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DNX7100 Double-DIN Install

24510 Views 56 Replies 16 Participants Last post by  Squirrel, 
Scooter Scott
7
So I just installed my DNX7100 into my '07 Escape.

We had many things go wrong during this install.

1) Despite the warnings about the metal clips scratching the dash, it happened Any ideas on working out these scratches would be great

2) I had a vent air freshner on my vent when we took the dash out, when laid down, the liquid came out and got onto the dash. It ate the paint right off and also ate through the plastic on the edge of the dash....it literally started cracking!

3) The vent on the passenger side of the dash broke at the bottom part of it...it's now holding on from the top part of the vent.

4) You can't piggy back any accessory off of another then plug it directly into the back of the headunit like you can, for example with any Alpine headunit. You need to by this switch that plugs everything in then routes it all to the headunit (there is an additional $80 I have to spend) I have the bluetooth add-on and the xm radio add-on. I had them piggybacked together...my xm only works when I hit Send or End on my phone while it is connected to the bluetooth.....and it only works for 5 seconds. Please see Crutchfield's Forums to get a better picture of what is going on.

Overall it looks great and it is a great headunit. Saturday was not a good day for me! If anyone has an extra dash laying around without the info center controls, please let me know.

I am thinking about just selling my Bluetooth instead of purchasing this extra switch. What do you guys think?

Here are the pics of myDouble-DIN after install. Sorry I didn't take pictures during the actual install.

These are taken at night so bare with me!






While installing I ran into the infamous metal clips problem as you can see below


And a funny story...I had an air freshner that clipped onto the vents. When we took off the trim panel we set it down, and when we did that, the liquid from the air freshner leaked out and ate the paint right off of the trim. You can also see that it cracked the trim too. Kinda nutz :bill:
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MadMax
How does yours compare with the Eclipse?
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Charles
How much difficulty have in putting either the Kenwood or Eclipse into my 2003 XLT? I have the factory 6cd changer that "appears" to be the right size. I have gone to Crutchfield and they say these will not fit.

Inquiring minds want to know...... :?:
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J
cbramsey said:
How much difficulty have in putting either the Kenwood or Eclipse into my 2003 XLT? I have the factory 6cd changer that "appears" to be the right size. I have gone to Crutchfield and they say these will not fit.
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Crutchfield says that because you have to trim the factory dash opening slightly to get ANY double DIN unit to fit. It is simple to do, but unless it's a straight bolt-in, Crutchfield will not list it.

~John
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Scooter Scott
I can't really say how mine compares to the Eclipse as I have never used one. However I do know that jmorton has used both units maybe he can give you a little perspective on the matter.
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Scooter Scott
Originally posted by Jpark:

PS...here's the vinyl paint GatorJ has used to patch vinyl scratches:

Clicky

They also have mix-it-yourself kits:

Clicky
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CrashNburn
that looks awesome. im debating putting in a 4.3" DVD player the one that fits in a single din but takes up more outside dash space, and installing a 1/2 din DVD player to wire to the rear screens. but that big screen fills that hole nicely. thanks to you gusy i might have to change my mind LoL
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K
I have the Alpine iva-w205 my local Detroit area custom shop is making kits for escape since no one seems to make one for a 2004 i will post pics when i get it done Saturday :thumb:
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Scooter Scott
Sweet can't wait to see your setup! And welcome to the forums!
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J
kbosworth1 said:
I have the Alpine iva-w205 :
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I know that is a DVD player, but is it also a NAV unit??

~John
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K
it does not have the NAV built in but what is cool is you buy the portable Alpine Blackbird 2 and you can put mp3's on the blackbird and it docks inside the unit so you can use the larger touch screen and also play the mp3's and as an added bonus it gives you bluetooth capability on your radio without having to buy thee extra module :thumb:
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J
kbosworth1 said:
it does not have the NAV built in but what is cool is you buy the portable Alpine Blackbird 2 and you can put mp3's on the blackbird and it docks inside the unit :
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Yea, that is a cool idea. That NAV unit does not get very high marks from reviewers however (I don't remember why right at the moment, but there are drastic differences between different brands of NAV setups), but I haven't personally tried it myself so I can't comment on that.

~John
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J
http://www.gpsmagazine.com/2006/11/alpine_blackbird_review.php


Quote from a review of the Blackbird:

"As if the address entry problems weren't enough to ruin the Blackbird, the routing engine performance was even worse. I tested the Blackbird against other similarly priced GPS units, including the Garmin StreetPilot c550, Garmin nuvi 660, TomTom GO 910, and Magellan RoadMate 2200. I also tested the Blackbird's routing performance against several online mapping providers (Yahoo Maps, Google Maps, and MSN Maps). The Blackbird lost in every single road test - consistently choosing inefficient routes and routing me bizarre ways.
In fact, the Blackbird was never able to correctly route me to a destination -- even on short trips with obvious roadways. The Blackbird is stunningly bad a figuring out which roads to take."

These where listed as the "cons" in the review:

Awful routing engine (the Blackbird couldn't route me correctly to ANY destination I tested)
GPS receiver performance not competitive with other units that use SiRF's chipset
Terrible address entry system - I had to experiment between entering the city first, or the street name first in order to find the address I was looking for. In some cases I had to know the exact cross street in order to find the address on the Blackbird.
Lots of vibration while driving, due to the poorly designed windshield mount
No text-to-speech
No route exclusion feature (route exclusion allows you to tell the GPS to avoid a certain road or highway when calculating the route)
Shorter than average battery life (~2 hours of continuous use)
No 3D Map view (map is shown in 2D only)
When entering the State name, you have to scroll through a list of every state, in alphabetical order, one at a time
MP3 player doesn't support playlists
No way to customize the level of voice prompts (you can turn them on or off, but you can't specify what types of things should be announced)
Screen not as bright at some other units -- I found the display hard to read in bright sunlight
Unnecessarily massive windshield mount
Slightly difficult to dock / undock the Blackbird from the cradle
No automatic power-off feature (i.e. automatically shut down the unit when the car is turned off)
No Bluetooth
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Scooter Scott
wow...I didn't realize alpine could put out such a poor product. Alpine used to be top of the line!
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J
GPS/NAV units are kind of a hobby of mine & have been for years (my first unit had a black & white screen). I sold Garmin units at one time & they are my favorite units at this time.

I have used/owned/tested most of the units on the market at one time or another (I actually have 3 different NAV units to choose from in my truck right now). To me, the routing engine performance is the first thing I look at when choosing a GPS. I know how frustrating it can be to own a unit that has sub-par routing. At one point, I owned a Pioneer Avic Z1 built in double DIN unit. This $2200 unit was an absolutely AWESOME entertainment center, but the routing engine was awful (I ended up selling that unit on ebay).

We where out scouting colleges for my son to attend & that POS was routing us to one we had never been to. At one point, it routed us off an exit that came to a T where you had to turn either right or left. Although both my Wife & I where pretty sure the school was to the left, the unit insisted we where to turn right which we did. About 5 miles down the road, the unit piped up & said "make a legal u-turn". We where on a 4 lane divided highway at the time...... I had to go another 5 miles or so to find an exit where I could turn around, just to end up driving right past the exit where we should have turned left in the first place. No NAV unit is perfect, but this kind of stuff happened constantly with the Z1.

Another time it gave what seemed like a very round about way down the East coast to another school, so I pulled up Google maps on my PDA & had Google plan a route. Google's route was 89 miles shorter & made perfect sense.

~John
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Scooter Scott said:
wow...I didn't realize alpine could put out such a poor product. Alpine used to be top of the line!
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I agree, I was an Alpine dealer when I was in the stereo business.

The problem is, Alpine does not actually make the NAV unit but relies on some other company to supply it & just puts their name on it.

~John
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jonas1022
That's alot of misdirected miles. Is there one for a reasonable price that can do the routing correctly? I am currently looking. And the units that I see are reasonably priced, but I doubt their capability.

As much as I pan Consumers Reports, I wonder if they have tested GPS units lately? They do test things fairly accurately, I do think you have to be on their wavelength to understand their results philosophy sometimes.
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Scooter Scott
I've heard that Alpine units have went downhill overall...not just in the nav units but that their stereos haven't been up to par either...
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J
jonas1022 said:
That's alot of misdirected miles. Is there one for a reasonable price that can do the routing correctly?
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ANY Garmin unit will work just fine for you. All the Garmin's use the same routing engine, just the features are different.

If you choose another brand, make sure it has Navteq maps in it as opposed to Teleatlas. Teleatlas work better in Europe, Navteq are better in the USA/Canada etc.

~John
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Scooter Scott said:
I've heard that Alpine units have went downhill overall...not just in the nav units but that their stereos haven't been up to par either...
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I didn't realize that, but I don't really keep current on mobile audio anymore.

~John
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