cd/radio/mp3, what stereo ?

[gary]

Hello all,
has anyone installed an up to date cd radio with mp3 facility and had the pleasure of retaining the steering wheel controls.
I imagine you have go a bit up market to get a unit that the steering wheel adapter wiring will link up to.
any help most appreciated.
Gary

[steelcityuk]

Hi Gary,

The only time I tried to get that to work it failed. It was a top Alpine unit with aftermarket interface.

What did work much better was a Sony head unit with their little 'joystick' controller fastened to the side of the steering column cowling. Much better than steering wheel controls because it controls more features and you can still adjust things whilst you're steering around bends.

Steve.

[Peter.N.]

Hi Gary

I have aftermarket radio's in two of mine, one Pioneer and a Kenwood, they have to be the right type to take an adaptor. I got steering wheel control adaptors from ebay, both work fairly well, the volume and station selection are OK but some of the other functions are variable.

Peter

[blue94auto]

Thanks for that chaps,in my xm now I have a cd/radio/mp3 player with remote control
and when I installed it about 3 weeks ago I couldn't get the radio to work,thought it was stuffed.It turned out it wasn't stuffed I got it working yesterday it needed a new aerial plug. It gets a bit muddled up in the middle of cds now and then but will do me for a while.
I will have a look on eBay and see if I can find any adapters for the xm then see what stereo's they will link up to.
Thanks again .
Gary

[Henry]

I'm thinking of a Blaupunkt Toronto BT400-has bluetooth and an adaptor is available for steering wheel controls too! Anyone got any experience of this model?

Alan.

[andersks]

I used the PAC-Audio - SWI-JACK interface that is a programmable adapter, together with a Kenwood KDC-BT60U (FM/CD/BT/AUX/USB), and that worked perfectly... The same adapter can then be reprogrammed to whatever reciever I'll switch to next. Happy times!

I wrote a DIY article on this topic for the Norwegian XM Club, but as it is in norwegian it might be less useful The guys at PAC-Audio was very helpful though, so I doubt there will be any problems figuring it out You'll have to modify the normal setup a little bit as the XM S2 uses two "resistance ladders" for the steering wheel controls and the SWI-JACK is made for one "ladder" ... adding a (I used a 420Ohm) resistor in series with one of the ladders before connecting the two in parallel did the trick for me...

PM me and I can send you diagrams and stuff

anders