Out with the old, in with the new. It was time. The original owner of our Phaeton upgraded to a fancy radio/navigation system that was woefully out of date when we bought it four years later. We really liked having the all-in-one system and looked into updating the map. Holy cow was it expensive. Nope, a stand alone GPS will be just fine, thank you very much. Garmin makes a great navigation system specific to RVs; we are very happy with our model 770.
The radio worked fine except for one thing: music. Long drives in the desert southwest mean lots of areas with little or no radio signal. There is nothing sadder in the middle of nowhere than hitting the “seek” button on the radio only to have it circle around and around never finding a station. Satellite stations are fine but to be honest, I’m not a fan of many of them replaying yesterday’s broadcast today. We have a lot of music on our phones and being able to plug it in was awesome, while it lasted. The previous owner’s upgrade also included Apple docks at the radio and all televisions which was kind of nice, if only our phones had the old larger sized plug. We had one old iPod that worked well until Apple abandoned it and we couldn’t add music to it anymore. We were striking out everywhere in the music to radio department so it was time for an upgrade.
Mark is so good at researching. He searches while sitting at the airport, watching TV, you name it. If there is going to be a long period of downtime, he’s researching something. Crutchfield kept coming up, enough for a phone call for assistance.
He called to tell them what we had and what we were looking for. This was going to be a DIY project so it also needed to be easy enough for us to tackle ourselves. We figured going with the same brand would give us the best shot at easy.
The guy he talked to was so helpful and very nice. With their website open, he told Mark about each model and what one would be best for us. In our point and click world today, it was so nice having someone that helpful on the other end of the phone.
We bought a JVC Model KW-M650BT. We were like antsy kids waiting for Santa as we stalked the shipping notification page. It arrived on a Friday and by Saturday morning we were ready to work.
The old radio came out easier than I thought. Mark popped off the beauty ring and thankfully the wires were just long enough to set the old radio on the cup holders. Yeehaw, it didn’t look too hard. And, kudos to Tiffin, the old wires had little flags taped on them marking what went where. This might be a 10-minute project.
But, just like all the remodel shows on television, we hit a snag.
All the wires matched up color for color except two. What??? Mild panic ran through my head. We picked the same brand to avoid something like this.
When I mentioned above how helpful the people at Crutchfield were, I wasn’t kidding. Mark called, clicked through to customer service and help was there. This man patiently walked us through not only those two mystery wires but also went wire by wire to make sure we had all the other ones reconnected correctly. Those mystery wires were for a backup camera for a car, nothing we needed to worry about.
Before putting the new radio all the way in it’s new home, we turned on the RV to make sure the radio did indeed come on. Viola! Victory was ours! The only thing missing: “enjoy your Phaeton”
And, just like every remodel show, there is always a second snag.
This was a teeny tiny snag, though. It wasn’t an exact fit so we needed a beauty ring and thankfully the old one worked just fine.
We had to wait three long weeks to test it out on a long stretch of road in the middle of nowhere between Flagstaff and Page, AZ. We seamlessly switched between satellite radio and the music on Mark’s phone. There was no bungling with the old iPod in the top drawer of the console, just a quick touch of a button.
Another RV project complete and two happy owners smiling. Now it’s me saying “enjoy your Phaeton.”
Another project, done well.
Thanks!