Cheapest Carplay Radio on Amazon Installed in a Chevy Cobalt

[Music] hey everybody i'm here in my 2008 chevy cobalt and this is the factory radio that came with the car and i'm going to be swapping this radio out it's got some problems and i'm going to swap it out with a radio on amazon this is one of the cheapest radios that you could find with carplay it's like a hi-tiki radio supports iphone supports android it's got a lot of features but for this price you could be sure it's gonna be a little shady this is gonna be an adventure so we're gonna jump right into it let's get started and how shady you ask they tell you to test the radio on page one before installing it because it may break during shipping oh jesus this video is gonna be like a choosy road adventure book if this radio craps out anytime after the video is made i'm going to post a link here in the top right let you know not to buy it if this installation turns out to be an overwhelming success i'll post another link with a comprehensive review of this radio still got to check to see if it's doa though so i'm going to look at this they put a label on the bottom conveniently so know what the wiring is just going to get the 12 volt connections right here wire them up bring ignition and battery together for this test along with black for ground bust out the old heath kit and we'll set it up for 12 volts it's current limited shouldn't expect to use too much current the book doesn't tell you not to turn the volume up when doing this test since it's you know an impedance mismatch since there are no speakers i don't think the company makes the radio really cares speaking of impedance mismatch i kind of take pause in the fact that it doesn't mention what the actual impedance of this radio's speaker outputs are which is somewhat alarming but sadly not surprising so i plug that back connector in and i see the current bump on the gauge looking good there it goes there's a screen there's an ugly looking boot screen they should have done nothing instead of that but yeah the radio actually looks surprisingly very nice much better than the boot screen i really gotta turn down that volume though because you should not have the volume on if you don't have speakers connected you got that impedance mismatch you can see dialing down to zero so now we're good that speaker turns red it's muted and we'll check out just some quick functionality the touchscreen works that volume knob obviously works some buttons work and that's the exhaustive test of this radio if you have a 2004 gm and up the radio is part of the car's computer i've had an aftermarket radio in this car before so i already have this gm 13 sr module we could see it was connected to an old radio so i'm going to cut that old radio harness out of this and i'm going to reuse it everything i do is soldered unions with heat shrink i don't use crimp connectors i only use tape to tie bundles together these are all the speaker connections i'm doing first it takes up one entire harness on the radio plus a couple of wires on the other harness to complete all the speakers once the speakers are done i'm gonna do the uh ground and then the 12 volts plus the ignition power that's going to go off into the radio and that's the minimum i need to test it in the car so open the glove box we'll pull off this trim and we'll pull off that trim and pull up this trim around the radio disconnect the airbag light we use the 930 seconds bit to remove the four bolts holding in the radio as the radio is removed from the center console pulling it away to reveal all the connections in the back the roll removed now the radio is gone from the center console sitting on the seat plug in my mostly assembled harness into these connections so we could do some testing the tone is a good indication that the box is connected and working properly so we'll just plug the new radio in now give it a go so here's a basic test key on power and i could hear the tone and the radio should come on automatically i was kind of impatient but it did i'm just listening for the static because i don't have my antenna converted yet i also don't have front speakers that i need to fix now i'm doing the door open power off test to pull the key out the radio is still on until i open the door and there it goes it's off everything works very briefly i plugged my phone in just to see if car play would work and it did i went through a bunch of functions but i'm not going to show it on this video it did operate what appeared to be without any issue also while it was in i use this radio to confirm that in fact the cables to the front speakers are working there's a test speaker that i got we can see it's running right to the door the front speakers are broken i'm gonna need to replace them i'm gonna order new speakers and mounts for them so i picked up the scotchy however the hell you pronounce it gm 2500 bravo and this is 2004 2011 gm kit for double din i figured i was covered right because there's a double din radio we got a double din mount kit as well with the world and surprise surprise he has the radio not fitting in the faceplate we can see that the radio is simply too big apparently double din which is six and thirteen sixteenths of an inch is different from this seven inch radio so it looks like i'm gonna have to custom fit this because i've looked at a couple others for this cobalt model year and they're few and far between for this size for whatever reason and some of the feedback is they just don't fit if anybody knows of a full seven inch kit for a 2008 cobalt put it in the comments below so i took my time this whole thing was inlaid like a rifle barrel measuring each side as i remove the material all four sides had to be adjusted eventually getting it just right constantly taking measurements re-measuring so i didn't remove too much material and then once it was refined i just softened the corners this is close now this is all set up even the insides a little bit had to be cut away here we can see the frame of the radio will get in the way but this is how it came out finally i'm still going to need to adjust here for the sides to get the right camber that's about it i believe i mentioned the front speakers with trash i made a separate video for replacing the front speakers in a cobalt and possibly other gm cars i'm including that link in the top right so you could click that if you need to do that project as well and then come back to this i've been told that all the documentation shows brown to be reverse which is a typographical error this documentation does show pink which is correct so this red and white on the box here is supposed to marry up to the pink connection it's supposed to be a reverse signal i thought that'd be very convenient you put in reverse you get 12 volts and you're done i made that connection i'll tell you now it doesn't work for the manual transmission it may work for the automatic all the other unused cables were capped and then i made a really nice harness just in time to forget one cable i forgot illumination so i can tap out the harness to fix it so i wired up illumination that's the green cable going to orange white to the digital box right over here and then i wired up the power cable going to the camera signal back in to this rca cable so here on the right i got my radio connections over here my rca to the radio my digital computer box and here i have the connections that go to the harness to the car and back here to the camera the harness is all ready so i've completely removed the rear center console i have loosened the front center console as we see and the front dash is obviously wide open and here's the whole harness and put this down on the floor because we're just working with this rca cable for the camera ran a small length of rigid wire as a pull cable started taping back the connections on the rca cable then tape everything to the pull cable carefully draw everything through as to not damage the connectors now the whole length of the backup camera cable will be pulled through at this point i pull off the tape and the rigid wire i use to pull the cable i'm going to draw that backup speaker cable through the next section of center console and i have like five of these antenna adapters but none of them fit so i'm going shopping taking the original radio with me to walmart that way i could size up the exact interface this looks like it wm-cr-10 so i open the box we look at the fitting we look at the fitting on the radio and we look at them both together now and it's the right fit we'll go with that while we're here i see walmart selling the carplay radio dual tech 150 dollars with the same functions probably better quality pioneers only 90 dollars but it doesn't have car play so it's out of the question so i unpack this antenna converter i say a small prayer i plug it in and by god it fits now i'm plugging in all the connections got the camera and these are the two cables that go to the radio and then after that i got the two cables that go to the harness to the car so i plug those in and then i got the antenna and that about covers it powers up fine all speakers are working get to a channel that youtube won't cry about democratic areas around places like miami make sure the backup camera is set for on and config but i noticed that putting it in reverse is not turning the tv screen to camera who's there checking with the multimeter on that cable shows that putting it in reverse does not generate 12 volts on the computer box on a manual transmission maybe it works on an automatic instead of just but not in this setup so i don't know so i clipped the computer box from that circuit cleaned and redressed the harness putting the radio back into the console i've set up this power supply to provide 12 volts the other side of the camera is grounded i touch the red side to this yellow wire and we see the camera does turn on and the radio does see that move the camera around a little we could see the camera in the screen very good everything works so now i unplug it and the radio resumes we're gonna put the front of the car back together before we tear the rear of the car apart the cable tying the cable here so if i pull it it won't pull against the back of the radio i'm gonna clip it off now i'll drop the cup holder back in here i'll guide the cable along the passenger side of the trim then i'll place this rear send the console trim back on the emergency brake then throw in the cup holder insert ace is the place especially when your radio is too cheap to come with screws so i got 580 by 10 fits in here we're getting four of them i'm gonna need some washers to pull it out depending on how it's going to sit in the chassis i don't know so i'm going to buy some adjusted case and some star washers to bite into the plastic to give it a good hold so i got several of those so i'm going to line up the radio within the mount making sure everything is entirely flush that the camber is correct i'm going to have to adjust it to accommodate holes for this plastic mount though i don't want to take off too much plastic at once so i use the dremel to remove some plastic and then i'll try it with the screw if the screw goes straight in and the mount is lined up you know that's good enough for me if not i'll remove a little more of the dremel and then i'll retry maybe two or three times till i get it right this process is going to be repeated for the other three screws all the while having to check that the front of the radio is still flush on the mount i'm not going to screw these screws all the way down and the holes are going to have to have a little bit of forgiveness allowing to readjust the radio as i go so now i'll bring the radio back to the car reconnecting all the connections and inserting the radio into the dashboard start installing the screws that hold the fixture into the dash and make sure one last time that the radio is working properly and in the morning plug in the airbag light and put the outer molding back on over the radio snapping into place as i do we see the mount doesn't sit ideal it's slightly off and it's going to need to be shimmed so i'm going to take it out and shim it slightly the top screws got two washers offset on the mount i didn't bother plugging in the airbag for this test throwing it on just to make sure everything lines up i can see it's a good fit everything is now flush i'll offset the bottom now with one washer placed on each side then once again tighten everything down now it has a nice fit to the front of the plastic i officially peel off the protective plastic of the touch screen and realize i forgot to plug in the airbag light so i take it off once again to put it right back on put on the two final pieces of dash trim the small one by the steering wheel the lower piece of trim under it slightly removed to fit it snapping it back into place and then that lower one back into place then this one by the glove box snapped back into place and that's the front of the car radio install portion completed everything as clean as possible with this install but there's still work to do continuing in the back we lift up the rear seats by pulling on these metal tabs hidden under the seats on both sides move the seats out into a safe place then fold the insulation material over i use a rigid wire again as a pull wire with the rear view camera cable taped to it i pull it through this section and out the other side and then secure it so it doesn't interfere with the emergency brake the harness is removed from this clip and the cable is dressed into the harness slowly working my way back towards the trunk then pull through under the seat clear in the back seat area this area is now reassembled the insulation is flipped back over the rear center console piece is now reattached the rear seat is brought into position of the front hooks and then locked back down at this point the back area is done and focus our attention into the trunk the cable is dressed in the harness through this first mount all the way back to here now the taillight will need to be removed there's a link to the specific procedure on the top right small cable harness was added through an existing grommet with one wire initially soldered it into the dark green wire but as we'll find out they change color on the connector the lamp this is actually for the brake light so it's going to be very interesting we'll do the testing but i've connected this ad hoc setup to test it nonetheless because i didn't know the time so we could see the initial testing did not work which left me somewhat perplexed my wife got later happened to put a foot on the brake pedal and noticed that it worked fine when she did that once the change was made put it in reverse camera appeared to function normally take it out of reverse works fine it turns out it's the light green wire not the dark green wire tail light put back on checked for function the taillight section can now be closed up the working area is now down here by the battery i use the pilot in the unibit to open up this rear section of the car where i ran a rigid pull cable through coming out just over the license plate tape the camera ends to that pull cable and brought it into the trunk i'll have to come up with an optimal covered mounting strategy that doesn't block the light i found this to be appropriate i'll make adjustments later these cables are cut solid and bundled and i'll need a grommet for the firewall i've added a speed connector for the earth side of the camera looks real good functions nice only requiring some minor tweaks the final cabling is dressed buckled down the insulation is laid back over the trunk is all cleaned out ready to be closed back up hope you found this video on the cheapest carplay radio on amazon installed into a 2008 cobalt to be entertaining and informative as well as the installation of the backup camera click that like button down below helps me out a lot when you do click that subscribe button for more videos when they come out hope you enjoyed this video thanks for watching thanks for watching would you like to reply you

Channel: Retro Tech & Electronics

Views: 452,549

Keywords: hikity, hikity autoradio, d-play, dplay, hikity 2 din car stereo, chevy cobalt, chevy, 2008 cobalt, 2008 chevy cobalt, hikity double din, car stereo, rear view camera, backup camera, installation, install, modification, carplay, ios, android, scosche gm13sr, scosche, gm13sr, gm2500B, metra, metra wm-cr10, wm-cr10, cheapest carplay radio, cheapest car stereo, swm, 7013b, swm7013b

Id: HM80ZNydF1U

Length: 19min 0sec (1140 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 28 2020