CarPlay – Mark Reid

Back in the day I used to have a ridiculous amount accessories and cables for all of the devices I needed for communications, music and maps:

I modernised slightly since then with a head unit that supports a rear USB connection with a cable routed to the glove box but even that is terrible by todays standards. I absolutely love having Apple CarPlay in my other car and it would be perfect for the MR2 (long gone are the days of needing the big paper map behind the passenger seat!!) so I researched the models available and selected a double DIN touchscreen unit, the Pioneer SPH-DA160DAB:

I was originally looking at the Sony XAV-AX1005DB as it more closely fits with the styling of the interior and in particular it has physical volume controls which I really did want. I did not like the front USB socket however, wanting a more clean look, nor was there any ability to change the lighting colour. The Pioneer unit has a selection of lighting colours (I wanted red), and has a really clean flat style. Although it doesn’t have physical volume controls, it IS compatible with steering controls so my intention is to get some steering wheel buttons later.

As with any job on the MR2, before I could get started with the actual job I wanted to do, there was a fair amount of extra work to do first. Some of the door speakers / tweeters were not working so I had trace the wiring and repair some faults – the almost 30 year old(!) wiring in the doors becomes corroded at the joints and just can’t carry a signal anymore. So I rebuilt the wiring from a spare loom and tested it all on the existing setup.

Mounting Plate
Earthing point was pretty corroded, so needing cleaned up.

With the wiring now sorted out I tested that all speakers, tweeters and the sub woofers were working correctly with the existing head unit and then moved onto:

Replacing the cigarette lighter / 12v Socket with an combined dual USB and battery voltmeter.
Extending the existing harness earth and relocated the earthing point
Fitting the new Headunit

OEM Tweeter (broken)
This was replaced with a spare I had in the garage.

OEM Left Speaker
4 Ohm, 20W. These are still working fine but will likely be replaced in the future.

Existing Cig Lighter Rear
As this uses a proprietary L shaped connector, we need to remove the power wires for fitting to the new unit.

Dash Panel Slight Expansion
The USB / Voltmeter is slightly wider than the diameter of the hole in the dash so just needs to be trimmed back slightly.

Voltage Display Rear
Connected to the negative and positive cables previously used by the cig lighter socket when the dash is reassembled. It is self lit so OEM bulb is no longer required.

Existing Harness
This is the original soldering (not my work!)

Existing Harness
The pin descriptions aren’t actually all correct

Earth Wire Extended / Rerouted
The earth wire from the back of the head unit will now earth directly to the chassis instead of connecting to the main audio harness earth connection.

New Harness
I won’t actually be using much of this yet.

With the head unit in, I’m very happy with it. It is so nice bringing CarPlay into the MR2, especially having control of the garage door directly from the car and of course having maps and music accessible from the console. The voltmeter was meant to be red, but when powering on was blue, so I contacted the seller and they have sent me the correct red version to match the rest of the interior lighting.