Fresh on the heels of my CB Installation thread (or maybe three and a half months later) here's my walk through for my head unit upgrade.

First, the process of selecting a head unit. I didn't want to purchase an extremely expensive unit but I didn't want to severely compromise on features. There was an interesting Sony unit I had been watching for awhile but I ultimately decided against it. The interface looked nice but seemed sluggish. It looked very nice and had a full size touch screen. I decided that I would miss having a rotary volume ****. It turned out the Clarion had the features I wanted at a reasonable price. I then spent some time researching the various accessories and installation items I needed. Here's the list:

Clarion NX501
Metra 95-5812 Double Din Installation Kit
Scosche FD23B 2003-Up Select Ford Harness
Metra Axxess ASWC Universal Steering Wheel Control Interface
BOYO VTL422C BLACK REAR LICENSE PLATE CAMERA
Parking Brake By-pass sourced from eBay

I did plenty of research before hand and laid out a plan for installation. This helped me easily complete the install in one day. Here's the gear:







As you can see above, there are plenty of wires and cables to deal with. I decided I wanted to wire the headunit harness directly into the pins of the Scosche harness. I researched how to pull the pins. I also created a wiring diagram to guide me through my specific installation.



What worked for me was a paper clip with the point cut an an angle. After I figured out exactly how the pins were secured in the harness they were easy to remove. I decided to start with the yellow main power wire.









The yellow power wire is of a larger gauge than most of the others on the Clarion harness. I certainly didn't want to join that to the lower gauge wire in the Scosche harness. However, the process was pretty hard since I didn't have the specific tools required to accomplish my goal. In the end, I only completed the yellow wire and made routine solder connections of the others.



Here you can see all of the Clarion to Scosche connections have been made. I skimped on heat shrink insulation so I used the less preferred electrical tape to insulate. I secured the wires with ties to prevent any shorts as the adhesive on the tape will eventually fail.



Above is my completed harness. The black box in the upper left is the steering wheel control. To the left and below that is the parking brake by-pass (blue and green wires coming out of what looks like black tape). Some of the connections on the Clarion harness had butt connectors pre-installed. Rather than cut them off and solder, I found appropriate matching connectors and crimped them where needed. I then individually capped unused wires.



On with the rear camera. The combination power and video cable route over the plate and through the opening behind.



Maybe the easiest part of the install. Unfortunately not so much running the cable under a long dirty truck. No pictures of that. I ran the cable the entire length and passed through a crowded hole in the firewall. I had found some good wire for this task at work. The power wire that came with the camera was pretty short. I suppose I could have tapped into a source at the rear of the truck but it seemed easier to run all the way to the front. The RCA cable that came with the camera was of perfect length.



Off with the dash. After some research I found the dash simply pulls away and then wiring connections on the rear need to be disconnected. Hard but not to hard. There's also a harness for every available option plugged into blanks all along the dash. Makes me wonder what all of the optional features are and if adding them is as simple as adding the appropriate switch. I'll look into that later.





With the dash out of the way access to the radio is gained. I wanted to replace the radio because one thing I failed to test was the CD player. I didn't work and I didn't realize that until months after I bought the truck.





With the radio out I connected my new harness. I secured the connection with a wire tie to prevent it from working apart.



Test fitting the Metra adapter.



A problem I would run into is that due to the thickness of the plastic Metra adapter, the screws supplied with the new headunit were too short. I didn't have anything ideal to replace them with so used screws that were a bit too long and used washers to keep them from penetrating too far into the unit.



Due to my workaround I had to notch the plastic around the unit.



Dropped the fuse box and searched for the black with purple wire that is the backup lights. I found two and I used a test light to confirm which one was hot when the vehicle is in reverse.



I've always hated using these wire splicers. I trimmed the insulation from the wire to make it easier to close the splice. Spliced with this is the reverse detection wire from my new wiring harness. This enables the headunit to automatically switch to the backup camera when the vehicle is in reverse.



I also spliced the positive power for the camera to a hot when switched to accessory or on wire.



Here you can see where I grounded the camera. I would later use the same point to ground the radio. The purple wire you see is the reverse detection wire.



I've read where some people seem to have good GPS performance with the antenna stuffed in the dash. I didn't want to take the chance. I also didn't want to put this black antenna on top of my white truck. I read that you shouldn't paint them. I decided to anyway. I scuffed it with sandpaper and spray painted it white.





I removed the third brake light and ran the cable through.



Inside I removed the map light and fished the cable through. I then slipped the cable between the headliner and the roof straight back to the trim surrounding the rear glass.



Here you can see how I routed the cable toward the trim surrounding the rear doors.



All the way to the front and down beneath the dash. The cable slipped behind the trim perfectly. The was the closest I came to not having enough cable.



The GPS antenna from the outside.



A USB extension cable from the rear of the unit resides in the drivers glove box.



With all the connections made, the unit was secured in the dash and powered up flawlessly. I made one mistake, however. I needed to first turn the key to the on position for about ten seconds to allow the steering wheel control to auto-program to my vehicle and headunit. Failing to do so required me to reset the steering wheel control. It then worked flawlessly.





As I familiarized myself with the unit I rearranged the screens to reflect how I will mostly use it. I also uploaded a custom wall paper I found on the web.

My review of the products seen above will be forthcoming.

 

Nice job. Looks like a nice unit! My GPS antenna, is in the center of the dash, between the defroster vents. Works great there.

 

Yeah, I thought about mounting it inside.

 

So, a short review of the items above.

First, there really isn't much to say about the Scosche harness, the Metra steering wheel control interface, or the parking brake bypass. They worked as advertised and all had clear instructions.

The Metra Double Din installation kit I've seen criticized for fit and the criticism is valid. I just don't really consider it to be their fault though. Once you remove the stock radio it's easy to see the curves on the face. The hole in the dash isn't perfectly square. I don't know if an alternative designed specifically for my dash is available but I'm sure it would be much more expensive. The fit is also really only noticeable when you first install the product. When you're judging all of the parts and work. I don't even notice or think about it now that is been installed a few months. I don't regret the purchase.

The Boyo rear camera also seems well built. The resolution seems a tad low but it's certainly adequate for the purpose. I wouldn't say it's especially good in low light but, again, good enough for the purpose. There are no graphical indications in the image it presents. Prices vary wildly for cameras and this one was quite reasonable. I don't regret the purpose.

Now the big part of the purchase. I'd only ever installed one aftermarket headunit before and it was a typical single din unit over a decade ago. The first thing that impressed me was the heft of the unit. When I unboxed it, the feel and look of the unit reminded me of a computer. And, when you consider it, that is exactly what these of units are. Purpose built computers. High on my list of priorities were rear USB and Bluetooth for phone and audio. Low on my list of priorities were HD Radio, Sirius, and iPod/iPhone. iPod and iPhone you basically can't not get now. The other features I can upgrade to in the future. All the cables necessary to do were included. Some features that I sacrificed in selecting this unit is there is no SD slot. Well, there actually is but it's dedicated to the GPS. You also get 18 FM but only 6 AM presets. I have no idea why they always skimp on AM presets. I can't imagine it would add anything more than pennies to the production cost. I also would have liked adjustable colored lighting on the unit to match the stock interior lighting.

The unit starts quickly. One thing that annoys me is that I wait for the glow plugs to warm and then start the vehicle. The half started unit gets shut down when the key moves to 'start'. Settling back to the on position it begins to power on again. Moving the gear shift to Reverse to back out of the drive way and the unit swiftly shifts to the back up camera. When looking at what firmware updates were available for my unit I found that they had released one to speed up access to the rear camera when the unit was still starting up. That update shipped already installed on my unit. Another nice thing is that if the last audio source playing was the radio, it also seems to get great precedence in the start up sequence and begins playing rapidly. Both of these features were pleasant surprises when a common criticism of these types of units is slow start up.

One of my goals is to purchase a 32 to 64 GB thumbdrive to store all of my music on. Right now I have a 2 GB model connected. My music is encoded in variable bit rate WMA files that exceed the bit rate specifications listed for this unit. They play mostly fine. A brief hiccup can be heard occasionally. I am considering re-encoding but mostly for another reason. The unit is supposed to display folder art. It's not right now and I'm not sure why. I do have an album I've purchased and downloaded from Amazon. I'm going to put that on the thumbdrive and see what happens before I start ripping CDs all over again.

An annoyance that is similar in both the USB interface and the radio tuner is they are cumbersome to use. When selecting music files you have to awkwardly scroll through them and I haven't found any obvious ways to create play lists. Choosing radio stations is similar with an awkward scrolling mechanism or having to reach over and precisely press presets or bands. I have been considering pulling the remote control out of the plastic to see if it gives me any better control options. Radio reception, as usual, is also not up to par with what the factory headunit offered.

Speaking of the remote, it seems well made but looks similar to the twenty year old remote to my old A/V receiver. Complete and full featured but difficult enough to use sitting on the couch let alone in a moving vehicle. Still, I haven't even opened it so I certainly can't qualify any praise or criticism. Fortunately, the steering wheel interface enables the factory controls to do exactly what they say. 'Next' will skip to the next track or preset. 'Mode' will bring up the home screen and each repeated press will cycle along each mode on the home screen. A second after you have highlighted a mode, it will launch.

Bluetooth is a little odd but apparently that's pretty normal with bluetooth. It's like my phone and headunit needed some time to get to know one another. They've gone from a rather schizophrenic relationship to only slightly dysfunctional. The phone pairs up nicely with the unit but that wasn't always the case. It paired and was functional but controls weren't appearing correctly. It's been over three months so the specifics are lost to me now but the weird thing is the interface improved over time. It's almost like the NX501 is a learning computer. But if that was the case I would sure appreciate it learning how to display track information when playing audio through bluetooth. I've tried both my Droid X2 and my wife's Droid 3. Audio will play but no artist information. I use a couple different apps on my Droid. First, I primarily use a program that downloads all the evil right wing talk radio shows I listen to. It's an awesome app (Beyond Pod) and I highly recommend it. But it doesn't matter if I am using that or the stock player for music. Now artist information. Another annoyance, but one that is on the phone side, is that the phone can lose focus of the app that is playing audio. Pushing pause to pause the podcast I'm playing can result in Madison Rising (a group that I would also highly recommend) to suddenly start blaring from my speakers. That's not the headunit's fault, though. Anyways, our phones and the headunit all supposedly support AVRCP 1.3, which is the bluetooth profile necessary to display artist information. It's not there.

I tested the DVD player once right after I initially fired up the rig after the install. I wanted to ensure the parking brake bypass worked properly and it did. I installed the bypass to ensure any operations that were disabled, primarily navigation, would be available regardless of whether or not my rarely used parking brake was engaged. I don't know if my navigation options were gimped without it or not but at least the rest of my family has the option to watch something if they want while I'm driving.

Another thing I hoped I could accomplish was view my ripped DVDs on the head unit. Apparently I can but only if I burn the files to DVD. On my last deployment I converted virtually all of my DVDs to high quality MP4 files that I could view on my laptop. This unit only supports them if I burn them to disc. I could maybe burn two movies to one disc but what's the point? It does play video files from USB but not in the resolutions my files are at. I'm retired from the Army now and don't really need terabytes of movies anymore. The quality is not as good as just putting the disc in when I want to watch in on the TV and I've started to delete many of them to recover disk space.

On to Navigation. I wasn't surprised to learn that my maps were old. Roads that were in my neighborhood when I got here over five years ago were not there. I have a Magellan unit that had the same issue. The unit was advertised to have a 30 day map guarantee. I had 30 days from the first use of the unit to download any newer maps available. I went to the appropriate site and downloaded the software that would interface with my unit. I removed the 4 GB micro SD card from the front of the unit, put it in a card reader, inserted it into the computer and launched the manufacturers software. It told me updates to the program were available. I backed everything up and installed all the updates. I saw that a newer map was available but I only had the option to purchase it. Time to create a support ticket. Back and forth and little response was very frustrating. I'd heard of companies seemingly failing to honor latest map guarantees and I was frustrated to find that I might become another victim of an eastern European company on the other side of the planet. I kept my cool and remained polite as the days ticked away. I was approaching the end of the thirty days when I finally got a very polite response thanking me for my patience and informing me I would now have access to the update for another 30 days. I went through the update process again and there was the update. A frustrating win.

I was hoping this updating process would fix an issue I noticed. It didn't. Sure, my roads and program was up to date but it's not the best navigator around. I think it's fair to say that all navigation systems are flawed. They're just simply not going to always pick the best route. When you are fortunate enough to know a better route, and take it, most units will sync up fairly quickly with what you're doing. This thing seems hell bent to get you to turn around or take ridiculous excursions through neighborhoods to get you back to it's route. It really makes little sense when it does that. It's bad enough that when I am actually going somewhere unfamiliar, I rely more on the route Google is giving me on my phone than what the headunit says. I've also turned directional notification off on the unit because it talks completely over anything you might be listening to rather than providing the notification with the source audio.

Other annoyances to me are that when you are navigating, the unit no longer displays the time nor a true indication of which direction you are traveling. Well, I installed a CB that tells time and the vehicle information center has direction. Also, the navigation options are fairly full featured but awkward to navigate and remember the best ways to search or navigate the menus is difficult. At some point I'm going to install a car dock for my phone to make it easier for me to navigate as well as view track information and control audio on my phone.

Although this review seems pretty critical, I don't regret the purchase. Every aftermarket unit out there is going to force you to compromise on something. I feel that I have a solid, nice looking unit, with good features. I feel that it provides good value for the price I paid and I do have upgradability if I choose to add new features such as Sirius. Now, had I paid whatever the original price was when the unit launched, I wouldn't be so generous. That's also why I am not an early adopter.

 

I also mounted my GPS antenna in the dash ahead of the stereo. These need to be mounted on a metal surface (there was a structural metal piece that's part of the dash that worked perfect for this). The only thing with the GPS antenna is that there be no metal between it and the outside of the vehicle, in my case the plastic of the dash and glass of the windshield. I have full reception in this location and it's a lot easier location to mount it. Your install turned out nice, good write up.

 

Yeah, I liked the stealthy idea of keeping the antenna inside. Something also drew me to the subtlety of the white antenna on the outside. One thing I learned in a sadly humorous way was how easy it is to break into these trucks. One of the forums I came across a guy was offering up his factory headunit after he installed an aftermarket one. In the same thread he said it's no longer available because someone stole the new one and it was going back in. Apparently it only takes about a screw driver to defeat the drivers side lock. And our trucks only really pretend to have an alarm with flashing lights and stuff when you lock the doors. One thing I failed to notice when I purchased the head unit is there are no security features. I'll need to be vigilant if I travel to more suspect areas.

 

One of the main reasons I choose to mount the antenna inside is that I've had the antenna blown loose by a car wash a couple of times when I had it mounted in my old Expedition, luckily it didn't tear it from the wiring, but I figured it was just a matter of time before that would happen. My system actually requires two antennas, one for the navigation and one for the satellite XM radio which uses a tuner box thats separate from the head unit, however my truck came with Sirius satellite radio in the stock radio/sync system so it already had the satellite antenna permanently mounted to the truck (non magnetic), but the cable wasn't long enough to reach where I wanted to mount the XM tuner so I had to try to find an adapter/extension to reach this location which I was able to find. You can see the thread I posted on the subject here if your interested in reading it, if you haven't already done so. https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...2-f-250-a.html What I like about this configuration is that it's got the factory look of the antenna without needing to mount additional antennas outside of the vehicle, and because the factory antenna is solidly mounted I don't have to worry about blowing the antennas off at the car wash anymore.

I understand your concern about vehicle break-ins, I've always been concerned about this with any vehicle I own after having one of my vehicles broke into years ago. One thing I did in my old Expedition, and plan on doing to my new truck is to get the darkest window tint that's allowed by law. My reasoning for this was that at least at night (which is when most vehicle break-ins occur) it would make it more difficult for potential thieves to see if I had anything in the vehicle worth stealing. In my old neighborhood vehicles were known to get broken into occasionally, but I never had any problems, and I attribute this partially to the dark tinting, and luck might of came into play also. Another advantage is that it helps keep the vehicle cooler in hot weather. I am also considering getting an aftermarket alarm system for it also. There's nothing that'll protect a vehicle 100% but the more deterrents you have in my opinion, the better. On a good note, I no longer live in that neighborhood, or in town for that matter, live out in the country on twenty acres at the end of a long gravel road with a garage to park in so my vehicle break-in potential has been greatly reduced.

 

Nice write up.....I thought that Clarion says not to install the GPS antenna on the out side, I dont know why it says that???
~Gage~

 

Make sure you make a backup of your SD card. The unit will corrupt its map card and then you get to pay $100 to replace the card. Ask me how I know.

I will NEVER buy another Clarion again...

 

I've done that but to be honest I think all of the after market systems are flawed. The one's that include anything more than audio that is.