So after a few months of finding all the parts and gathering information, I finally finished the conversion before the holidays. I've always wanted to do this on my '04 since the original flopez conversion. After looking through posts from Waynster, Greendestiny, Acha, and a couple of other members, I realized that it's not as overwhelming as it seemed at first, and this is my reason for posting, to re-iterate the fact that this is very do-able.

Unfortunately I didn't take a lot of pictures, but it's really one of those installs that you just have to start and then it'll continue on ok. A very important thing that I must stress on again is that the most important part of the install (aside from getting all the parts) is that you have to study the electric diagrams from the electrical troubleshooting manual. I got the '06 manual, and for the most part it's the same for the '04 (I have an '04), so either one is ok. One thing worth mentioning is that the service manual has a couple of circuit diagrams that are helpful with the install too.


I bought some 4 contact and some 2 contact shielded wires, all 22awg. (I still have a 100' spool of 4 contact shielded wire left which I'm planning to sell, if anyone is interested, contact me)



Soldering the connectors on. I tried to source the connectors from the suppliers, but it was too much of a hassle tryign to find the exact P/N and dealing with minimum order quantity. I ended up getting them from a ebay seller selling Acura/Honda navigation units and such.



Ready to go into the car. I overestimated the length needed, so I ended up having to stuff a lot of the extra length behind the rear seat above the rear wheel well, although it's all hidden. Again, measure twice, cut once.



This is the view that usually scares people away, but it's really not that bad. A 20 pin BLK/WHT display connector was added, a pin was added to the existing blue audio connector A. Three wires needed to be added to audio connector B, but I didn't get the connector. I ended up tapping into my Blitzsafe adapter for that. If you have an '05 or above, you can easily just tap into the XM radio input plug for this.



Need to hide all the wiring. I bought some 1/2" diameter wire looms from HD. I think 1/2" should be the perfect size. It doesn't need to complete wrap around all the wires, as long as the wires are all within the wire looms. I had some extra wires prefetched for the voice command button and mic, which I might or might not do (does anyone know how to wire these up? I haven't looked into how to connect the steering wheel harness and mic/homelink to the main navigation harness)



Tidying up and hiding all the wires. One thing to mention is that it's a little bit tricky getting the wire harness up the passenger's side kickpanel and up through the glovebox. It's a bit tight behind the glovebox so make sure you can make enough clearance if your harness is thick like mine.



This is the connector from the ECU where most people tapped into for VSS. I also tapped into CAN H and CAN L here as opposed to tapping into it by the driver's footwell. I just found it easier to do it here since I'm already getting VSS from here. Not sure if there's any differences.



The last two pics are cell phone pics so that aren't that great. Routing the harness through the backseat, this is where I hid the extra lengths of wiring. Here I didn't take apart everything like most people did, just the seat bottom, side bolster. For the rear deck I only popped off the speaker grills, removed the screws there, and then lifted up the rear deck enough just to mount the DVD bracket and GPS antenna. Saves some work for me especially since I couldn't get the plastic trim behind the rear seats off.



Up and working! No point to post pics of the working navi, you guys all know what it looks like




There's still some work to do as I haven't connected the wires in the trunk (ILL, BCK LT), but it's working for the most part. Also, I didn't connect +B to the fuse for the Nav, I only tapped into the +B on the Audio connector A (ACC is shared for both). I'll probably fix this once the weather warms up.

My write-up is far from complete, but I can contribute a few hints. First is that you should verify your harness before you put it in your car. Measure how long you need the wire to be, cut and build the harness first, and then verify contact and wiring. I wasted a couple hours in the car because I reversed two wires (I didn't test the harness before I put it into the car). Second, you don't need to spend almost $100 on the GPS antenna. The GPS receiver itself is built into the DVD unit. The antenna that mounts on the rear deck is just a stub antenna to amplify the signal. You can get a GPS antenna with the same plug (I forgot the name of the plug) which is used on other alpine navigation systems for about $25-$30 on ebay.

 

Wow very nice.... props to you.

 

Thanks.. oh and I haven't sourced the sub-clock display yet. Right now my non-Nav clock is displaying random characters..

 

good job. what is the total cost

 

It's about $700 or so that I've spent so far. I was able the purchase the display and DVD unit at a pretty decent price. Most of the time they go for $450-$500 individually.

~$300 for Nav display
~$300 for DVD unit
$25 for GPS antenna
$100 for wires, connectors, etc.

I haven't gotten the sub clock display yet.