New head unit

[Fat Magpie]

Thanks ele288, that explains everything. The MOST is an optical system; does it also carry the Canbus signaling?

[ele288]

It's optical. The infotainment is in specific order on the fiber,

[Shug]

Originally Posted by Fat Magpie

Well, the new unit arrived today; it took nearly 2 months to get here. the build quality is impressive, the unit itself is aluminum, and the whole unit is quite heavy. I hope to install it in the next few days

Hi, looks like a good kit, does front and rear parking sensors still sound? I have read some upgrades loose the front sensor signal. Also is there a way of taking line level sound to separate amplifiers? I recently bought an '09 XC60, love the car, but want to upgrade sound system.

Cheers

[Fat Magpie]

Well, success, I installed it today, and it's superb. The unit looks OEM, and the functionality is way above what I had before with the old factory-fit sat nav.

It is well worth doing...

I have Android Auto or Apple Carplay, I can decide, voice control, internet surfing, and I think that the audio is crisper or better.

It was a struggle at one point; I was unsure if I had a bad wiring harness or if there was a compatibility issue. but after some investigation, I sorted the issue out. It has given the old girl a new lease of life; the cockpit now looks more modern.

I will give a more detailed installation description in a later post.

To Shug, my install still retains both front and back sensors, and the sound is better to my ear; the old head unit is a budget Ford unit, which I think is a considerable improvement.

[Fat Magpie]

Another significant advantage is that the old sat nav unit, the factory-fitted unit, consumed considerable electrical power even when the car was parked and locked. The reason for this was old technology; the unit had to remain powered up so that the driver had instant sat nav when the car was started, while the older, more primitive sat navs needed maybe 5 minutes to find the satellites and did not display a map (if you had one of these old portable stuck on windscreen aftermarket units you will remember).

The older factory-fit unit had two modules: the screen in the dash, which was the GPS receiver, and the nav data held on a CD unit in the boot; both were constantly powered.
This strained the car battery; I remember leaving it at an airport for three weeks, and the battery was almost flat.

I have now disconnected both of the old units, so the parasite current has been greatly reduced.

[Shug]

Originally Posted by Fat Magpie

Well, success, I installed it today, and it's superb. The unit looks OEM, and the functionality is way above what I had before with the old factory-fit sat nav.

It is well worth doing...

I have Android Auto or Apple Carplay, I can decide, voice control, internet surfing, and I think that the audio is crisper or better.

It was a struggle at one point; I was unsure if I had a bad wiring harness or if there was a compatibility issue. but after some investigation, I sorted the issue out. It has given the old girl a new lease of life; the cockpit now looks more modern.

I will give a more detailed installation description in a later post.

To Shug, my install still retains both front and back sensors, and the sound is better to my ear; the old head unit is a budget Ford unit, which I think is a considerable improvement.

That does look amazing. Do you have a link for where you bought it from? Cheers.

[Fat Magpie]

Well, I purchased mine from Ali Express, the ZWNAV GPS Store. However, these guys sell them and can offer little to no assistance. Mine had a problem.

I believe a company called Seican (Seican.com) makes and sells them. They can offer technical assistance, and they were superb in helping me even though I did not buy it from them directly.

I did a custom install. If you follow the factory instructions, you will lose some functionality. The factory install disabled some of the top pod features, and I had no display or sound from the parking sensors front and back.
Also, I had no sound from the car amplifier; I might have had a dud wiring harness module (the blue box see image). However, I gave the unit 12vs from another source, and it worked ok, with audio out from the phono connectors, and tested using a small portable amp speaker system.

In my install, I left the original Volvo unit fitted and connected, so I still have the original sound system, and everything works normally. I disconnected the antenna lead and bought an antenna splitter lead from Amazon. Thus, the old radio and the new Android units have or share an aerial connection.

To install, I just gave the unit 12vs from the cigarette lighter socket cables underneath the dash unit and connected the audio out from the phono connectors to the analog aux-in on the Volvo (3-meter phono to 3.5mm jack lead from Amazon); it works, and I have all of the original car features as well.


The sound is definitely better; my Volvo has a mid-range (called a high-performance sound system), but it always sounded average. I suspect all the speakers in the factory are the same as those in the higher-spec system, but Ford's head unit CD tuner was a budget unit. The higher-spec factory audio systems also had a center speaker in the LCD pod unit; the wring is there, plus a plug but no speaker.

Difficulty level, there was one bolt that was a pain in the ass to remove, and getting the old sat nav screen out was a pain as well, but it s not too difficult to do. Think of it like this: you are just adding a new car radio, giving it an independent 12v source, and taking its audio output to the aux in on your Volvo.

All the cables are hidden beneath the main console panel. The whole thing looks factory OEM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsI4s8xrNYY&t=2s

[RDesign4Life]

Looks great, nice work.

[Fat Magpie]

I don't want to be a post wh@re, but I am posting this before I forget it, and maybe it can help someone else doing a similar install.

I disconnected the rear CD unit for the sat nav to save battery power when the car is parked and locked. But if you just pull the power leads, the audio amp will not work. It's the MOST system, a fibre optic bus or system to carry multimedia data.
You can either leave the CD unit powered up or buy a loop-through cable for the fibre optic connector. Pull the optical cable from the back of the CD unit and plug in the loop cable, My head unit came with such a looping cable and when fitted everything worked with the CD from the unit unplugged