Thread: Aftermarket HU upgrade - Alpine Halo9 iLX-F309E installation

Originally Posted by Eevo

perfect timing for this thead.
im putting a halo9 in my RRS this week.

Would u mind putting 1 in ur D2 so I can see one in person please?

Originally Posted by John_D2

Would u mind putting 1 in ur D2 so I can see one in person please?

as long as your paying, sure, i can do that.

Originally Posted by Eevo

perfect timing for this thead.
im putting a halo9 in my RRS this week.

Why? Can't you fit a double DIN unit into the RRS like you can with the Discovery 3 and 4? If so, you should really reconsider your choice of the Halo 9 and look at the Alpine iLX-107 < iLX-107 - Alpine Electronics of Australia > instead. Many reasons - first I cannot see anything the Halo 9 does that the iLX-107 doesn't do, secondly the iLX-107 has a big advantage over the Halo9 in that it is Wireless Apple CarPlay (not USB cable only like the Halo9), if your an iPhone user then that should be enough to sell it to you, thirdly, it's $500.00 lower listed price should mean you can obtain it at a much lower price.
The only exception to the above is if you are an Android user as I think it doesn't have the Android Car features at all.

Part of me really wishes I had just spent the time to make up a custom double DIN centre dash surround for my D2...

The view from the drivers seat at about my eye level showing it as per how I see it now:



The Mudpod is much more visible than it was with the old Clarion unit.
It’s all working but I haven’t connected the VSS or handbrake leads yet.

Looks good in there. Was the wiring of it straight forward enough? Also did you end up using you're old casing from the old head unit?

Originally Posted by twr7cx

Why? Can't you fit a double DIN unit into the RRS like you can with the Discovery 3 and 4? If so, you should really reconsider your choice of the Halo 9 and look at the Alpine iLX-107 < iLX-107 - Alpine Electronics of Australia > instead. Many reasons - first I cannot see anything the Halo 9 does that the iLX-107 doesn't do, secondly the iLX-107 has a big advantage over the Halo9 in that it is Wireless Apple CarPlay (not USB cable only like the Halo9), if your an iPhone user then that should be enough to sell it to you, thirdly, it's $500.00 lower listed price should mean you can obtain it at a much lower price.
The only exception to the above is if you are an Android user as I think it doesn't have the Android Car features at all.

Part of me really wishes I had just spent the time to make up a custom double DIN centre dash surround for my D2...

you had me convinced until you said it doesnt do android.

Originally Posted by SPROVER

Looks good in there. Was the wiring of it straight forward enough? Also did you end up using you're old casing from the old head unit?

Yes, fairly straight forward, but there's just a lot of it.

For the main wiring harness I used the Aepro APP8ALPV < Aerpro | First Choice > but modified it slightly for three things:

1. Ran a direct 15amp wire back to the battery instead of using the original OEM wire.

2. The blue and blue/white wires (I can't remember which is which) need to be swapped - but basically the ISO harness has what is usually the power antenna connection, but the D2 not having a power antenna uses this for the amplifier. A lot of the aftermarket headunits only activate the power antenna when the FM radio function is working, so the amplifier would be turned on then but not during any other listening (e.g. from iPod, DAB, CarPlay, etc.), so just swap the connection around so the amplifier remote wire goes to that place on the ISO harness and leave the power antenna wire free.

3. Chop the speaker ISO half out. As I've got the HSE model it's got the factory high spec audio system including OEM amplifier. This means that although they look like standard speaker wires (pairs of grey, white, purple and green with black striped negatives), they're actually for pre-out which would usually be RCA connections so I had previously fitted RCA connections so they plug straight into the headunits preouts without the need for high to low converters. There's a whole seperate thread on this from 8 or so years ago on here.

There's a few additional parts to be fitted along with the associated wiring:

DAB antenna - onto the front windscreen, passenger side, run wiring behind the glove box.
GPS antenna - onto top of dashboard, passenger side, run wiring behind the glove box.
USB connection to where ever you want it.
Microphone - I ran it up the drivers A pillar and mounted near the Homelink and rear view mirror. Has excellent audio quality there according to my test calls.
Steering wheel control interface - I use a PAC SWI-RC < SWI-RC Wiring Guide – PAC >, already had this fitted for my Clarion unit and just had to adjust the rotary switch and half the functions work (volume up and down and skip track back) - will reprogram the buttons later to get the skip track up working).
Reverse camera - yellow RCA connection for video and a signal connection into the main hardness loom. Mine is not working so I need to test if it's the signal wire as the camera was working perfectly with the old unit but I hanged the terminal connection on the signal wire from a flat to a bullet style to connect into the Aepro Alpine hardness.

Still two wires I've yet to connect:
Handbrake wire - I haven't connected this yet, apparently you can just ground it out, but I have no need for video when driving so intend to do it properly to the handbrake.
VSS - I haven't connected it yet but there's a whole seperate thread about it at Aftermarket Head Unit - connecting vehicle speed pulse line

Another thing I've yet to connect is the old roof top dropdown screen up to it. The Alpine unit uses AV/RCA Interface Cable (4-pole mini AV plug to 3-RCA) (can't find it on their website but its shown in the Installation Manual on pages 10 and 15). I'll need to get one before I can connect it. EDIT: while reviewing the manual, I've just realised that this is an AV input into the unit, not an output to a second screen - looks like the Halo9 might not be able to output a video signal to a second screen.

What I did is remove the clock/central locking button unit, button cluster unit and HIVAC unit then you can access all the wiring, run is down along behind where the HIVAC sits so that it's out of the way and then run it up either the left of right side depending on where it connects to the back of the headunit. This meant the headunit was easy to connect up with the wiring and slid in easy.

I've used my old Clarion single DIN cage with a few modifications and bends and it's perfectly fine for road use. I need to make a bit better plan perhaps if I ever got rattling over corrugations though.

Originally Posted by Eevo

you had me convinced until you said it doesnt do android.

Check out the iLX-702D < iLX-702D Alpine Electronics of Australia > then. Doesn't have the Wireless Apple CarPlay, but does still have USB version. Also has USB Android Auto. Seems to tick most of the same boxes as the Halo9 but again cheaper purchase price and double DIN should be able to fit neater and easier into a RRS/D3/D4.

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