Aftermarket audio head unit installation - Saab 9-5

[bjorn_1987]

No, I haven't done this yet.
Are there any available which can be placed between a normal speaker wire instead of RCA connectors?

[DrunkieTheBear]

Stereo install #3 in my car...more than that by alot on 9-5s in general

My current setup:
-4 Channel Ground Loop Isolator
-Axxess ASWC-1 Steering wheel controls
-ConnectS2 installation kit
-Pioneer AVH-3800BHS ($200, don't but the 391...its the samething and they want more money)
-Pioneer rear backup camera
-G1W-C Dash cam
-Second Skin sound deadener in doors, b-pillars, upper dash, rear deck and rear half of ceiling
-Infinity Kappa 32.9cf dash speakers
-Pioneer 10 inch shallow mount sub
-Rockford 300w amp

New stereo only has one USB connection and doesn't accept a hub...lame. SO I have a nice OEM looking mount in the glovebox and I have to switch out the iPod to the smartphone usb connection for navigation if I need it.





I just finished it all today, I don't like not having a volume knob...I hate that. The crossover and EQ is very complex and needs a lot of tweaking to not distort on the old Harmon Kardon speakers. Pros are the clarity is even 10x better then the kenwood DDX372, like the phone control, fast boot, fast response, great screen, and good audio source selection; bluetooth streaming audio is some of the best I've heard yet on clarity. Next radio will be android auto for sure, I hear good things about that Sony XAV-100

[seippel]

I just replaced a 2005 Aero Saab Nav radio (Denso) with a Pioneer AVH-4200NEX. I have some advice that might save time for someone else. I also need some help.

After the first pass at installation, I didn't have any sound. After playing with it for several hours, I discovered that antenna trigger (Connector B pin 14 controls the amp). To bring up the amp, you connect the remote control wire from the radio (blue wire) to the antenna trigger and then the miracle of sound occurs. Since I had the volume set way up, I am sure the sound was heard counties away. Chickens will probably return to laying in a couple of weeks.

After installation was complete, I couldn't get Android Auto to work. The radio wouldn't connect to the phone. The solution was pretty simple, The USB cable was defective. It worked fine for charging the phone and connecting to my computer but wouldn't work in the car. It turns out that Android Auto is VERY picky when it comes to USB cable selection. Caveat emptor.

Now, here is my problem. I am trying to get the steering wheel buttons to work. I am using an Metra Axxess ASWC-1. In spite of the claim that they connect to anything, their tech support doesn't have any connection information for the Saab Nav radio harness. When I look at the wiring diagram in the WIS, the steering wheel switches terminate at the radio connectors pin B-7 (Ebus + high) and pin B-8 (Ebus - Low).

Has anyone else been able to get the steering wheel controls to work? Any help would be appreciated.

Regards,
Jim

[DrunkieTheBear]

I have the ASWC-1, the SID controls your steering wheel controls and feeds it to the stereo. So take a look for the wire you need to splice at the SID (blue/light blue wire). The white/green wire is the one to use off the ASWC-1 that you splice into the SID wire. Power your ASWC-1 with the wire off the headlight/ignition switch wire to the red and the black to the ground. From there figure out what stereo you have and follow the directions for connecting it to the stereo, which is simple with pioneer, just plug in the jack. When programming, the directions are pretty straight forward.

I actually emailed them sometime ago, told them all the info for connection and the resistance values so that it could be an auto learn setup. They never followed through or updated their website, whatever.

FYI, if you lay on the horn for more than a second it starts turning down the volume.

[DrunkieTheBear]

Speaking of Pioneer. I just did the AVH-3800BHS, wish I had just went 7", there really is no point for the 6.2" anymore since it has buttons for volume control instead of a knob. I hate not having a knob, but I wanted to try an upgrade.

I will say the Pioneer really brightens the audio even more and has a lot of features, but until you tune it, it blats the sound and makes it sound like crap. I have the crossover, timing, and eq tuned. Took me a solid week of driving to finally get it right, still has minor tweaks to do I feel but getting there.

I wanted to go android auto but they all kind of suck yet, need a little more time I think. Kenwood/JVC, Alpine, and Pioneer seem to shun the android side of things. And why do they have AppRadio still on that stereo? All the manufacturers dropped their support for App/smartphones in favor of the Android Auto and Apple Carplay, Pioneer is the last one to keep it going with their flavor AppRadio.

I am liking the new Sony AV100, it is getting rave reviews, it has a clean UI (I have a Sony Xperia, I think they dominate when it comes to clean simple minimalistic design), I want to try it but it has a mono subwoofer output and 2v preamp outputs....ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

[seippel]

Drunkie The Bear,
Thanks for the quick response. I finally found the information about the steering wheel buttons in the WIS. I didn't realize that the SID took the raw voltage and resistance from the buttons and converted them to signals for the navigation unit. You saved me a lot of time figuring which wires on the SID and the ASWC-1 to use.
Thanks a lot,
Jim

[seippel]

I just got a chance to look at the wiring on the SID. I can't find a blue/light blue wire. I looked at the wiring diagram for the SID in the WIS for a 2005. It does not show a blue/light blue wire. The wires from the steering wheel controls are yellow and blue. I looked at an earlier year and the color coding is the same. Should I assume that the correct wire is the blue wire that connects to pin 24?
Here is the description from the WIS:

• SID supplies +5V to the steering wheel controls via pin 24, and grounds them via pin 23.
• The six connectors comprise six resisters connected in series. When a button is pressed, the connector in question is grounded.
• When a connector is pressed, the total resistance in the circuit changes, as does the voltage value which SID then reads.

Thanks, Jim

[Solttu]

Hi, im doing the installation to my 9-5 and i have some issues. First, before i had the old kenwood navigation on this.

So i found the line out wires that goes to the rca harness from trunk so did not have to do anything else than just disconnect and move it to the front.

I got power to the new radio and sound for sometime. Then the sound just disappeared. No pwr coming to the amp remote wire for some reason. Amp died? I checked fuses but all ok.

Secondly, the steering wheel adapter, im not sure how to install it so im gonna send a pic from it.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1810ouip2h...75627.jpg?dl=0

So the orange wire goes to the sid wire? Was the sid wire white?

[dabernster]

I've recently successfully (99.9% satisfied) installed a cheap (<$100CAD) Morrivoe 6.6" touch screen head unit into my 2005 9-5. There are no "pop"s, screeches, or "engine whine," just the very faint white-noise from this particular HU - more on that later.

So I joined just to say thanks for all the awesome tips & diagrams; and to let folks know a few things about my travails.
First, though, a huge thanks to nordwolf, angry kitchen appliances, and others who have taken the time to post such helpful info about this subject!!

1. After much trouble shooting, the engine whine was completely suppressed by a really beefy noise filter (pic 1 below) placed in series with the yellow wire (yellow pin #8 from the Saab's interior plug in nordwolf's original post) and the continuous power line for my particular HU. I first tried it on the ignition line (red pin #2 in nordwolf's post), but that didn't do anything, but on that yellow line it works. I had tried to "roll my own" chokes (both ferrite core, and plain iron ring) to no avail. I probably needed either more than 6ft of wire to wrap, and/or a couple of capacitors to smooth things out more. I had forgotten that I had the one in the pic lying around, until rummaging for more components ...

2. The blue line on the interior connector (blue pin #7) I wired together with the red wire (ignition/switched), in order to turn the amp on when the radio comes on. Some users reported hearing pops, etc. when the key was turned on or off, but I heard no such thing, even without the filter in place.

3. The GLI's on the audio circuit didn't help at all. I tried to use the Pyramid Gold series NS-20 "noise suppressor isolation transformer" which come with the RCA plugs attached. Perhaps if I put them back in, I might eliminate the remaining .1% of noise. I'll probably try that again, but for now happy with just the noise suppressor on the continuous power feed.

You see, I got into this situation because the battery died last winter after an extended period of non-use (just a couple of months, but probably needed a new battery anyway). So after I replaced the battery I ran into the no-radio-code problem, to which all the local dealers were either clueless, or happy to charge me $75+ to reprogram the radio code. A quick glance on Amazon.ca one day convinced me to dump the old radio for a modern one - same price as reprogramming old one, more features. (BTW, if anyone can steer me to a hacker-friendly aftermarket HU, eg. android or other, or how to re-flash this unit, I'd be grateful. Just reply to this post.)

Now about my cheap head unit. I only listen to a couple AM stations, so only having FM is not a major issue. This unit also doesn't have a CD/DVD player, but it does have blue tooth (and yes it works great and can pause your music, and works as hands-free unit, mic is in upper left corner), two 2.1A USB ports in front, an audio jack, a micro-sd slot in front, and inputs for backup camera, and additional L&R+video outputs. All-in-all, very satisfied with this cheap purchase. The screen is resistive, not capacitive, so any object will work (great if you have gloves on in winter), but the GUI leaves a lot to be desired. It will play all sorts of A/V formats, and you can pic an image to be the "desktop" when you're browsing images. I don't have a backup camera, so can't say if it works well. The hands-free with blue tooth does work, and the mic pickup range seems decent enough (despite my Saab being fairly noisy). Going into settings will interrupt anything playing - i.e. no overlay/modal pop-ups for that. The audio level coming out of the back into my amp is very high, so the volume level selector stays below 10 though the volume bar clearly goes beyond twice that! Could probably use a line-leveling interface (as others in this forum have mentioned). It has a nice feature that turns off the unit 2 seconds after the rest of the accessories go off (eg. the amp) - perhaps that's why I hear no pops when I turn things off. Pay close attention to the pin-out diagram for your HU. In my case, the continuous power (the one that keeps the clock correct) and the switched/ignition power pin locations were swapped, as compared to the Saab original HU. And the blue ANT/AMP-ON line on my HU did put out 12V but just didn't work when connected to the same pin on the Saab connector - so I just connected them together on the Saab connector, and that works fine (i.e. when I turn on the ignition, the amp is powered too).

Pics:
1. beefy isolation noise filter - I looked inside and found a large transformer (choke), a resister and two capacitors.



2. GLIs that didn't help. But they have RCA connectors already attached. I looked inside, and there's a small transformer (choke), and a capacitor.


3. my working harness - I used small wire nuts, and soldered the RCA connectors to either end, hoping to use the GLIs.


4. my head unit. "Morrivoe Bluetooth 6.6 Inch 1080P Touch Screen In Dash Vehicle Car Stereo MP3/MP5 Player with USB/SD/AUX Input FM Radio Steering Wheel Control Hands-free Calls,BLACK"



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Hope this helps someone still guessing or sitting on the fence: it can be done, quite easily.
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Things left to do:

[dabernster]

Things left to do:
- add the steering wheel remote adapter
- take the power from the headlights, feeding it to the ignition/switched power pin on the HU as per nordwolf's followup post(s)
- improve the bezel situation - my unit came with a thin (1/4") plastic frame that leaves 1/8" gap around the sides and bottom, when shoved up against the SID; perhaps make it out of wood.
- I should note also that my HU had two screws holding the face plate onto its body which stuck out enough to prevent the unit from fitting into the metal frame in the Saab. But it's such a small amount that a bit of elbow grease (ie. prying with a screwdriver) to force the unit into place was enough.