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Thread: Adrians '94 RRC soft dash - audio upgrades & other stuff

  1. #1
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    Adrians '94 RRC soft dash - audio upgrades & other stuff

    The last month or so I did a "little" project on a mates '94 RRC soft dash. This is Adrian's car, not mine.

    Actually it's been going on for a few months, but a couple of those it was in a panel shop being painted.

    The brief;

    - new modern audio system
    - sounds good
    - looks good
    - phone, music, maps, reverse camera
    - something "special"

    So it was decided, Alpine Halo9 big screen. The "special" being the steering wheel controls, which we'll get to.

    First some pics of the finished product.





    The speakers turned out to be a bit of a challenge. Firstly trying to find a 3" midrange to go in the factory location. I ended up with Hertz speakers, the mid is a coaxial, but the tweeter has been snipped, and then run off a Hertz 3-way crossover for bass, mid & tweeter. All these speakers in the factory locations.



    The original speaker grilles were destroyed, so new reproduction pieces were purchased from Congleton Service.



    The tweeters in the factory a-pillar pieces. Overall you wouldn't know there's aftermarket speakers installed. Apart from the sound of course.



    The rear speakers in the roof are Hertz 4" coaxials, again a perfect fit replacing the factory speakers behind the original grilles.


    The subwoofer was more of a challenge. The factory sub driver being a weird 7.25" unit. There used to be a company in the states who had these reproduced, but they seem to have gone out of business. After much searching I found a 7" woofer, which was a good fit, and only needed slight massaging of the subwoofer enclosure to fit. In hindsight a new custom enclosure might have made more sense, but this worked, and it works well.






    Amps from Clarion, basic things but they have some grunt. Mounted on the factory sub enclosure.


    Obviously all new wiring needed here; 3x RCA pairs from the head unit to the amps in the boot, new speaker wires (all twisted & colour coded), plus the camera video cable, those all went in the roof, speakers left side, RCA's right side. Needed to run a power cable for the amps (and for eventually a power socket in the boot) that went along the floor, just managed to hide it nicely. So all the wiring feeds are separated.




    The 3-way splits in the front using a Hertz 3-way crossover.




    USB/AUX fitted in the centre console replacing the cigarette lighter.


    The dash centre panel, well... it was broken. Previous audio installs... but I had to fix it.


    Lots of plastic welding, and some aluminium reinforcements.





    It's rock solid now.

    Head unit test fit.


    And then back into the car.





    Reverse camera fitted.




    And for me, the "special", steering wheel controls. I really wanted to have these, for a few reasons.

    #1, the Alpine Halo doesn't have a volume knob, and the buttons at the bottom of the screen are not really all that convenient.
    #2, modern cars have steering wheel controls, it's a great feature & convenience
    #3, as far as I could find, nobody had retrofitted SWC to a RRC, or a D1.

    So I had to make it happen. And I did




    Well.... luckily Land Rover was already planning for this.... the mounting lugs are there on the metal frame of the wheel. Without those lugs this wouldn't have gotten off the ground.

    The Discovery 2 steering wheel buttons are a different design, physically bigger, however the mounting lugs are the same spacing, and with a bit of cutting/trimming, you can fit both the cruise & audio switch assemblies to the D1/RRC wheel.

    The other problem is the wiring. Although the clockspring in the D1, RRC, P38A & D2 is the exact same unit, the way the cruise switches (& horn switches) are wired up is different.

    After re-working the steering wheel wiring that was taken out of a D2 to match the D1/RRC arrangement, there was one free wire, which could be used for the steering wheel controls.
    In a D2 there are two wires used for the audio switches, but this wasn't possible in this case because of separate power feeds to the horn switches & cruise switches.

    I used a CP2-UNI steering wheel interface, manually programmed the resistance of the audio switches to match the Alpine head unit.
    It relies on the steering wheel/column being grounded (same like the horn switches), I tried to set it up using 12V through the switches but the CP2-UNI didn't like that.

    I discovered that the factory wiring diagrams for the Classic & the D2 had some errors in them regarding the steering wheel connections, but fortunately I had the two harness' side by side & could work it out that way.
    When I was doing the initial research into it (using just the wiring diagrams) I was very confused, nothing made sense, and then after going through the connections on the bench, it all became clear...

    So that's it, all done.

    I'm particularly proud of this one.
    Freelander 2 HSE 3.2L - BUILD THREAD
    Jaguar XKR 4.2L S/C - Jaguar XJR 4.2L S/C - MINI Cooper S

    Old Jaguar Australia - www.facebook.com/oldjaguarau
    Upgrades and retrofits for late model Land Rover and Jaguar vehicles. www.oldjaguar.com

  2. #2
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    Well done! I’m very impressed and like how the halo fits.

    cheers

    Steve

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