Pioneer AVIC-F700BT
This article should be subtitled: Why card-carrying AARP members should never install a radio/navigation system in a truck.
On the Saturday following the Great Ice Storm of ’09 here in Louisville, I was driving to run errands after dropping my wife off at a conference and was contentedly listening to the Science Friday podcast off my iPhone via a cassette adapter in my old RAV4′s radio, when suddenly, I was surrounded in the cockpit by the sound of SILENCE! Well, silence and the quiet sound of grinding plastic gears emanating from within my radio. I ejected the adapter and was shocked at how warm it was, so I figured the gears in its case had just tried to seize up and I grabbed the adapter I use with my Sirius Stiletto unit (hard to unplug the adapter cable from the Stiletto’s dash dock, so I used two adapters). A soft click, click, click. Ejected that adapter and tried the CD player; it worked but the sound was distorted as it was when I tried FM and then AM. “It’s dead Jim.”
I am not sure, but I think Toyota uses Clarion head-units in their vehicles, and they are usually pretty reliable if rather uninspired in their aesthetic design and feature sets. About like most vehicles from Subaru, which also used Clarion units. No matter, this parrot was no more and it was time to start researching a likely replacement, that was both affordable and helped eliminate the clutter of wires and adapters and boxes which have seemingly multiplied in the seven years that the RAV has been hauling myself and my collection of electronic gadgetry down the road.
The most pressing need was restoring the Stiletto for my listening pleasure, since I am paying an exorbitant amount in extortion fees — that increased again on March 12th — to Sirius each month and it was going to waste while I was unable to listen to it in the truck. Therefore, the new head-unit needed an Aux-in jack on the front, a more elegant solution than a cassette adapter — if one could find or even want to find a unit with a cassette player nowadays — or using the dock’s built-in FM transmitter in the radio clutter which is the state of the FM band around Louisville. Secondly would be to have a dedicated 30-pin iPod/iPhone connector which would facilitate the playing of such devices as well as charging them while moving on down the road. The ability to control Apple devices from the head-unit would be a major plus as well.
My wife and I share a TomTom One 130
I have long been a fan of Pioneer Electronics since the late 1970s when I bought my first component stereo system and then my first LaserDisc player (I had DVD-quality video from 1980 on) and various other gee-gaws over the years to the present day. For around $250 I could strike most of my bullet points off the list, with the exception of a navigation system with the Pioneer FH-P8000BT
However, early on in my research I had found the Pioneer AVIC F-series radios at Best Buy with the cheapest unit still commanding Pioneer’s list price of $850. These are really some lust-worthy radios for the non-Luddites out there and unfortunately, they have the price tags to match — best price I could find for the low-end one was $650. If one has seen one of the Ford commercials in recent months touting their cars that come equipped with radios that utilize the exclusive SYNC system from Microsoft, that are able to use conversational voice commands (up to certain limits) then you will get the idea. The exclusive part must just refer to car company exclusivity, because the AVIC radios use the same Microsoft OS and have the same voice command capabilities as the SYNC radios. Plus they have a huge touch-screen display, powerful navigation system with text-to-speech to tell you the name of the street to turn on to and lane indicators at the top of the screen to let you know which lane you need to be in to catch your exit on the Interstate, video-capable Aux-in jack (the law requires a connection to the parking brake switch so that video can only be viewed while parked with the parking brake set), a video-capable USB/iPod/iPhone connector (same parking brake restrictions for video) so you can hook up your iPod, your iPhone, a USB thumb drive or even a portable USB hard drive; an SD card slot for video, music playback, and for updating the system firmware. A very nice system, but two things kept me from jumping on the bandwagon and buying a unit for myself; the price and the admonition from Pioneer that recommended PROFESSIONAL INSTALLATION ONLY.
A couple of weeks ago I read that Pioneer had started a $200 instant rebate program for the AVIC F-series radios (which everybody except Best Buy honored as far as I could tell). I decided to look at these units again and found a good deal on the Pioneer AVIC-F700BT
The radio arrived on the FedEx truck on Wednesday afternoon (the iPod cable was a day behind it) so I spent a couple of hours studying the installation guide, scratching head, studying some more, repeat, until I got the gist of what they wanted me to do. I then spent about 90 minutes soldering the wiring together (never been a big fan of wire crimping and I am not half-bad with a soldering iron) and wrapping it neatly. I then waited for the next day and the arrival of the iPod cable.
After the mail run on Thursday, I had all the components to begin the radio transplant operation in the RAV. I gathered all the tools I thought I would need, although I would invariably over the next several hours have to stop and go get something else out of the tool chest as per the Rivers Corollary of Projects Involving a Lot of Tools. I pulled out the old radio and passed the huge amount of new wiring through the opening and began making the various connections. The first wiring task was to run a long wire from the harness through the dash and to the back of the truck and clamp the end to the hot side of the back-up light, for apparently, it is not enough for the GPS part of the unit to rely on signals from the GPS satellites in space to figure out which way the vehicle is going, it also needs to know whether or not said vehicles is in reverse or not — I am still scratching my head on that one. Well, that wasn’t too hard. Next up was hooking up the GPS antenna and for this, I opted not to run it onto the roof of the RAV as I already had the Sirius antenna mounted up there and didn’t want the RAV to look like it was sprouting too many antennas and become the mobile equivalent of Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs. Besides, I was concerned about water leaks with so many wires being lead through the weather stripping. I just stuck the metal mounting plate on top of the dash and slapped the magnetic GPS antenna on it so it could pick up signals from space through the windshield and hope for the best. End of first hour of the operation.
Probably the easiest cable run was probably the iPod A/V cable to the glovebox, as it only took maybe five minutes. Now it was time to run the cable to the parking brake switch. I would spend the next two hours removing the console to even get access to the switch, lie across the door sill in ever-increasingly ridiculous angles to run the cable down to the switch, more serious bodily contortions trying to gain purchase with my fingers on the very short inch and a half long lead from a wiring harness to the switch so that I could clamp my cable to it and the then put everything back together correctly using the exact number of screws I removed when I pulled the console. A few final four-letter incantations to make sure the spell on it was properly cast and it was time to run the microphone cable out and around and up and through to clip it to my sun visor.
Ok, hook the wiring harness up to the back of the radio, make sure the mass of wires is out of the way of the radio’s cooling fan and push it into place and bolt it in, replace the trim ad dash vents, go and hook the battery back up and did I mention it is only 35° in the garage? Moment of truth and I turn the key and it powers up, but I have to use the special stylus they shipped in the box to reset the radio before I can use it. I wait anxiously for it to reboot and finally I get the warning screen about the proper operation of the radio in a way that will not distract me while I am driving, yada yada yada…
Oh my, everything works. GPS, check. CD, check. iPod, check. iPhone, check. Radio. Radio. Uh, radio? Crap, forgot to hook the antenna up. Pull radio back out of the dash and fish around back there for the antenna lead and plug it in and put dash back together and ten minutes later, I have radio. Four and a half hours to complete the transplant, not counting the prep-work time on Wednesday. Unfortunately, I would be in pretty bad pain from the experience from Thursday till the following Tuesday and could barely walk on Saturday and Sunday. Definitely a job for a younger person.
The only negative I have read about these radios has been how slow they boot up. That was with version 1 of the radio’s firmware and this unit shipped with version 2.0 and the boot time is vastly improved but it not instant on. AM or FM radio, CD and my Stiletto radio playing through the Aux-in jack will start playing in about 7 or 8 seconds from key on, the GPS unit doesn’t fully boot up for 30 seconds or so and the iPod starts playing a few seconds after that. Considering the capabilities of this system, I guess that is a fair trade off. Everything else works as advertised, but I do recommend printing out the 192 page Owners Guide off the CD in the box as it is not the most intuitive thing I have every used. But Microsoft had their hand in it, so you get what you get. But after you get used to things, you find it is a very powerful system with a great GPS system, much better than our TomTom; nice sounding stereo even with my stock speakers. Voice Command works as well as it does in the commercials, but it does have a problem with my slightly southern-tinge accent (what I get for having a father from Louisiana) like when I asked it to play the Eagles, it loaded the Beatles, but it got it right next time.
Bottom-line: Best radio I have ever owned, but not sure I will ever install my own radio ever again.
Tags: "Bluetooth Hands-free", "Car Stereo", "Navigation System", "Pioneer Electronics", AVIC-F700BT, in_dash, iPhone, iPod, Pioneer, Radio, Stereo
