First, knowing the car and its stereo pretty well by now, I was aware that any advertised plug and play replacement was unlikely to be, so when I ordered the unit I was prepared for a longer project , also limited Covid access to a proper place to actually work on the car in the winter.
When I received the unit, I first set out to test its functionality in the car and the practical limits of the installation. I wanted to stay away from cutting and splicing anything on the side of the car.
I am not including guides on how to remove the radio and navigation, there are many on this forum.
Some of the issues I had when the unit first arrived:
- Car harness with wrong plug, claimed to be a Nissan Kenwood
- The antenna plug on that harness was also wrong, and short (!)
This particular provider was helpful and quick to respond and sent a new harness with the correct plugs (took about 3 weeks) this harness had its own issues
- With no aerial plug, In the end I opted to use the originally supplied Nissan plug and reused one of the stereo connectors on my car connected to the RDS/Traffic unit for the factory navigation.
- Short antenna cable even with the new plug the cable was short I bought a standard extension cable problem solved
- No antenna power, there is antenna power on the side of the harness head unit (blue) but it was not connected to the car connector, I reused an old ISO parrot link adapter I had for my previous installation, on this way I was able to use the official plug and only had to extend the cable through the solder in the harness
- No lighting on the old head unit, although the harness has a ring connector to connect the original stereo (to use the CD changer) the unit’s rear light did not work, this was due to a missing wire, see picture below, the white wire is saved from the same ISO connector mentioned above
The white wire is to add lighting to the old radio, above the yellow wire you see a free spot, this is where the antenna power will go, which is in the supplied harness.
This basically results in a usable harness, the new Android unit has power, responds to the light switch and connects to the speakers via the car plug, the old stereo has all its buttons illuminated and the CD changer can used, the speaker lines of the old radio can be routed as one line to the new head unit. and all this plug and play.
Everything worked except the steering wheel buttons (which I knew from reading the forum would be another task).
The steering wheel button wires are not on the big white car harness from Subaru, but on the smaller black connector which also has all the Satnav controls, the wires controlled by the steering wheel button are the ‘satellite’ wires that they confused me initially because of the satnav. As explained in this video,
you will have to disconnect the switches from the car wiring, the video made the connection, but as said before, I don’t like the idea.
The harness supplied with the unit has 2 extra loose wires, switch1 and switch2.
The manufacturer claimed that by attaching these wires to my disconnected wires from the steering wheel, everything should work. Unfortunately this didn’t help, I did all the experiments with temporary clamps and soldered wires to the wiring harness, in the end I used the damaged Nissan plug as a donor test plug.
After some research I came across this site: CIDRAM and decided to try the method here, ground 1 of the 2 wires from the steering wheel and connect the other to ‘key1’ this actually worked! I can ‘teach’ the keys to the Android unit as explained in the manual.
If your car has a stero with CANBUS steering wheel buttons this may not work but I think gen3 cars don’t have this.
I then disconnected the pins from the connector on the side of the steering wheel and with some connectors lying around I made a new connector for the new HU, I connected one of the wires to the steering column and the other through a connector to ‘switch1’ ( I don’t have a picture of this yet, as soon as I have time I’ll get one and add it to the thread)
As a result, I had a completely plug and play harness for the head unit, which made the unit work as designed and integrate nicely with the car.
Second, now that the unit was working and plugged in, it needed to be installed, the supplied vent frame replacement fits ‘right’ and you’ll need to transfer some of the tunnels attached to the original frame to the new one, to the the side of the car fits nicely and although it’s not exactly the same style, I’d say it’s pretty good.
I removed the old satnav and redundant cable extensions from the car, it saves a ton of space and you don’t need the cables anymore.
I put all the usb connectors into my ashtray location so I can plug a phone in there, the antennas are on the passenger side behind the center console trim, the manual said to put them in view but so far the all have excellent reception, the Simcard holder is also down on that side, so by pinching my finger between the console trim and the mat, I can pull it down and replace the SIM.
[ I also installed amplifier under the right front seat and a subwoofer in the trunk, but that is easy to wire up with this head-unit so I won’t describe that here ]
You need to install the new unit first by following the installation procedure and route the wires to the old stereo location, then click on the old stereo assembly everything and close the console.
You are ready to go!
So what’s missing?? The original satnav has several screens with car details, interior light control, trip details and fuel consumption information. These features are gone with the new install, especially the fuel consumption (remaining tank) is a feature I miss. Some of the other parts can be replaced using an obd2 bluetooth dongle with an app on the HU, this actually gives you more detailed information apart from the ride/tank info, this is still something I would like to add .
The Android head unit has a number of options, setting the logo, changing the button color (to match the Subaru red) installing apps etc., but that’s beyond this guide and more about personal preference, out of the box , offers everything. you will need, FM/AM Radio (No DAB+), bluetooth music, USB music and various Maps apps.
One option that is still on my list is to test the ‘reloaded head unit’ which makes the unit work like a proper Android Auto unit.
Let me know if something is missing or unclear
