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So I cannot stand my 2014's OEM Radio w/maps (have for sale in classifieds) - mainly because traffic changes so quickly here in Dallas/Ft Worth I need live traffic from Google/Apple maps to not get stuck in a gridlock.
I plan on getting an Alpine headunit with Carplay, but was wondering if anyone had any photos of what it looks like in the tC2 dash. Did you have to put in fillers/spacers?
Any pictures would be appreciated.
Also any part numbers for retaining steering wheel controls / stock microphone / install tips would be appreciated.
I gave up trying to get the stock mic to work with my Pioneer, ended up just hiding the mic it comes with behind my Autodim mirror - nobody can see it and it works better than hiding it inside the upper panel.
For the steering wheel controls, I went with the iDatalink Maestro unit (make sure you have a compatible deck) and it was almost fully PnP. I just had to tap a wire for my backup cam to function.
Wireless car play wasn't available when I put my head unit in and I hate wires so I'm not currently using that functionality - but visually any Double DIN will fit the same as this:
When I bought the stuff it came with a Metra kit that is just little endcaps that fill in the blanks as the OEM head unit is a bit wider, but it's cheap and still looks great. You won't care about it anyway as soon as you hear how much better everything sounds with a proper source unit lol.
The only weird thing about this dash kit is that (mine at least) didn't sit completely even - like one side was always a little higher than the other - but a little square of double sided tape between the unit and bracket fixed that right up. It also stopped the head unit from creaking which is always a plus.
This iDatalink kit also connects to your OBD2 (so I grabbed an OBD2 splitter so I can keep it connected all the time and it still looks factory at the connection under the dash.
I linked the one I have but it looks like its discontinued. Anything with that same design will work perfect as it snaps into place where the OEM connection is. This allows you to monitor engine vitals (like water temp, voltage, AFR, etc), see fault codes and shows you individual tire pressures (doesn't update positioning if you rotate tires but it's still cool lol). Sweet kit for the price and the steering wheel controls work with no lag. If you're interested in that, just make sure you grab a deck that supports it and that you have a windows computer as the thing needs Active-X controls (Internet Explorer) to program (on Windows 10 just click on start and type iexplore and it will popup). Oh the steering wheel controls are fully customizable as well with the programming tool they have - my gauges popup when I hold the Mode button for 2 seconds.
Bad pic (I'll take a new one later if I remember) of my gauge setup: