would not have to drill large holes in your bumper. Instead of using the supplied connectors, cut them off and splice the wires together.
Head over to Avic411.com for lots of info on the Pioneer Avic units and also for information on how to
bypass the "safety" features built in to this stereo.
A lot of this is from memory but I have tried to be as accurate as possible. I hope this helps some of you wanting to do the same thing.
Jay
