2003 Porsche Boxster S
Discussion
squareflops said:
Liking the interior lights addition dude; quite fancy that myself.
This exhaust mod is something I'm seriously considering too. Charlie has built a few exhaust systems for me before so know his work is great. How does it sound on a run? Is it at all intrusive? We do pop over to France quite a bit so want to avoid a drone at cruising speeds but yours does sound fantastic compared to standard. £130 is a bargain from Propseed!
It sounds fantastic. You can drive this thing totally silent if need be, as tickling the throttle gives the same exhaust note as standard. On the motorway, there's very little resonating; there may even be less. You get that same slight drone at around 60mph, but anything above that is fine. I'm a stickler for having a quiet car on the motorway and I'm fine with this This exhaust mod is something I'm seriously considering too. Charlie has built a few exhaust systems for me before so know his work is great. How does it sound on a run? Is it at all intrusive? We do pop over to France quite a bit so want to avoid a drone at cruising speeds but yours does sound fantastic compared to standard. £130 is a bargain from Propseed!
Let me know if you ever want to do the interior lights, I'll talk you through it.
I can spin a spanner but I'm rubbish at wiring! Here we go:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/141038761146
Only £16, and they're perfect. Have fitted a few of these now and they're great. The beeper is ok but I'm going to wire up a BMW gong which sounds quite premium, and you can pick one up for about £7 on eBay.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/141038761146
Only £16, and they're perfect. Have fitted a few of these now and they're great. The beeper is ok but I'm going to wire up a BMW gong which sounds quite premium, and you can pick one up for about £7 on eBay.
V8OW said:
Looks stunning. Good effort.
I'm definitely thinking of going down this route once my lease car goes back.
I can't recommend these cars enough. Well, the later ones, not the pre-facelift ones.I'm definitely thinking of going down this route once my lease car goes back.
Anyway. I've got a new radio! I've decided to go down a different route to everyone else. I've got a CDR-23 so it's not an easy swap, but thankfully I've not got an amplifier so that does simplify things if only a little. I've gone down the route of an Android head unit by a Chinese company called Xtrons, as I wanted to make use of things like Google Maps, Spotify, and customise it completely to create a Porsche branded radio. Granted, these are made on the cheap but there's been great reviews, and I can tell you that so far it's incredible. Build quality is outstanding, and it's speed is fantastic. It just has to stand the test of time, but to be honest, what electrical component isn't made in China anyway? This wasn't an Ebay jobbie either, and was from the company themselves. They do a lot of custom radios, and are quite common.
Here's the radio I've got:
It's got some incredible features. Being Android it's completely customisable. It's very fast, there's no horrible chrome buttons, the hardware buttons on the left and right are illuminated by RGB LED's and can be changed using any colour you can think of. It's lovely.
I powered it up using a laptop charger that I hacked into, so that I could customise it before fitting it.
Here's the home screen, with a custom Porsche background that neatly places a logo at the top left:
Customised the Android start screen to show my own designed Porsche startup logo:
Trying to make it feel OEM.
Got round to adding some apps (Google Maps, Spotify, etc)
Spotify:
Google Maps:
Notice the 'Porsche' app?
That's the Torque app, but I've customised the shortcut to show that. Torque now opens up custom designed layouts that match the car's interior, and gives me useful information.
Got round to fitting it:
The awesome thing about it being android is that it's 100% customisable. I can install Netflix if I wished (obviously not going to). I can download Gmail, SoundCloud, even Facebook if I wanted to. It's perfect. The car radio can now diagnose its own problems through the OBD2 port and show real time information as shown above.
And the price? £190 for the radio and around £70 for the fitting parts and fascias. This thing blows £600+ radios out of the water.
Now before anyone with a Boxster or 996 thinks "Awesome I'll order mine!", this was far from a plug and play job. I've had to run custom wires from the fuse box, cut the radio harness wires and wire them into the cars adapters myself while soldering spade connectors onto them, I've had to remove the plastic surround and dremel it to fit the new radio, etc. It's not pretty behind it all, but it's finally working.
A little bit about what was done:
Installation:
- Purchased the Xtrons radio and above fitting kits
- Removed radio surround
- Dremeled the surround inner area to allow the double din radio to fit
- Screwed the double din cage into the sides of the radio surround
- Connected the 12v wire from the new radio loom to the 12v wire in the black connector on the original radio loom using thin spade connectors
- Connected a ground wire from the new radio loom to the ground wire in the black connector on the original radio loom using thin spade connectors
- Fed a 12v accessories switched feed from fuse E1 to the radio's switched 12v feed as the original loom doesn't have one (the CDR23 never needed one)
- Connected the front left positive & negative, and the front right positive & negative speaker wires from the new radio loom to the correct wires in the brown connector on the original radio loom using spade connectors.
- Fed a wire from the grey/blue wire in the instrument cluster to the new radio loom's illumination wire, so the radio recognises the lights
- Screwed in the attachment plates to the side of the radio
- Connected the external GPS at the back
- Slid the radio into place
- Attached the bezel
- TO DO: Buy an adapter for the radio wire
Setup:
- Designed and applied custom boot logo
- Designed and applied custom wallpaper to show Porsche logo in the upper left
- Installed Google Maps
- Installed Spotify
- Installed SoundCloud
- Installed Gmail
- Installed Torque
- Downloaded 'Icon Changer Free' to replace and rename the Torque app with a Porsche icon
- Enabled Torque to start straight into the dashboards when the app is launched, bypassing the Torque home page
- Customised the dashboards to show relevant information, and customised the look and feel to a more Porsche branded look (including a logo)
- Auto connects to phone's mobile WiFi hotspot
Tadaaaah! It's taken a while, but by god it looks good.
gowmonster said:
does the 986 have a display in the dials linked to the head unit, if so have you integrated that somehow?
It doesn't. There are dot-matrix dials on some Boxsters (that I'm looking to install soon), but this just shows standard trip computer things. The readouts you can see on the radio are from the Torque app, which reads the OBD2 diagnostic port through a WiFi adapter plugged into it, giving real time information.The app was about £2, and the adapter was about £10. Best money I've spent on the car.
That looks fantastic dude. Excellent value also. I had a similar Eonon unit in the m3 and whilst I didn't customize it as much as you have it was a great addition. The free offline maps got me through Europe on a trip very nicely. One thing I did find with it was I couldn't access playlists from the head unit itself, I had to select the track/list I wanted on my iphne then bluetooth to the headunit, a little clunky. A Pioneer Carplay unit I had installed in a previous Subaru was seamless but the Eonon HU was still very good.
Can you pair to your phone on this and select audio through the HU?
If I wasn't getting the bypass mod done on the 18th with Charlie after seeing/hearing yours I'd be tempted to get myself one of these this month..
Can you pair to your phone on this and select audio through the HU?
If I wasn't getting the bypass mod done on the 18th with Charlie after seeing/hearing yours I'd be tempted to get myself one of these this month..
geraintthomas said:
gowmonster said:
does the 986 have a display in the dials linked to the head unit, if so have you integrated that somehow?
It doesn't. There are dot-matrix dials on some Boxsters (that I'm looking to install soon), but this just shows standard trip computer things. The readouts you can see on the radio are from the Torque app, which reads the OBD2 diagnostic port through a WiFi adapter plugged into it, giving real time information.The app was about £2, and the adapter was about £10. Best money I've spent on the car.
gowmonster said:
I have the app and the dongle, but am looking for headunits, i have a 987.1 and it looks like unlike other cars there are no harness adapters that are straight easies :S
You'll be glad to hear that you're wrong:http://xtrons.co.uk/11-585-double-din-car-stereo-f...
Xtrons themselves do a fascia that fits the 987 for this radio, so it'll look even better than mine. They didn't do one for the 986, but you're in luck.
squareflops said:
That looks fantastic dude. Excellent value also. I had a similar Eonon unit in the m3 and whilst I didn't customize it as much as you have it was a great addition. The free offline maps got me through Europe on a trip very nicely. One thing I did find with it was I couldn't access playlists from the head unit itself, I had to select the track/list I wanted on my iphne then bluetooth to the headunit, a little clunky. A Pioneer Carplay unit I had installed in a previous Subaru was seamless but the Eonon HU was still very good.
Can you pair to your phone on this and select audio through the HU?
If I wasn't getting the bypass mod done on the 18th with Charlie after seeing/hearing yours I'd be tempted to get myself one of these this month..
I think so. You can on Spotify anyway, it recognises the car and you can control it. Thanks for the compliments though Can you pair to your phone on this and select audio through the HU?
If I wasn't getting the bypass mod done on the 18th with Charlie after seeing/hearing yours I'd be tempted to get myself one of these this month..
V8OW said:
Great effort.
The one thing I would miss from my Octavia is the headunit (android/iphone integration), as integrated google and spotify is brilliant.
I almost bought an adroid headunit for my old E46, but glad to see there are some good options available.
Having Spotify is a dream to be honest! So nice to have my computer, phone and now my car all synced up.The one thing I would miss from my Octavia is the headunit (android/iphone integration), as integrated google and spotify is brilliant.
I almost bought an adroid headunit for my old E46, but glad to see there are some good options available.
olly22n said:
You know what, people who slate the 986/996 interior are full of s
t.
Looks great!
Totally agree. It looks older than the 987/997 but the curved lines are just gorgeous.t.Looks great!
Podie said:
Really interested to see how you get on with this.
The unit in my daily driver isn't great and I've been looking at these but been sceptical as to how good they will be (they do one that fits the Ford OEM shape, which is neat).
I'd get on it! It'll be an easy swap compared to mine!The unit in my daily driver isn't great and I've been looking at these but been sceptical as to how good they will be (they do one that fits the Ford OEM shape, which is neat).
Diesel Meister said:
This.
Nice work OP.
Thanks man Nice work OP.
Some more photos, just for the hell of it!
Off:
Boot:
On:
I think that looks bloody fantastic. Like I've said before I've tried to customise it so it doesn't look aftermarket, and due to the fact that there's not a single brand logo in sight, and as the hardware lights are the same colour, it feels completely standard
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