At the weekend I tried to fit my new Single DIN DVD/Nav motorized monitor into my Fabia. Got the OEM radio/CD player out fine. Fitted the new cage to house the new unit - all fine so far. But on fitting the unit into the cage I found that the dash is to shallow for the unit to fit in. Its actually about 1 inch out. Therefore the unit is sticking out of the dash and doesn't fit. :thumbdwn:

Has anyone else come across this? How did you get round it?

Cheers folks :confused:

Is it because of the mass of wiring round the back.

For the Fabia I believe you can remove the centre vents to get access to above the HU and reorganise the cables.

No the wires weren't a problem. There was only one so I pushed this down out of the way. There is a plastic brace that is in the way at the rear. The lower part of this is where the oddments tray slots into and sercures.:(

Is it possible to get enough access to chop away the part of plastic in the way but leave enough for the oddments tray to attach to.

Is your new headunit that much longer than the standard unit? I thought they were all a fairly standard size...

If you remove the tray/drawer below the headunit you should get a bit more access

Mannyo - yeah I think that is my next option. I didn't want to start chopping away at anything but I feel that this my be the only option. There is enough room in there for a junior hacksaw so I should be able to keep it quite neat.

tdirob - My nw unit is longer - an inch and a half and thats what is causing the problems. I did remove the draw to check why the unit wasn't pushing int to cage correctly and felt the unit pushing up against this plastic brace. So its not just a problem with the ISO connector getting in the way.

Thanks for your help!!!

you don't buy units that are too long, its the cables getting in the way. the standard for stereo sizes includes length.

take out the centre vents by easing it out at the bottom with a small flat screw driver then ease the top out not forgetting to remove the wiring on the hazard button. on the octavia you can also remove the glove box for more acces, not sure if this works on the fabia too.

I removed the glovebox on my fabia when fitting the new stereo last weekend. There's a gap big enough to stuff your hand through and you can pull the wires and fittings out the way enough to fit the stereo in.

Hurts like hell when you pull your hand out and the skin comes off your knuckles!!

I had the exact same issue in my Octy when trying to fit an in-dash monitor for my car PC (now abandoned, teddy thrown out of pram etc )

I ended up cutting a chunk out of the back of the recess in the dash to make it fit.

I had the exact same issue in my Octy when trying to fit an in-dash monitor for my car PC (now abandoned, teddy thrown out of pram etc )

I ended up cutting a chunk out of the back of the recess in the dash to make it fit.

Thanks Rob. That will have to be the modification to get the screen to fit. I think that its longer due to having everything built in, DVD, TV, Radio, Monitor, etc and thats why its longer than a standard 1Din stereo unit. Why does it always happen to me.....

still confusd by this, i currently have a kenwood ddx-6029 double din unit that has a 7" screen and dvd player built in, i use every available input/output of the unit except for the video in and audio out so thats audio out front, audio out rear, audio out sub, reverse camera in and video out(8 phono cables), have satnav connected to it(an RGB connection and power cables), a kenwood bluetooth adapter(1 cable) add all that lot to the ISO's aswell and you have a veritable birds nest behind the stereo. infact up until yesterday i also had a nokia cark-91 bluetooth phone kit wedged in there too so another box and a load of cables to go with it.

i have made no modifications what so ever to get it in just struggled and placed things carefully so that it all went back eventually.

in the past i also had a clarion 7" fold away screen with no real issues either.

still confusd by this

I'll try to take a photo of the OEM headunit and my new screen side by side to show you the difference. Hoopefully this will stop you being so confused?:confused: ? Oh and the plactic dash brace that gets in the way!!!

I have had a similar problem with my hu in the octy lately and have already had to hack out some of the plastic at the rear of the hole to allow the rca plugs some room.

Until last night the right hand side wouldn't sit flush no matter how hard I tried to force it back.

I've actually discovered that in my case it was the metal backshells of the rca leads (I made my own up with gold plugs and decent cable from work ) that were fouling against the rear of the slot so I unscrewed them and taped around the plugs to insulate - result is now the head unit sits nicely flush back against the dash surround .

Still have the ongoing problem of the rubbish signal (see my as yet unanswered thread!:( ) but I'm going to have another go at the booster over the weekend and see if I can rectify it.

Matt

Yeah, thats my next problem. After getting the unit to fit correctly by "modifying" the dash I have found that although the radio signal is fine the TV signal is very poor. :thumbdwn:

Does anyone know of a good aerial that can be use to help my TV signal but still keep a decent radio signal without the need for another external aerial???:confused:

car radio aerials are absolutely no good for TV what so ever, you need a proper TV aerial that either goes on the roof or a pair that go inside the windows on either side of the car but you will never get a good reliable TV signal that stays strong whilst driving at speeds above 30mph.

a mate that works at a local car audio shop has spent god knows how much over the last few years trying all sorts of different tuners and aerials and the best he has found is the alpine DVB-T tuner with twin aerials.

Yeah, thats my next problem. After getting the unit to fit correctly by "modifying" the dash I have found that although the radio signal is fine the TV signal is very poor. :thumbdwn:

Does anyone know of a good aerial that can be use to help my TV signal but still keep a decent radio signal without the need for another external aerial???:confused:

I hope you have a TV licence to cover this!

The aerial for your radio is designed for frequencies of 535kHz to 108MHz (AM + FM radio) The table below from Howstuffworks.com shows that channels 2 to 6 operrate between 54MHz to 88MHz and 174MHz to 220MHz. Your aerial isnt designed for these higher freqencies which in turn means the length of the aerial must be changed to accomodate the full range.

Common frequency bands include the following:

AM radio - 535 kilohertz to 1.7 megahertz

Short wave radio - bands from 5.9 megahertz to 26.1 megahertz

Citizens band (CB) radio - 26.96 megahertz to 27.41 megahertz

Television stations - 54 to 88 megahertz for channels 2 through 6

FM radio - 88 megahertz to 108 megahertz

Television stations - 174 to 220 megahertz for channels 7 through 13

So, using f = c / lambda , and re arranging lambda (wavelength) = c / f we get

Radio... @ f=92MHz

c = 3.00x10^8

wavelength is 3.26metres.

1/16th of this gives us about 20 cm which is about the length of the current aerial.

TV... @ f=200MHz

c = 3.0x10^8

wavelength is 1.5metres.

1/16 of this is about 10cm or 1/4 would be 40cm (which would work better).

In otherwords, the current length of your aerial is suitable for radio but not TV, if you want tv you need a aerial that is either 1/2, 1/4 or 1/16th of the wavelength which I would recommend 40 cm as it would give a decent reception without making you look like a taxi!

HTH

Mike:thumbup:

so

car radio aerials are absolutely no good for TV what so ever, you need a proper TV aerial that either goes on the roof or a pair that go inside the windows on either side of the car but you will never get a good reliable TV signal that stays strong whilst driving at speeds above 30mph.

=

I hope you have a TV licence to cover this!

The aerial for your radio is designed for frequencies of 535kHz to 108MHz (AM + FM radio) The table below from Howstuffworks.com shows that channels 2 to 6 operrate between 54MHz to 88MHz and 174MHz to 220MHz. Your aerial isnt designed for these higher freqencies which in turn means the length of the aerial must be changed to accomodate the full range.

Common frequency bands include the following:

AM radio - 535 kilohertz to 1.7 megahertz

Short wave radio - bands from 5.9 megahertz to 26.1 megahertz

Citizens band (CB) radio - 26.96 megahertz to 27.41 megahertz

Television stations - 54 to 88 megahertz for channels 2 through 6

FM radio - 88 megahertz to 108 megahertz

Television stations - 174 to 220 megahertz for channels 7 through 13

So' date=' using f = c / lambda , and re arranging lambda (wavelength) = c / f we get

Radio... @ f=92MHz

c = 3.00x10^8

wavelength is 3.26metres.

1/16th of this gives us about 20 cm which is about the length of the current aerial.

TV... @ f=200MHz

c = 3.0x10^8

wavelength is 1.5metres.

1/16 of this is about 10cm or 1/4 would be 40cm (which would work better).

In otherwords, the current length of your aerial is suitable for radio but not TV, if you want tv you need a aerial that is either 1/2, 1/4 or 1/16th of the wavelength which I would recommend 40 cm as it would give a decent reception without making you look like a taxi!

HTH

Mike[/quote']

then

Lol, yes, I suppose! Makes for good reading though

yours was way more technical than mine i must admit :P

Sorry for the quality of photo but they were taken on my phone. This is the reason(s) that the unit will not fit. My idea is to cut away the upper part of the plastic brace along the back of the unit because there is a good two - three inches of space behind this. This would therefore give plenty of room for the unit to sit flush with the dash.

from the look of that picture they seem about the same length as you haven't lined them up right, where the front actually sits means nothing, the front of the screen unit is a lot thicker so will stick out from the dash. if you look the metal casing of the original unit is lined up with the very front of the screen.

it might just be the picture but to me they look the same size regarding what actually goes into the din slot.

This is what I did in my Octy:

Made all the difference!

This is what I did in my Octy:!

Yeah this is the modification that I was planning on. Has it caused any dashboard rattles / creaks?

Nope, no problems at all, and I did it about 18 months ago.

I hope you have a TV licence to cover this!

Now I'm sure because my house holds a TV licence I can therefore watch TV in my car because the same law applies to "mobile" caravans as to "mobile" cars. I state "mobile" in inverted commas because the law states that if a caravan is "static" then a seperate licence has to be obtained. So as long as my car hasn't broken down and can still move off its own steam I think I am fine.