How To: Upgrade Head Unit (Kenwood eXcelon DNX6960)

Is it just me, or do those trim pieces have indentions where the clips are molded showing through on the front? I have been putting off the DNX9960 simply because I haven't seen one installed with a nice flush fit, but I may finally just give in and go for it anyway. How accurate and fast is the iPod response? Does it report characters correctly?

 

Haven't times it but I'd guess about 10 seconds? I am listening to music before I get my car in reverse almost every time, so it can't be that long...

 

I don't notice what you are talking about when I look at the trim pieces. In person it looks amazing, in my opinion.

iPod response is great. As with any SWI-Jack kit (from what I understand) you have to actually press down on the steering wheel control and it's not immediate response like factory would be. But it is fairly rapid and it hasn't bothered me yet.

If I change iPod on the unit it is instant. My iPod (6th Nano) displays all characters correctly for song, artist, album, etc and shows all album artwork within one to two seconds of song coming on.

 

Hey USB, I'm lobbying the Mods to make our install threads Sticky.

 

Agreed! I'm stoked you put all the effort into documenting it. I'm sure the hundreds of people who've read it and benefited from it are stoked too.

 

I'm dying to install one of these in my 09 but I was just curious as to what happens on the MFD when you press the "audio" button?

 

Well usb, and f8l, I think I speak for many people on here when I say your threads about upgrading your audio have been of a great help. There are quite a few other helpful posts on the subject on these forums but the two of you most of all have such detailed threads that they inspired me to DIY on an audio upgrade of my own, instead of taking it into a shop for $200 extra to have it all installed. But sadly i'm such a detail hound I still have a few questions left if you don't mind?

The details first:
2008 Prius (non-JBL)
Pioneer AVIC X920BT
Scosche TA02B 87-Up Toyota Wiring Harness
Scosche TA2103B Prius Double Din
Metra Axxess ASWC (SWI Controller)

Now my question: Upon starting the wiring a problem came up. There's some wires on the Pioneer harness (which is to be connected to the Scosche Wiring Harness) that don't seem to have a match on said harness and seem pretty important. For example: There's a pink wire labeled Car Speed Signal Input. A purple wire labeled Reverse-Gear Signal Input. A blue wire labeled System Remote Control. And the ever important light green wire which is labeled Parking Brake. Now, how am I to hook any of these up if there's no corresponding wire to connect to on the Toyota Wiring Harness?

I've searched google for quite some time looking for this answer only to fall just short of an answer that applies to my setup time and time again. I've included a picture of the wires in question. I know others have used these wires from my google searches but like I said, no information really specific to a gen 2 prius and a pioneer avic.

The parking brake wire I presumes tell the HU that you can't watch video's now. The speed sensor wire helps with gps positioning most likely by determining your speed, etc.

 

Thank you kindly. That Prius Speed Wire link I actually already had open in the tab next to this one lol. Had not clicked on the reverse video yet. Was still trying to figure out if that's what I need to get into before I read everything and become the guy who starts muttering wire pin numbers to himself over and over again. Well it seems I have a lot of reading ahead of me as I really don't want to mess up any of the wiring inside my car with a misplaced splice. Again, thanks.

 

US, thanks for all the great vids! I sent you an email not sure if it went through but was wondering if you had instructions to updating the nav/maps on the unit. thanks!

 

So I finished my install this weekend. Liking it so far. I'm already muttering to myself about other drivers less now that I get to have my music playing in the car instead of just the radio.

Can't thank you and F8L enough for the help you both gave on this forum, as well as a few others. I'll make a thread with some pictures of the install process once things get less busy. Was fun to DIY this though it did take me quite a long time. I took plenty of pics though not enough as I wanna kick myself for not taking a picture of where I tapped into the speed wire. That link you gave me to Darrell's site helped a bunch on that though without the JBL system or rear view camera built in the wire's put in a different place in the harness that feeds into the MFD. It's still the purple wire though and it's still the only one so it was pretty easy nonetheless. I just tapped into it.

Anyways I'll post some pics soon but at the moment I'm trying to decide whether or not I'm keeping the Metra Axxess. That up/down button nonsense is annoying the hell out of me. Don't know if you know but on the Metra you have 2 options for the up/down on your steering wheel. Either it goes track up and down for cd's/ipod AND 'seek' through radio static... or up/down on radio presets and nothing else at all on any other source. Which is really annoying but the reason I got this unit over the PAC SWI-PS is that I couldn't find any solid information on a) the delay in response time for button press to action or b) whether the PAC-SWI handled the up/down in the same way. From what I could gather (mostly from PAC's website info about button mapping) it seems that they do so it wasn't worth it to me get the PAC over the Metra. =/

 

I'm just happy we could help you out.

If you can write up your install I'd be happy to add any new information onto my thread and I'm sure USB would like to do the same. It's all about spreading the knowledge and making the Prius experience that much better.

 

Indeed, that's my hope. I even made a few vids of some of my wiring. And I wanted to make one of the dash disassembly but it honestly took me so long there was no way. I'll take it apart at some point now that I know what I'm doing. I think I'm going to want to try and change the angle of the screen as it takes in a lot of glare during the early morning. My hope is that I can get a friend of mine to help me film so that it's not all my head in the way shots.

I had a plan to do all this because doing this myself was a pretty large undertaking with no clear roadmap. I'd like those that come after all of us to have a much more clear picture of not just what they're getting themselves into but also how-to. It'd make it so much less stressful lol.