Also forgot to mention. Someone asked about the screen. The screen is very good. It's well visible in direct sunlight as well as in the shadows.

 

Nice write up. My car has most so I need to remove the bose amp and head unit. will be installing a kenwood nav and JL audio amps next weekend once everyting arrives. I looked up Rod Birsch from Car Audio Innovations. He is hsipping everyting I need in one box.. Can't wait.

How long would your install have taken had you not waisted time on the Kenwood trim and the rear view camera install?

 

Overall the install wasn't too bad. I would say a day to do it if everything goes well. You have to splice into the Bose amp harness to get to the speaker wires and the battery is up front so it shouldn't be bad for you.

Don't bother with the Kenwood trim piece (get the premade one on ebay) and skip the backup camera and it can be a really quick job. If your stock setup has the AC controls on top and a storage bin just under the AC control, there is a plastic trim that separates the top DIN and bottom DIN that needs to be cut and you have to shave off some of the sides of this plastic trim to make the double DIN headunit go in. Trimming this plastic piece can be time consuming too. I used a Drummel.

Good luck and take some photos!
Paul

 

Did you need anything else besides the harness? Did you have to get an radio antenna adapter?

Edwin

 

Sorry if I forgot to mention the antenna adapter. This is what I got:
http://www.installer.com/item/displa...php?it=40-vw10

You can get this from any best buy car install place for about $15.

Paul

 

I got my radio in yesterday and am going to tackle this project soon One question... you said you spliced in the Bose amp to get to the speaker wires. What does that mean? Do you have a pic of it?

Edwin

 

Paul,

I'm confused. I don't have BOSE or MOST but the shop I went to told me to get this 70-1847 harness. Did I get the wrong thing? He said I needed to get the 1847 if I had a amp in the car. Not sure what to think

Edwin

 

Good stuff, thanks for the pics... gives on a few ideas.

 

Hi Ed,

Send me an email or PM.

You may need to pull out your radio and see what the connector looks like on the back of the radio and the harness in the car. There may be a difference in the Bose vs Non-Bose. If you get a chance to pull out the factory radio and take a picture of it and the harness and I may be able to help you with the harness. There is no splicing of the car radio harness to get to the speaker wires. It's all plug and play - crimp/solder the new radio wires to the aftermarket harness. Then you just plug the aftermarket harness into the car radio harness.

Let me know if you have more questions.
Paul
paulthai@comcast.net

 

Paul, thank you for going to the effort to create this excellent thread. +Rep for you. I was just looking at this Kenwood unit the other day. I liked the features and the ability to choose amber lighting. I prefer the round volume **** compared to the push buttons on the higher end units. It's a shame to find out that the bluetooth is not very useful, but the other features still make it a good choice for me. My car is an '01 with factory NAV/PCM so I will add any tips whenever I get it done.

 

Thanks,
I have to say now after using the Kenwood unit for a few months that it still is a pretty good unit. I like the ability to match the Porsche's amber lighting. Sound quality is very good. The bluetooth is fairly good but there is so much ambient noise (from the engine, tires wind noise) that I think people still stay it's sometimes hard to hear me on the speaker phone. The alpine bluetooth unit was completely not understandable.

The other thing is with the touch screen, it's hard to find the buttons on the screen while you're driving.

Overall I'm very happy with the upgrade and would do it again.

 

Thanks for this great write-up. It's inspired me to tackle my own stereo project. Unfortunately, I do not have the lower dash console on my 996 so I'm stuck with a single din unit replacement. =(

 

Good luck with your project. I still have the Alpine single din head unit if you're interested. I'm selling it on craigslist for $270 (MSRP at $399).

Paul