Thanks to a generous donation from seattlesc who gave us a perfectly functional pioneer radio to hack up we have the donor radio and are underway. I'd personally like to thank seattlesc for his unselfish actions and willingness to contribute to the CL community as he even paid to ship it here so we could get the conversion underway. Tonight I will begin to strip the unit down and gut it in preparation for the new aftermarket radio conversion.

 

The premise sounds intresting, but what exactly are you doing?

 

A while back i had proposed the idea of frenching an aftermarket radio into the stock radio chassis so one could enjoy any aftermarket radio they wished without having to go with the dreaded fit kit fiasco of the aftermarket radio install thereby keeping the stock apperance. I had a thread asking for a donor, and seattlesc decided to give his radio as the donor for the mutation.

 

Thanx seattlesc ..... and I can't wait to see what onelasttry has up his sleeves Keep up updated.....

Looking forward to this....
Shawn

 

As you can see from the photo, the lexus radio is a 2.5 din radio. it has two full radio cages inside of it, as well as a half din space at the bottom. I will be removing both floors of the unit, and replacing one of the floors with the motherboard of the new aftermarket unit. getting the radio motherboard inside will be a fairly average job for me. but making it work with the stock faceplate is going to be the trick.

 

good luck. let us know how you plan on getting the display to work!

 

GUTTED!!

 

010

 

onelasttry if you don't mind me asking what unit are you using.... Also you are saying you are going to gut out a aftermarket unit and place it into the stock "shell" of the factory Headunit ..... So as for the Vol control and the Stock LCD/ buttons you think you could get it all to work together ?? and a aftermarket changer also ?? Like I said I can't wait for this GL on your work............


Shawn

 

Looks good Brian...Keep up the good work!

I have a question...Would this same conversion work for Nakamichi head units also?

 

onelasttry,

Are you going to use the stock tapedeck? That headunit looks like a non-cd one, so it looks like your going to have do some magic with the faceplate. Good luck, and keep us posted! I'm very interested in seeing how this turns out.

 

OK, as far as aftermarket head units, there will be two units i will be using. The mainboard (guts) unit will be an Alpine CDM-7861 flip face cd unit. The display screen will be from an older sony since the display will be easier to fit into the stock lexus faceplate. i am going to attempt to use the display from the lexus faceplate, but i am not expecting it to work, so i have aquired the sony for a backup because of it's similarity in height.

the external volume can be used if i can get the Alpine board to accept an analog signal. the aftermarket changer can be used with any aftermarket headunit of the same type that is changer capable. if i use a alpine board, i can use an alpine changer for example.

This can be done to any radio of any brand, ford, chevy, lexus, ect.. since i am not using very many of the factory components. I am however having to use the factory faceplate and wire each individual button and light as well as any extra options the aftermarket unit may have, so it's no cakewalk by any means.
another problem is that unless i use a radio that uses analog rotary buttons for the bass and treble, i have to make one of the buttons on the face multipurpose.


Magic? hehe, david copperfield would be proud. i still haven't planned the escape hole for the cd yet. I don't even plan ahead on these kinds of projects because if i plan it, it won't go according to plan, and if i don't i can be creative. My dremel tool is exited about this as well

 

by the way, if anyone has an alpine CDM-7861 and needs parts, i'm about to have a few

 

so you're using a stock stereo to make a aftermarket fit?
why dont you just buy a car kit?
my car had a custom headunit kit, and it works great. clean install too.