Car Radio Upgrade

Aug 2021

This was a personal project that I undertook to bring a touch of modern features to my 2007 Corolla. I removed the old factory radio and installed a new ILX-W650 from Alpine. I chose to make this upgrade for added Android Auto functionality, allowing me to display maps on screen, making it safer and easier to navigate while driving. Additional features such as music streaming and hands free calling have been welcome upgrades as well. In order to complete this project I had to research how to take apart the necessary items to remove and install the older radio, as well some custom electronics. I had to wire my own custom wiring harness and test the radio to verify the quality of installment. I have had this radio in my car for over 2 years now and it is still working great to this day!

Project Walkthrough

Look through the images and descriptions below to see how this project came to life!

Research

Before setting out on this project, I made sure to do my research and ensure I had all the necessary components. I started by choosing my radio, then chose a vehicle specific wiring harness adapter and vehicle specific dash adapter kit. I also made sure to pickup car stereo wiring connectors and fabric tape to create a quality wiring harness.

Custom Wiring Harness

The first step before I could install the radio in my car was to create a custom wiring harness. New car radios come with a plug that terminates in bare wire, which must be wired into a wiring harness adapter that is specific to the vehicle. This allows almost any radio to be installed in almost any car. All car radios and harness adapters use a standard color coding system so this step was as simple as connecting green to green, red to red, and etc. There were a few colors that didn't match up like certain signal wires, so special care had to be taken. When I was finished, I wrapped the harness in fabric tape to create the neat harness shown on the right.

Out With The Old

With the wiring harness complete, the next step was to remove the old radio. This required removing several pieces of the center console, starting with the trim around the shift lever, followed by the climate controls, and finally the radio assembly itself. Once the old radio assembly was removed, I removed the old radio from the mounting plate so that the new one could be installed. The image on the left shows the white plugs where the custom wiring harness connects.

In With The New

With the old radio out, it was very simple to install the new radio in its place. The radio I installed is a standard "Double-DIN" size which was slightly smaller than the factory radio. This is where I used the dash adapter kit came in to fill the gap between the new radio and the hole that old one left. This created a nice seamless look.

Testing First!

Anyone who has ever built a PC before will tell you never to put the side panel on until you boot it up and make sure it works. I used the same reasoning when installing my radio and made sure to test it before putting all the trim panels back on. This would allow me to catch any mistakes earlier on without having to redo a bunch of steps. Thankfully my test was successful and the radio booted up nicely and sounded great!

Final Result

With testing complete, I reinstalled all the trim panels and put on some music to do one last final quality inspection. I wanted to make sure there was no static (possibly indicating a bad connection or pinched wire) and that nothing else odd happened. Thanks to my careful planning, everything worked great and I was very happy with the end result. I even replaced the 12V car charge port with a USB port adapter that connected to the radio, allowing for easy connection to Android Auto.