Parrot mki9200 Fabia II Estate Installation

[Kanga]

Photos showing removal of an old Nokia bluetooth carkit and replacing it with a Parrot MKI9200. Hope the following picture are useful. Please note, any work carried on your car is at your own risk and expense, if you're unsure with what you are doing, consult your car dealer or an I.C.E. specialist.

Components I used for the install:

Parrot MKI9200

Skoda compatible wiring loom

Piggyback fuse holder

a few bullet connectors

Before you start, make sure you have everything, insulation tape, tools, multimeter, connectors, radio code (if necessary) and have read the instructions and understand what you are about to do. Also give yourself plenty of time.

Before work started on the Fabia II Estate 1.4 TDi. The holder you see near the radio is a Brodit active cradle for a HTC Desire mobile phone, it is attached to a Dashmount no-holes mounting bracket. The cradle's 12v cigarette plug connector is attached to a separate cigarette lighter socket hidden behind the dash and connected to the 12V & ground of the wiring loom for the Nokia CK-7W car kit already installed (button to the left of the climate control knob).

Carefully remove the head unit surround using a facia removal tool to prevent scuffing the dashboard (a knife covered with a hankerchief also works; allegedly)

Remove the four screws and gently pull out the radio, detach the connector at the rear and the aerial. I removed the Nokia car kit and wiring loom from my car at the same time. You should be left with this:

Please note, the blue connector is for the CD changer, this piggy backs onto the back of the connector and will need to be unclipped and refitted to the corresponding plug of your wiring loom. You may also want to connect the mute lead to the back of the head unit, whilst the Parrot kit automatically mutes the audio from the head unit during a call, connecting the mute lead will pause music played on a CD rather than just muting the sound and display 'Phone' on the radio's display. To do this you will need an additional socket similar to the CD multichanger connector and a lead with an appropriate pin to sit in the connector, the part number together with the pin out location can be found in other posts within the forum.

Before you start installing the components, the most important thing to do is check that your car kit is working, you don't want to spend an hour or so trailing wires around only to find you have a duff unit. Connect everything up as in the Parrot instructions. Pair your phone, make a test call ensure that the microphone is working, attach your iPod/Phone, SD card or USB drive to the break-out lead and play some music, make sure it's playing through all speakers, etc. Once you're happy it's working, disconnect and decide where you're going to locate the microphone. I decided to put mine near the interior ceiling light (I can't remove the sunglass holder - see my other post for this install), this requires removing the transparent cover, uncrewing a couple of screws and removing the cluster.

feed the microphone lead along the ceiling trim (it's worth unclipping the passenger sun-visor arm to make feeding the lead behind the trim a little easier). Pulling the pillar trim away, feed the lead behind, down to the passenger footwell and up behind the black 'polystyrene' through into the radio compartment. Make sure none of the lead is visible, push back any unclipped trip, refit the sun-visor and using the little mic-mount, stick it to a suitable position on the light cluster. Carefully refit the cluster tucking excess cable behind and out of sight.

Remove the fusebox cover and locate an ignition-switched 12v supply using a multimeter. Again if you're unsure about this, consult a specialist. I used a piggyback (PB) fuse holder for this job using a vacant slot and inserting a new 2 amp fuse into the breakout socket of the PB holder. Connect a wire to the PB using a bullet crimp connector and run the wire to the radio compartment, I loosened the two screws securing the fusebox in place, pushed the new lead under the case and tightened the screws. The 12V ignition supply was connected to the appropriate wire on the parrot wiring loom.

I have sited the display on the blanking panel to the left of the climate control knob on the dashboard, this required removing the blanking panel, pushing the display cable through a gap only just bigh enough, fixing the mount onto the blanking panel and refitting whilt making sure the lead is pulled through from behind the dash. If you have some other button/control here, you will have to decide where else to locate the display.. One other thing about the mount, the sticky fixers that come with the kit are useless, I ended up peeling them off and using some double-sided number plate fixing tape.

The instructions advise to drill your glove box and feed iPod/USB/audio breakout lead through, I didn't fancy this approach, so fed a little of the cable down the back of the radio compartment into the centre console, I'll see how I get on with it for now and may decide a more permanent location in the future.

Connect the car's audio leads up to the wiring loom, the loom up to the Parrot 'blue box'. I've sited the Parrot 'blue box' on the base of the radio compartment sitting it on some thin foam insulation to stop is rattling whilst driving, you may want to locate the box in a different location, maybe behind the glove box (requires the removal of the upper glove compartment). Space is tight in the radio compartment, so perhaps we'll get some more ideas from others who have done their own installations. Make sure everything is neat and tidy, the connections are secure and nothing is going to rattle. Reconnect the aerial lead and finally the radio gently re-siting it into the compartment. It might be an idea at this point in time to retest the audio to ensure everything is working. When you are sure it's OK, screw the head unit in place and fit the trim.

Next, decide where you are going to locate the controller, the unit is wireless and I initially thought of putting it somehwhere on the dashboard as I though the steering wheel mount looked a little naff, however, I used the mount and it really looks quite neat, so my controller is located at the bottom of the wheel and hasn't got in the way so far when driving.

That's about it. so far I'm very pleased with the install. The audio quality in calls is very good, the menu system takes some getting used to, but the unit does what it is supposed to do. iPod recharges when connected, the audio through the unit is good, I wouldn't say fantastic, but if you want quality hi-fi, use the CD player or get a better head unit and speakers.

Here's the 'after' pictures:

I didn't like the supplied wallpapers for the display, so did a little customisation using the Skoda and Parrot logos

Hope this helps.

Edited 30 June, 2010 by Kanga

[swordstoke]

Nice job

[dougiegair]

Great job, very neat :clap:

My question is "What is the Part No for panel under glovebox where the CD changer is fitted"?

[Fred58]

Thankyou very much. It has been a great help for me to install MKI9200 in my brand new Fabia TSI Ambient.

Briliant idea with the piggyback fuse holder.

I have a few questions:

1. My son says that the Parrot shouldn't be switch off as long as the key is still in the keyhole. That is if I stop for instance by a parking place and stop the engine, the Parrot should still be playing as the radio does as loong as the key is still in the keyhole. I have check every single fuse position, but couldn't find one with that function.

2. I'm supprised that it takes about 10-15 seconds from I have turned the starting key until the Parrot has been switched on. Maybe I should ask in a parrotforum about that.

[GoodDoc]

I'm very close to purchasing the mki9200 for my Octavia.

I currently use an aux-in to connect my iPhone, music only. While not the best solution I do get the full iPod functionality of the iPhone, including the ability to select 2x speed when listening to podcasts. When I plugged my iPhone into a demo mki9200 the iPhone went into "accessory connected' mode and all playback was controlled by the parrot, but I never checked to see if the 2x playback option was available, and google has failed to provide an answer.

Can anyone with an mki9200 confirm if 2x podcast playback is still available when their iPhone/iPod is plugged in?

Cheers,

GD

[GoodDoc]

I'm still trying to work out if 2x podcast playback is possible with the mki9200, but in the meantime I've realised that the mki9200 contains it's own amp that, by default, replaces the amp in the car's head unit. How does the parrot amp effect Audio quality compared to the Stream (non-MP3 version) in my Octavia.

Also, really dumb question here, but if the car's speakers are now plugged into the parrot, what happens to radio playback, and what happens to the reversing 'beeps' from the parking sensors? Can they still be heard if the car's speakers are plugged into the parrot?