Install complete of replacement head unit

[Lifeisabeach]

I had the nav unit in my 2010 Edge replaced last week with a Pioneer AVH-4200NEX. This unit doesn't have navigation built-in, but it does have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support. If you've ever shopped on Crutchfield, you'll know that they claim units with slide-out faceplates like this one don't fit. While I have no doubt that is true if the unit is large enough due to the way the units sit back in the dash a bit, these 7" Pioneer units fit just fine with plenty of clearance from the dash when opening up to insert a CD or SD card.

 

I did have the iDatalink Maestro installed with the FO1 harness to maintain full Sync options. That was a great choice! The head unit is able to give me readouts for a variety of performance information, including something as simple as the tire pressure. I also have full control via the steering wheel controls as before, and you can customize those controls when you flash the Maestro. I still have Sync voice dialing and Sync controls for media playback. Sync will still recognize USB drives in the port inside the armrest. The Pioneer head unit itself won't read that, but does have a slot for SD cards that you can put media on (Sync does not recognize the SD card and Pioneer has no voice controls for that).

 

I had a bizarre problem with the subwoofer output... it was anemic and no adjustment of the EQ or other audio settings made a difference. Then my car failed to start yesterday and it turned out my battery had some bad cells in it. Got a new car battery, and suddenly the subwoofer is performing up to expectations. Best guess is the new head unit is drawing more power than the old, and it pushed what already had to be a failing battery too far and it couldn't deliver enough power to the amp for it to perform properly.

 

I lost factory Sirius integration due to pulling out the OEM head unit. I had some bad info from the iDatalink website early on. The Pioneer head unit is supposed to retain factory Sirius integration when used with the Maestro, but as it turns out, starting with the 2009 models (if I recall correctly, it may be mid-2009 before the change), the Sirius tuner is built into the OEM nav head unit. Non-nav units still have an external Sirius tuner. I can also confirm that you can re-use the factory Sirius antenna with an aftermarket Sirius tuner... you just have to remove the yellow plastic clip that surrounds the antenna connector.

 

I also had a backup camera installed. I grabbed this off Amazon, made by Moonet. This camera is attached to a replacement for the right-side license plate light. No drilling required! The angle is a little steep, and the image quality is quite terrible to be honest, but it gets the job done. It has LED lights for nighttime, but they don't help much. I may replace this with a better camera some time in the future.

 

Photos attached... if there are any questions or more pics/demos desired, feel free to ask. All in all, I am very satisfied with the change. The big reason behind it was because the maps in the OEM nav unit were 7 years out of date (the prior owner never updated it) and the current update kept failing when I tried to install it. So now I can use Apple Maps directly from the Pioneer courtesy of CarPlay. Apple Maps has its own issues, but they are still much better off than what the Ford unit was providing. GPS was often far off and once when I was meeting family for lunch, the community we were meeting in didn't exist seven years ago. In other instances, highways had been reconstructed, exits changed... it was horrible relying on it.

 

Coming next week... replacement speakers for the doors and a replacement subwoofer.

 

Edited October 1, 2016 by Lifeisabeach

[Lifeisabeach]

I just installed the rear speakers. I'm not going to have time to get the rest today due to the looming hurricane and work responsibilities, but right off the bat, the sound is so much better balanced than before, much more so than I had expected. I went with Crutchfield's "best fit" recommendations so the rears are Polk Audio DXi571 and the fronts will be Polk Audio db571. The sub will be a Kicker CompRT 40CWRT81, recommended elsewhere in these forums.

 

The rear speakers do have a slight gap in at least one spot between the rim of the speakers and the cutout in the door. In retrospect, I probably would prefer a gasket of some sort but I'm not put off enough to tear the door panel off just for that. Especially not for how much better they sound already.

 

The people in the link below make custom speaker adapters for specific auto models that likely would have done the trick, assuming they wouldn't have added too much thickness for my speaker choices to still fit properly with the door panel back on.

http://www.car-speaker-adapters.com/products.php?id=adapter_search_consumer

Edited October 7, 2016 by Lifeisabeach

[WWWPerfA_ZN0W]

Stay safe!

[Lifeisabeach]

Stay safe!

 

 

Thanks. All is well in my corner!

 

I finished replacing the door speakers Sunday afternoon and it's just a 1,000x better than before. No question of it. I just now finished replacing the subwoofer driver. I added in some Acousta-Stuff fiber fill hoping it would help. Quite frankly though the subwoofer change sounds awful. The bass was much stronger before with the factory subwoofer. I'm not sure if the fiber fill is to blame; the choice of sub; or a bit of both, but it's just very poor.

 

I did have some subwoofer issues after the initial install of the head unit, but that resolved after I had to replace my car battery (bad cells, it finally wouldn't turn over). Basically it was very flat, about as poor as this is now, interestingly. Maybe there was more to it than just the battery. I'll hold out hope that it just resolves itself in a week or two, as unlikely as I think that is.

 

EDIT: I think I have this sounding more to my satisfaction. The sub seemed better at higher volumes but the audio was too loud otherwise, so I used the EQ settings on the Pioneer to dial down the volume on the door speakers to -5 or so (varied by location), but left the sub up at +6. All in all I think this worked well. The bass is a bit "tighter" I guess I can say. I think this Kicker would stand out a little better with a new amp, and certainly a 10" driver would be still better, but I think I'm going to be a lot happier than my initial impression was.

Edited October 11, 2016 by Lifeisabeach

[Lifeisabeach]

I still have Sync voice dialing and Sync controls for media playback. Sync will still recognize USB drives in the port inside the armrest. The Pioneer head unit itself won't read that, but does have a slot for SD cards that you can put media on (Sync does not recognize the SD card and Pioneer has no voice controls for that)

 

This wasn't "quite" correct. The Pioneer does recognize the USB port in the armrest, but it's listed under "Car Sources". Sync is probably what's reading the drive and relaying the track info back to the Pioneer, but it's seamless. As a bonus, the Pioneer won't sort tracks by track number if reading the SD card... it only sorts by track title if browsing by tags, or by filename if browsing by file name. The tracks will sort by track number when read off the Sync USB drive when browsing by tags.

Edited October 11, 2016 by Lifeisabeach

[Lifeisabeach]

I've done some additional work on the speakers. I was never able to quite get the sub sounding right, and in retrospect the problem was the choice in the sub. Kicker recommends 300 watts for the CompRT, and I very much doubt the factory amp puts out that much. There's more to it than that. With dual voice coil (DVC) subs, you have to be very careful you are matching the sub to the amp and wiring it correctly so the sub gets enough power to it without reducing the ohm level below what the amp can run reliably. That said, my best advice after all I've experienced and read up on is to replace both the sub and the sub amp if anyone ever plans to replace one or the other. My choice here was to go with the Rockford Fosgate PBR300X1 for the amp and a Kicker 8" CompS SVC (single voice coil) sub running at 2 ohms. The RF amp is rated for 150 watts constant @ 2 ohms, tested @ 180 watts, which is in the ballpark for the CompS' requirements (200/400). I could have chosen a sub that would pull 1 ohm for 300 watts/900 peak or stuck with a different CompRT sub (the 2 ohm DVC model wired in parallel would give me a 1 ohm power draw), but that would run the amp hotter and since it's in the location of the factory sub amp (behind the sub enclosure), I felt this was safer.

 

I had also tried using Acousta-Stuf fiber fill in the sub box. All I can say is no... not recommended at all by my ears. It dulled the bass pretty severely. All in all, the bass now is a bit... cleaner I guess I can say. It doesn't thud heavily like the old sub did. If one likes the heavier thudding, you might want to do something different or just stick with the factory sub system.

 

There was a lot of hiss coming from the door speakers since install. After talking with the installer, I spliced RCA jacks onto the Maestro's speaker-in leads and connected them to the line-level RCA outputs on the Pioneer. That effectively eliminated the hiss. The problem at hand was that using the high level speaker leads from the Pioneer unit was leading to a double-amplified signal once it passed the factory amp for the door speakers, which is a big no-no. This modification worked out very well with no volume loss.

Edited October 29, 2016 by Lifeisabeach

[IWRBB]

So can you use sync voice commands to access the USB drive? Meaning, if you have it selected as a source, can you tell it play track "x" or play album "x"? Can you use Sync voice commands to select it as a source or do you have to go through the head unit screens for that? Same question for the card slot in the headunit. Does voice commands work on those files?

Edited October 28, 2016 by IWRBB

[Lifeisabeach]

So can you use sync voice commands to access the USB drive? Meaning, if you have it selected as a source, can you tell it play track "x" or play album "x"? Can you use Sync voice commands to select it as a source or do you have to go through the head unit screens for that? Same question for the card slot in the headunit. Does voice commands work on those files?

Yes, Sync voice commands absolutely work exactly as before with content on the USB drive in the armrest, but only that port. They don't work for the SD card slot or the Pioneer's own USB ports. Sync voice dialing also works as do the steering wheel controls to activate that, but I'm experiencing problems with answering calls when Sync is handling voice calls. I've been in contact with the iDatalink folks so hopefully they have an update to fix it in the works.

 

It took me some time to figure it out, but you can apply Sync updates through the Pioneer head unit and you can pair new phones to Sync's Bluetooth module (the 6 digit pin is passed to the Pioneer head unit so you can read it). The Sync Bluetooth support is separate from the Pioneer's own Bluetooth module and you "can" pair to both, though the iDatalink rep I've been speaking with advised against doing so. If you do so, you just pick from the settings menu which one is used for hands-free calls.

Edited October 28, 2016 by Lifeisabeach