2005 Subaru Outback

What up peep to the eeps!!! Guess who's back... back again... Chitty's back... tell a friend...

Anywho, got a new project to play with. And as Sean Connery would say, "No, it'sh not your shister." Picked up a 2005 Subaru Outback 3.0R recently. Pretty cool ride. It's like a Legacy, but taller. Loaded up with quite a few options, especially to be a 12 year old car. And they all work! Heated seats, dual climate control, wiper blade heaters, turn signals in the mirrors, etc...

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But that also leaves our heads scratching on what the frickety frack was Subaru thinking with the radio. It's a one piece unit, with the dual climate controls built into it!!! Apparently a partnership with Kenwood spawned this creation. If you have the three knob setup, then you should probably star in certain movies, know what I mean? :eyebrows: Huh? Huh? Just kidding, seriously though, if you have the manual climate controls, no problem. A $25 kit from Metra and boom, radio swap. With the dual climate controls, you really have one option. Japan sells a double din faceplate for their cars that has the climate control separate. And with the AE64 harness, new hazard switch, shipping, blah blah blah, only about $350!!! BEFORE buying a radio!!! Dafrick, yo.

So of course I am planning what anyone else around here would do... hack up the dash!!! The car has this cubby piece between the upper vents:

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The biggest issue, is apparently the climate duct work goes behind that cubby. There is even a label inside warning against leaving anything flammable/combustible inside.

Well, I just happen to have a media player unit that was supposed to be pretty snazzy back in it's day. An Alpine iXA-W404. Has the HD Radio TUA-T550HD add-on, the Navigation NVE-M300, and recently acquired the Bluetooth KCE-400BT module. Might as well put that puppy to good use, right?

Let's check some depth first. Step one, cut a hole in the box... I mean, whoops...

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Looks to be just a bit shorter than a pretty standard single din, hopefully this works. Now to make sure that thing doesn't look too ugly up high in the dash:

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4504/...d65b25fb_b.jpg

Hmmm... not too bad surprisingly. Thought it would be very fugly, but this could work. And for my next trick... thinking about putting a LOC on the factory head unit, and run a short RCA to the AUX input of the Alpine. Why? Three words. Six. Disc. Changer. That is all.

In case anyone else needs info on the wiring pins, I'll post this up from AE64.com:

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Nice car chit. Always liked the Scooby 3.0R. Matter of fact, if they were not selling for such a premium at the time, I'd be driving a 2015 Legacy 3.6R. I decided to keep ~$8k in my pocket and drive a Camry V6. :p

Oh no doubt, we had a 2014 Legacy 3.6R - ZERO complaints about that car, it just, I dunno. Wasn't, "us" if that makes any sense. It rode like a dream, had tons of options, plenty of go, was a super nice car for sure. The Camry is no slouch either though. If they hadn't decided to ditch the hatch on the WRX/STi - Might have one of those instead of the Challenger. Maybe.

Sweet new toy bro! Get it rockin’!

We are all counting on you to actually have an install instead of a constant rotation of equipment.
Keep the pics coming.

You got it dude! Pretty locked in on the head unit, but still all over with what else to do. Use the trio of Zapco amps and put all the NVX gear in there since they are very happy off moderate power? Toss in some passive components with coax and a sub and a five channel? Go monster SQ with some crazy theories that kinda work but aren't perfect but it doesn't matter because of being a daily driver? I dunno. So we go to the ole standby and ask ourselves... what would pizza do?

https://i.imgur.com/Y9QCT7R.gif

Quote:

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Originally Posted by chithead

You got it dude! Pretty locked in on the head unit, but still all over with what else to do. Use the trio of Zapco amps and put all the NVX gear in there since they are very happy off moderate power? Toss in some passive components with coax and a sub and a five channel? Go monster SQ with some crazy theories that kinda work but aren't perfect but it doesn't matter because of being a daily driver? I dunno. So we go to the ole standby and ask ourselves... what would pizza do?

https://i.imgur.com/Y9QCT7R.gif

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Their is a 5 channel Rubicon Nano B or PPI Nano....[emoji48]

The Power Class also has Coax drivers now too. [emoji78]