This is more of an FYI post for those who are thinking about upgrading the factory stereo system. It was a tough decision for me because I love the stock look, but ultimately I ended up doing a mild upgrade. I drive my car on nice days and on long trips, and I found that I wanted to be able to play music from my iPhone.

I went with an Alpine ilx 007 head unit, which is a media player with Apple Car Play, and does not play CD's or DVD's. I had a custom bezel made, and I can report that because of its small size, the Alpine fit in the dash with no modifications. We even got the steering wheel controls to work by using a programmable ASWC adapter. We programmed the buttons for volume up/down, and track up/back. Works great.

The sub, one door speaker and two tweeters were blown so we replaced all of the door speakers and tweeters with Infinity Kappa component speakers that sound excellent. I intended to find a 6x9 sub for the back window, but ended up putting an 8" sub in the trunk by putting it and a new amp in place of the factory amp and CD changer. We then built a custom enclosure that replaced the carpet liner on the left side of the trunk, and it turned out nice. Sound quality is better than the factory system, but is not overpowering. The head unit obviously looks a little out of place, but the custom bezel is perfect, as is the angle and fit.

The sub is a JL Audio, and the amp is an Alpine. Since I don't plan to ever sell the car, it ended up being a good decision to modernize it just a bit. I'm a music lover, so it is important to me to be able to stream from my phone.

If anyone has any questions, I'll try my best to answer. I had a custom audio place do most of the work so that the fit and finish was nice. Here's a couple pictures:

 

Very clean, kudos !

 

That's a great fit. Were you able to mount the tweeters in the A pillar? Any pics of those?

 

No pics, but one reason I chose the Infinity speakers was that the tweeter size was smaller than some of the other ones I looked at so they fit well.

 

Very neat! My factory sub is dry wrotted, been avoiding fixing due to challenge of getting it out from under the rear deck - never thought of just adding a new sub somewhere else in the trunk.

How is the bass punch in the car when your trunk is full?

 

I haven't really had anything in the trunk other than a duffel bag, so I guess I don't know how it would affect it. I know that lower bass frequencies are not directional so I'm guessing it wouldn't make much difference unless it was packed against the grill. We removed the sub from the rear window and replaced it with grill cloth and reinstalled the original grill, so sound passes through. I'm not sure if that was necessary or not, but we already had the rear deck and sub out because we originally intended to replace the Jag sub.

 

It is simply awesome. Great job and thank's for the information, now we know it can be done

 

Like the looks of the in dash system, someday down the road I may change mine out but that has to wait for I have other things to do first, nothing major just general maintenance things, and get some new tires along with fixing the rear part of the head liner. And, I need to get my XJS done and running been on that for two yrs and want to get it into some local car shows.

 

Love it!!!

I'm intrigued though, is this unit shallow enough that it doesn't hit the steel brace behind the centre console, or does it sit on enough of an angle to go underneath it?

Also, how was the custom bezel made? Did they modify a single din fascia adaptor, or build this completely from scratch?
It looks very similar to this Jaguar XJ8 1998?2002 Car CD Stereo Fascia Surround Panel Adaptor CT24JG06 | eBay

 

I pulled the radio out the other day in order to repair the climate control panel bracket, unrelated to the stereo installation. When I pulled the head unit out, I tried to pay attention to how it fits in there.

The custom bezel started out as the exact piece in your picture. It was modified to fit the double din height, and was built out at the bottom to angle the head unit slightly upward. The steel brace in the dash was not cut or modified in any way, but to be honest, I cannot tell if the head unit is simply shallow enough to miss the brace, or if the angle makes it go under it. I THINK that it's shallow enough that it doesn't hit the brace. The reason I think that is because I don't think the angle is steep enough to go under it, if that make sense.

What I should have done is slide the radio back in when I had the climate control panel out so I could see back in there. I didn't think about it until just now, unfortunately.

 

No worries, that pretty much answers all of my questions

The shallow depth of the unit is what lets you angle it more. From what I've seen from other installs, the issue with full depth double din units is that when you angle them down the back of the unit hits the airbag sensor on the transmission tunnel. But this shallow unit won't get anywhere near that.

 

Very nice, clean fit and great, modern looks. I don't see how this unit looks out of place, unless you're missing the stock radio's old "buttons galore" technology that the other buttons-generous unit, the climate control panel above it and still there is missing and yearning for... and which you've been conditioned to see in there, yourself... You know, what would make a difference in this respect would be to install a few extra buttons on those two little empty panels at either side of the radio, even if they don't do anything, other than making a better match to the buttons on the climate control panel above it...

A couple of years ago I went through a major struggle finding a SINGLE DIN, 7" display head unit that would fit in the X308 dash radio opening height wise. I had measured the total height of most single DIN 7" display radios available then and nothing would fit in there, even at the steepest of angles, meaning that the bottom of the display is at the front edge of the radio frame. Geometry tells me that a 7" 6x9 ratio display can only have one single height (3 9/16", or approx. 90.5 mm). Then you add the upper+lower display frame lips thickness of about 6+6=12 mm, and you have approx. 103 mm (4 1/16") to try and fit.

On my X308, this 103 mm height display only fit because I used the steepest angle possible, along with some subtle incursion into the bottom-front end lip of the stock radio frame. I know that this Alpine is advertised as a 7" display, but I look at the picture you took and I envy you, as in how is it possible that this full 7" iLX-007 Alpine display fits in there so loose? The fact that it is a shallow unit should make no difference in this regard, only that it allowed you to have a much more straight up display, which is the least forgiving of angles in regards to fitting it height-wise and meaning far more straight up than mine is (see pictures below). Where am I wrong here, but something is definitely quite different. Maybe is the frame piece that you purchased (altered/improved measurements?) in which case I should get one, myself, just to try.

Huh.. would you mind to measure the screen itself for me, corner to corner? Would much appreciate it. Thank you.

Cheers,

 

Just going by the pictures, it's about right. The difference though is that his display has a much smaller bezel overall because of the lack of physical buttons like the left side, etc. But it is also a lot shallower, since there's no "guts" for a drive or anything, so you are correct in that it could go a lot more vertical and that will certainly help the appearance. But if you look at where the edges of the radio are under the HVAC buttons above, you'll see they're pretty much in the same location from left to right. As his post above stated:

So it was modified, and the way it was carved out is probably why it shows the fit to be the way it is. And now I'm thinking I want one.

 

Yeah, I was thinking of that possibility, myself, but the Alpine-Apple marriage on this radio limits it too much to Apple supported operation and limits it from other features, such as Bluetooth and other music sources, etc.

I do like the shallow install, as I no longer use CD or DVD because I have everything (music and video) in either USB or sand disk, but there's always Bluetooth and the phone...uuuh any phone...

Cheers,

 

Hi aquifer

This looks great. Do you bought the adapter between XJ308 Jaguar and radio? Do you know where to buy?

Cheers Beat from Switzerland

 

I just had a similar unit installed in my car. There is no plug and play adaptor for these, as far as I am aware, but with the wiring diagram from jagrepair.com it's not hard to work out
One hiccup we had was that the steering wheel remote wire was not Red/White as expected from the diagram, but Green/Brown I think? You can test it with a volt meter though, it will read 5V constant, and then decrease when the buttons are pressed.

I'd ben keen to see more pictures of everyone's custom bezel too.... I'll try to get some pictures of mine soon, but the headunit was narrower than the hole in the fascia adaptor, so it's been filled out with some little plastic pieces, and looks kinda cheap and nasty. I'm hoping I'll be able to fill in the gaps and maybe give it a quick coat of paint to make it look better....

 

I don’t remember where I bought the adapter, but I think it was ebay. A google search for x308 stereo adapter brings up what I think you’re looking for. They’re single din, but you can cut them to fit double din height, which is what we had to do with mine. I’m sure they’re available in your area too.

Keep in mind that, at least in my 98 XJR, I don’t think a full size chassis (CD player) double din receiver would have fit in the hole. The Alpine fit well because it has a short chassis (doesn’t play CD’s). Others will probably know if a “normal” full size chassis double din receiver will fit in there or not, but I’m almost certain that it would not have fit in mine if I remember right. I think there was a brace or dash bracket that would have been in the way.

 

Adding a picture just for fun. The Alpine lets you upload a picture for the boot-up screen. Of course I had to do this.

 

I was hesitating between a radio and a dash cam with camera but my radio is no longer working, so I ll go for a radio with front and rear camera ,bluetooth. Unfortunately the one I bought does not fit. Joybring 00-18
Can you someone recommends one ? According to the radio installer I will also need: A dash kit, a writing harness and a control adapter .My car is a 2003 SuperV8

Thank you

 

great job