My Parrot CK3200 arrived today so I set about installing it.

Installing control unit
*****************

@ XJ8Johnny, I saw your picture in the gallery so I went to see if that would work for me. I found that the way I have the steering wheel tilted all the way down, I couldn’t see that location, so I tried something different

@ SuperSport, You’re right, no air vent clips, only a weird L shaped bracket that was useless and some sticky Velcro

I sat and looked at the dash and the only really suitable place for the CK3200 was on the drivers side air vent. I knew I would have to get behind the vent to mount the control unit, so let the disassembling begin !

1) Remove the wood in front of the instrument cluster (It does just pull off but it is a bit nerve racking if you’ve not done it before)

2) Wriggle out the foglight switches and trip computer reset switches (you need to get behind these switches to 2 hidden screws)

3) Unscrew the 2 screws you have just exposed by removing the switches and the other 2 at the top of the instrument cluster. You don’t have to remove the instrument cluster, you just need to get it loose so you can wriggle the air vent free.

4) Unscrew the 2 screws holding the air vent into the dash (They are visible on the right hand side of the air vent (in my left hand drive car)

5) Gently pull the air vent out of the dash.

6) The air vent in connected to a tube which has the flap inside it to open or close the vent. You need to disconnect the tube from the air vent by unclipping the 4 tabs holding them together. You can also unclip the control arm which connects the flap to the slider control on the front of the air vent.

7) Working from the back of the air vent, remove the vertical slats (There are 3 and they all come out together) They are just snapped into place so you can lever them out. They are quite bendy so it’s easy to do.

8) You have to remove the control knob that is used to move the vent slats from side to side. The control knob is fitted to the horizontal slats. To remove it you first need to remove the fitted sleeve that’s inside the back of the air vent. This fitted sleeve holds the horizontal slats in place. It is held in place by 4 tabs, similar to the tabs that held the air vent to the back tube. Once you have taken the fitted sleeve out you can lift out the horizontal slats and push the control knob off the end of the horizontal slat it is on. There is a little spring clip behind the control knob that is supposed to restrict its travel but you can push the clip in to allow the control knob to move all the way along and off the horizontal slat. You should have these “spare parts” now off the air vent.



9) Feed the cable from the control unit through the air vent now! Put the horizontal slats back into the air vent and put the fitted sleeve back in to secure them in place.

10) I dismantled the L shaped bracket that came with the CK3200 and kept only the square pad that clipped into the back of the control unit. This square pad has a screw hole in the middle of it which I can screw in to.

11) I got 2 small metal brackets with holes in them and mounted them on the back of the air vent slats and screwed the control unit in place, ie



Also note in the picture that the vertical slats are gone and that the cable is routed nicely in through the air vent slats and is coming out of the back of the air vent

12) From the front it looks like this…



Again, note the cable going inside the air vent. The control unit can sit flush to the air vent because you have taken off the control knob that used to stick out the middle of the air vent.

13) Before reconnecting the air vent to the tube you have to make a small cut out in the tube to let the cable come out of. It’s soft plastic so it’s an easy cut with a hacksaw.



14) Reconnect the air vent to the tubing and route the cable out of the cut out



Route the cable in through the hole in the dash where the air vent goes and around under the pedals and along the side of the tunnel towards the centre console cubby box. I found I had enough cable but if you’re going to try this with a different kit, better to test the cable length first before going to all this trouble and then find the cable doesn’t reach!

15) Refit the air vent and the 2 screws that hold it in place. Screw the instrument panel back into place, clip the round switches back into place and push the wood trim back on.

This sounds like a lot of hassle, but in reality it only took me about 30 minutes to do. Everything would also be reversible later on if need be (you could just put a bit of tape over the hole you cut in the air vent tubing and assuming you hadn’t lost the spare parts for the air vent you could re-fit them.

The wiring up has been covered extensively already, the only thing I can add is that the colour coding on my Jag harness was slightly different (But the pin allocations were the same)

Description ............................. Jim Roals guide ....... My 2000 XJR (US spec)
Audio line input negative (pin1) .. purple/red ............. green/orange
Audio line input positive (pin2) ... purple/pink ............. blue
Mute (pin3) ............................ purple/orange ......... blue/yellow

All others matched

I used the factory wiring for the mic, and that went ok. As mentioned earlier, the wires are thin and fiddly, but it’s doable if you’re patient. I spliced the parrot mic cable on the workbench then soldered some wire extensions on that I could crimp to, ie



That way I only had to take the wire crimper inside the car, and not the soldering iron or the heat gun :-)

Everything works perfectly, including the voice dialing.



Right guys, whats next ?!

 

Fantastic Tutorial!

I'm sure that will help others a lot.

Thanks SARC

PS: Your idea of soldering on crimp connectors was very good. I too do not like bringing my soldering iron into my cars. I usually do, but will take your advice from now on. Thanks again

 

Nice work SARC.

You're very good at documenting your work. Once I got mine together I wished I had taken a few pictures along the way because no one will appreciate the attention to detail now that it's all hidden inside.

This really has been fun.

 

Agreed. Thanks for taking the time to post such an awesome tutorial. Your work is extremely clean and thought out. What I like best is that your installation placement is less obnoxious than that of the tutorial I originally found and posted in reply #1. Perfect for getting the most out of the Jag without hurting its interior's look, feel and character. I'll definitely be going this route in the next couple of weeks.

At the time of this posting the Parrot 3200 LS Color can be had for about $90 on ebay. A thrifty enhancement for any XJ.

 

Thanks guys. Glad it's useful.

After living with it for one week I'm glad I put the control unit where I did. It does just look like part of the car.

The finishing touch was to make a Jaguar wallpaper and download that to the unit.

Here's a link to the file :

http://www.scottcorboy.com/leaper_parrot.jpg

Note : The file is bigger than the screen size but the aspect ratio is the same, so it scales correctly and looks good on the Parrot. I put the leaper and wording higher up the page because when my phone connects my name and carrier appears on the bottom half of the screen, so this way I can still see the leaper, etc

The only other thing I've done is to change the voice tag to initiate a voice dial from "PHONE" to "VOICEDIAL" I had 2 problems when I had it set to "PHONE". First problem was that if you were having a conversation and said "I need to PHONE the wife" it triggered it, and the other problem was sometimes it didn't pick up that I'd said PHONE when I was trying to dial. "VOICEDIAL" is a more unusual word and the system seems to be able to pick it up better.

 

My parrot CK3200 arrived this week so I decided to have a go as well.

I followed SARC's instructions to a "T" but wanted to post the differences in my installation for those looking to follow the Parrot route.

In addition to the Parrot CK3200 I also purchased a the Bluetooth Car Kit wiring harness from Nexxia Audio Solutions in the UK. They provided me with a wiring loom that connects to the 10-pin factory phone harness in the Jag as well as a loom for connecting to the factory mic lead (see below)



You can see from the photo above the 10-pin harness on the right leads to mic and stereo input plugs as well as the battery, ground, ignition and mute leads. The piece in the middle plugs into the factory mic lead (blue end) and then allows me to plug in an aftermarket microphone. No soldering/connecting required. I can also return my Jag to its factory configuration if I wanted to (a real plus for me for some reason).



I did, however, have to cut and connect the power, ground, ignition, mute and stereo leads to the Parrot unit, but everything still fit snugly under the armrest compartment.

I was indeed a little nervous about removing the wood trim from around the instrument cluster, but I discovered that if pull out from the edge of the tach and fuel gauge clusters, it comes off nice and easy. Don't worry about cracking the wood, the whole thing is backed with an aluminum plate.



From here I followed SARC's instructions for mounting the Parrot unit to the air vent. I actually ended up using components from the provided "L" bracket as a backing-plate behind the air vent although I had to find a long screw to connect the backing-plate to the Parrot unit.

To route the wire from the Parrot unit to the control module in the center armrest its easiest to remove the compartment directly under the trunk release switch (its held in place with one screw) and then lead the wire down under the steering column and then tuck it into the center console. (The wire in the picture is actually my AUX input for my iPod not the Parrot kit)

In a couple of careful hours however, I was finished:



The Parrot unit paired up nicely with my iPhone and instantly synced its address book with the one on my phone. It comes with a number of configuration options for adjusting sound volumes and voice commands and the like and I found I had to slightly adjust the input sensitivity from the mic.

I loved the wallpaper SARC posted in the previous reply, but I had to pair the Parrot with my Mac for sending files. Hopefully you tech-savvy folks will figure it out. It looks awesome.

Thanks again everyone. This isn't something I could have tackled so easily without all the input.

Finally I'm using the Jag's phone option as close as I can to its original spec!

 

Nice one Astig.

For sure getting the Nexxia adaptor makes things much easier.

I still suffer from a secret wire cutting and stripping fetish which has to be addressed every now and again though :-)

 

Hi, Bit late replying to this thread, but....

I put an "iO Play" system into my 2002 XJ8-SE. It has a very discrete interface that does not look too obvious when position on the dash. It also plays through all the speakers on the car and interfaces completely to my iPhone allowing me to play music on the iPhone through the car speaker system in full stereo vis bluetooth. Excellent bit of kit at a good price.

John

 

Hi John

Thanks for the update. The iO play system looks pretty interesting.

Did you fit it yourself or have it done at a shop ?

Any chance you could give us an idea of price ?

I'm guessing to fit it you'd have to splice into the speaker signal cables coming from the head unit so that the iO play unit can "mute" the stereo and supply the bluetooth music/phone source. A few of us here on the forums already discovered that you can't use the normal phone input on the stereo as it only supplies the front 2 speakers. Does the iO work if the car stereo is powered off ?

Some more info on your install would be much appreciated. Although I'm very happy with my 20USD solution, it does involve a bit of wiring so it would be good to hear if there is a different solution that people could also consider.

Take care

 

Just in case someone is looking at this thread and they are NOT in the USA, Matt/icarus found something very interesting when he tried to to this install. There are wiring differences between USA and ROW (Rest of World) cars, in particular the mute wire.

See the details here :

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s...d=1#post171804

 

I finally made a decision and bought the Parrot MKi9200. While I was at it I also bought the IR-X Infrared Repeater by PAC. The IR-X will control the XM unit that is currently in my center console. Install will go sometime next week. I'll keep you posted.

 

@3down

Sounds good. Pictures, stories of successes and failures when you are finished please :-)

By the way I copied your idea for disguising the cable running along the hump into the centre console. I got the black version of the cable run you bought from Home Depot. It looks great !

 

SARC

Great! I'm glad you were able to get the channel and make it work for your car.

 

@3down: Did you make any progress with the Parrot MKi9200? I am considering the same model for my 98 and would love to hear how the install went for you.

 

Talon

I bought the Parrot MKi9200 and its sitting in the trunk of the car. To be honest, I will not be going that route. In my opinion, the issue is that the MKi9200 takes away from the asthetics of the car. There really isn't a good place to put the display without it looking 'aftermarket'. I plan to go with a standalone unit that fits in the visor because I can't stand things looking out of place. I don't see added value to having the phone run through the stereo by sacrficing the look of the car when you have to attach the product to an airvent or adhere the device to the wood grain finished dash. Right now I am running my XM radio, tucked neatly away inside the center console unseen and out of the way, which is really all I need. As I have made a short story long; the Parrot MKi9200 and the like just isn't for me.

 

Good info, thanks!

 

Hello,

I've read most of the threads about adding a bluetooth car kit, and I have to admit it's not super clear to me.

I've got a european XJ8 sovereign 1999 with a built in motorola phone, that I have removed from the central console.

I would like to install a bluetooth car kit (parrot) for my iphone. could anyone tell me
- can i connect a parrot to the plug inside the central console ? in that case can I reuse the plug from the harness I removed form the factory phone ?
- can I reuse the existing microphone (i assume that this is the mic the i see above my head) ? is the wire in the existing plug ?
- i have understood but I might be wrong that this plug uses the 2 front speaker and are not ideal for music streaming (but does it work ?)
- which thread sumrise explains the wiring diagrams to connect the parrot to the existing plug?

best regards from Paris

 

you can re use the connector from the phone. I followed the wiring diagrams, cut the wires on the connector from the phone unit, but left them long enough to splice the Parrot connectors into and basically got a nice plug in connection.

as for the microphone, I used the parrot one and routed it through the head liner but I've seen two examples where they used the factory microphone, one bought a connector, referenced somewhere in this thread and the other spliced into it. I wasn't sure so I played it safe, in retrospect I think it can be done.

THe unit was installed on a 2000 VDP, I'm not sure of the wiring differences but I can send you a picture or two if you need it.

 

@alroder

Download this document.....http://j.roal.home.mchsi.com/X308Bluetooth.pdf, there is a table at the bottom of page 6 which tells you which wire is which in the factory phone connector under the centre armrest.

As you are in Europe, you may also have to read the following post....https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s...t=input&page=2.... scroll down to post #11 by icarus and read about his mute wire issues on his european spec car.

Music through the 2 front speakers using a car kit isn't very good. It's best to go the "proper" route, and hack into your CD Changer https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s...ighlight=input You can then add a bluetooth stereo receiver......http://www.amazon.com/Miccus-BBMR-02.../dp/B0038MA11U and you have bluetooth music streaming through the whole stereo system which is awesome.

I have an HTC Evo 4G cellphone which runs Android OS and it can happily hold a bluetooth connection with the parrot car kit while streaming music to the bluetooth receiver. (Apparently you can have up to 8 separate bluetooth connections going on at the same time) The only thing to consider is that running music streaming using bluetooth, and having the parrot connected via bluetooth doesn't do much for your cellphone battery life, so you'll need to have it powered somehow

 

I put the Moto T605 control button assy under the ash tray flap - no unsightly additions visible. I SURE do love the bluetooth phone audio from the front speakers, the auto muting of the stereo audio when the phone is in use, and the auto-switch between Sirius Radio and bluetooth streaming audio from my phone into the full stereo. People think I'm sitting at home even when I'm at 70 on the expressway.