Turn your old dead Eurovox head unit into an adaper for ya new one :)

[BoraV5]

Hey Guys,

My Europox head unit died to day, so I figured it was time to install the Sony unit I had laying around from my last car into the Bora. I was dubious to do this in the beginning because I really didn't want to cut any of the wires, but with the old unit dead I thought I'd use it as a donor for the plug in the unit to make an adapter so I didn't have to cut the loom.

All it really took was some solder, some shrink wrap, a little bit of tape and of course tools to hack and slash the old unit apart. This is my first guide so I am sorry if its a bit dodgy , just thought I'd give something back to the board. Albeit a small contribution.

If you grab your old unit out of the dash you will we the part we are after.

Hopefully if nobody has been there before you this is what we want to see.

I tucked the stacker cable behind the dash as the unit as I am putting in is just a single disk changer.

Now to time to destroy!

With the unit opened up you can see that the plug we are going to turn into an adapter is soldered onto the circuit board. I tried to get the part out gently but in the end gave up and settled on a less dainty approach

Wire cutters! Take that Eurovox!

Here is the part free of the old circuit board ready to become an adapter. I plugged it back in to check that it still fitted in after my hacking it did

I stuck a bit of masking tape onto the plug to take note of what wire came out of that connection so didn't connect positive to negative or anything silly like that.
Now I grabbed my trusty soldering iron and some shrink wrap and set to business. I didn't take any photos of the soldering process as my hands were kinda full, but it was just a matter of matching the wires up, there is a wiring reference on the forum if you do a search, and your new head unit should have a wiring diagram to match up.

Here you can see how I shrink wrapped the terminals to make em nice and safe.

And here is the finished product.

Was just a matter of plugging the unit in and turning it on! Works a treat! I'll take some shots of the finished dash tomorrow for now I am going to have a quite drink

Cheers!

[maca]

Lol as much as I loved my Eurovox unit in my Mk4 (and would trade for it anyday), great walkthrough!

[dylan8]

Nice write up. How long did you think it took you?

[BoraV5]

Took about 2-3 hrs had to stop for lunch tho, and took a bit of time swearing coz some of the soldering work was a bit tight.

[JustCruisn]

WOW
I would have just cut the end off and soldered the Sony lines to it = 1 less connection. You do know that the eurovox line connects to another junction a bit further back in the dash ?


So now you have
SONY -> EUROVOX JUNCTION -> EUROVOX LOOM -> MAIN LOOM

You could have had
SONY -> EUROVOX LOOM -> MAIN LOOM


Just my 2c.

Looks nice and neat though

[BoraV5]

Yeah, but i wanted to keep it so if I remove the Sony unit the the loom was stock. Couldn't live with my self if i had have cut the Bora

[YellowDieselGolf]

Nice write-up, but why would you ever remove the sony unit? It's not like you can put the OEM one back in.