# 2007 VW Passat - Co-Worker's install



## WLDock (Sep 27, 2005)

Hey all,

Thought I would post up some work I did on a co-workers 2007 VW Passat Wolfsburg Edition. His car has the base system and not the Dynaudio upgrade.
He listens to a lot of techno and trance and he came to me and said:

*"I was listening to some tracks in the ride the other day. I was really trying to get into the music but I said to myself.....I just know there has to be something better...this factory system just aint' cuttin' it."*

Well, those were not his exact words but close. We talked previously about doing something so ...the project was on!

*GOALS*
1.) Keep cost under $1500. 
2.) Double DIN DVD deck with USB. 
3.) Articulate sound with clean, tight but not over bearing bass
4.) He wants to help so he could learn.......Cool!

*EQUIPMENT*
Deck - Pioneer AVH-P3200DVD
Amp - Clarion XH5410 
Amp - Clarion XH5210
Components - Pioneer TS-D1720C
Subs - Infinity Reference 1052W

*EXTRAS*
Second Skin Damlifier Pro deadening on the doors
PAC Audio C2R-VW, SWI-PS, SWI-CAN steering wheel control interface (YES! You need all three)

Here is the gear:


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## Notloudenuf (Sep 14, 2008)

subscribed. Looking forward to this one.


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## WLDock (Sep 27, 2005)

OK, let's get this started. What should have taken a matter of minutes took almost a couple of hours....and that was landing the main power wire on an empty spot on the buss bar of the fuse box, removing the trim pieces in the car, and running the wire back:









Here is the door with the trim panel removed and the OEM speakers literally drilled out. If you never done a VW...they rivet in the speaker pods:









Next, here is the door with some Second Skin deadening and Pioneer midwoofer mounted on a MDF baffle. I used a red piece of metal over the cutout above the woofer so that the door panel would clear.


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## WLDock (Sep 27, 2005)

Here I am running wires under the dash, with the OEM deck removed:










We decided to mount the amps under the read deck so.......Here is the rear deck removed. The fit and finish of the Passat was very nice. The panels fit tight and overlap very well.









OK, moving along.....Here is the wire harness behind the Pioneer deck. You don't see the PAC Audio interfaces as I stuffed them further down. What sucks about them is there are three boxes that wire together to make one LARGE harness. I actually did not realize that I needed the SWI-CAN interface as well as the SWI-PS interface for the Pioneer deck to make the steering wheel controls work. Also the C2R-VW wire harness/can adapter was used.


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## WLDock (Sep 27, 2005)

OK, my bud Tim was a great help and really wanted to learn how to do this so I put him to task. He made the amp rack....Nice work Tim...your ride will be sounding good real soon!









Next, here is the sub enclosure with the trim panel and black egg crate foam that I got from our service department at work. Many of our electronic PCB's come packaged with this stuff to protect them....I just had to use it for something as we throw away a lot of this stuff.









Here is the sub enclosure complete! I applied red vinyl over the face of the enclosure, attached carpet to the trim panel oval cutout with some glue and staples on the under side. I let the long length carpet drape down the sides as I used silicone and screws to mount it to the box. Next I glued down the carpet to the sides for a seamless look.


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## WLDock (Sep 27, 2005)

OK, so we went back and forth about where to put the tweeters. The OEM sail panel pods were a bit small for the Pioneer tweeters so I thought the location above the mids would work. VW made provisions for the 3-way front Dynaudio upgrade which consist of a 7" midbass, 2" midrange above the midbass, and tweets in the sail panel pods. The door panel has a angled grill for the 2" midrange to play into the cabin so I glued and zip tied the tweets in place. The Pioneer tweets come with a cool front mount flush adapter that was used. 









Here is the panel with deadening added behind the tweets:









Now, here is the door with the crossovers mounted and more deadening added:









We got the door panels back on and as you can see this is a great location for the tweets as they are close to the mids and are angled up towards the center of the car.


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## WLDock (Sep 27, 2005)

OK, here we have the amps rack bolted to the rear deck and all wired:









Here is the view from a standing position looking in....a pretty stealth and space saving idea. Tim' s said he wanted to see just a cool blue glow back there at night.....you got it!










We got the sub enclosure in and wired up...here is a rear shot:









Here is a front shot of the subs....hard to see from the pic but the box is a wedge shape and fits well behind the seats:


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## tintbox (Oct 25, 2008)

Nice looking install. You gotta love DIY!


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## glidn (Apr 21, 2007)

Hope sounds as good as it looks. Keep up the great work.


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## WLDock (Sep 27, 2005)

And last but not least here is a close up of the deck. We used the AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL dash kit as I heard that this fits better than the Metra kit. Not bad!









And here is the last pic, a dash shot;









Overall this install was not bad at all but was tough due to time restraints. We spent several single day weekends doing stuff and Tim was out of town for a week right in the middle of the install so that pushed things back. The system sounds very nice and has good tonality. I got my bud, SQ legend Anthony Davis to come over and tune it. We were pressed for time on Sunday evening and there were some imaging issues that maybe needed a phase reversal on one of the midbasses. So, we tried running the AUTO EQ as we got the optional microphone. We performed it with bodies in the front of the car and it actually cleaned up the sound and fixed some of the imaging errors. 

For the money, the Pioneer deck is nice and should work out well as Tim wants to load his music files onto some flash drives. I also did the relay parking brake bypass to run the DVD and that worked out well for a minute but for some reason stopped....so I have to figure that out once I actually install the PAC Audio CAN Bus interface. 

Nevertheless, the Pioneer components sound GREAT and are a steal for $115. Balanced sound, nice detail and depth, yet they have good midbass ability. The Clarion amps made no impressions at all and got out of the way of the music....I did not hear any turn on noise, pops, hiss, etc. We used the 4 channel to send 90 watts x 2 to the front, 90 watts x 2 to the rear OEM speakers (We should have replaced these ). The 2 ch sent 160 wattx x 2 to the subs. The subs are not ground pounding but have just the right amount of tight low end that Tim was after...he really did not want BIG bass so I did not sweat over the 850 watt sub amp that I was thinking using. You really can't enjoy Techno and trance without some form of low end...so he is lovin' it!  Nevertheless, the two amps fit just right in the given space. 

Overall I had a good time doing this and was glad to make great in-car-entertainment or *I.C.E.* a reality for my fellow music lover Tim. Such a great guy to work with on and off the clock and I hope he enjoys it.


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## jsun_g (Jun 12, 2008)

Nice work! Nothing over the top, just plain and simple, and what's more, you gave a very positive impression to your friend about DIY car audio.


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## sydmonster (Oct 5, 2009)

strailght forward and logical! nice, its how daily systems should be


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## slowride (Jan 26, 2009)

nice install. it's good to see some simplicity in a VW. I work on these everyday and I have seen some crap installs.


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## fish (Jun 30, 2007)

Nice work Walt. Did you experiment with the direction the sub box was facing? I'm wondering if there was much of a difference in the sound if you did.


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## WLDock (Sep 27, 2005)

Nomally, I would play around with sub placement for a bit but front facing was the primary goal. I was prepared to do a stealth panel if we fired them to the rear to keep things somewhat stealth and throw-stuff-in-the-trunk problem free but.....
We just kept it simple and used the phase switch and EQ on the deck to deal with the subs. We really just wanted a little bottom that did not bring attention to the rear and we got that.


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## kizz (Jun 22, 2009)

Did you figure out the video bypass? i have the same deck and just used one of the bosch (can't remember how to spell it) relays and it worked great. only cost about 4 dol and was easy to hide.

Very nice install btw, I really like where the amps are mounted. very clean looking.


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## pioneercrazed (Feb 8, 2010)

Nice clean install, that's what I call a good friend! 

Can you tell me how you attached the amp rack to the rear deck, looks really slick...


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## WLDock (Sep 27, 2005)

kizz said:


> Did you figure out the video bypass? i have the same deck and just used one of the bosch (can't remember how to spell it) relays and it worked great. only cost about 4 dol and was easy to hide.
> Very nice install btw, I really like where the amps are mounted. very clean looking.


Yeah man, that is what I used and it worked fine for several days and then stopped. When you put a DYD in now the menu never shows, it stays on the screen saver. I don't know if that has somethings to do with it but I will check when I can spend more time with the system. Tim was saying something about having to go through some other menu or something to get it to play????


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## WLDock (Sep 27, 2005)

pioneercrazed said:


> Nice clean install, that's what I call a good friend!
> Can you tell me how you attached the amp rack to the rear deck, looks really slick...


 We went to Home Depot and bought six 3/4 2" bolts, locknuts, and washers and drilled holes in the amp rack and deck and did her up!
You can see the bolts in the picture.


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## nothinbutnick56 (Mar 28, 2009)

I would definitely go with the scosche kit for this car. It's much more flush and is a more solid plastic material compared to the metra and AI kits.


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## WRX/Z28 (Feb 21, 2008)

Looks great! I have one question though. Aren't you worried about heat with the amps mounted upside down? I might have suspended the rack like a shelf, and mounted the amps to it right side up... making sure to leave some room above for ventilation of course...


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## WLDock (Sep 27, 2005)

nothinbutnick56 said:


> I would definitely go with the scosche kit for this car. It's much more flush and is a more solid plastic material compared to the metra and AI kits.


 Hey thanks for the feedback but I read mixed things about the SCOSCHE kit. My understanding is:

*a.) The SCOSCHE kit has better looking plastic and color that matches the OEM.
b.) The AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL kit fits better then the SCOSCHE and METRA kits.*

Look at this thread: Scosche Dash-Kit Pictures - VW GTI Forum / VW Rabbit Forum / VW R32 Forum / VW Golf Forum - Golfmkv.com


I remember reading on here well respected installer BING aka SimplicityInSound said that the AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL kit fit better than the METRA kit he used previously. 
http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum/diyma-build-logs/47312-one-more-mkv-gti-sq-install-pics.html

Look at these pictures:

*SCOSCHE KIT* Look how bad the sides and top fit...:thumbsdown::











*AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL KIT...nice!:thumbsup:*










I think I made the right choice....and my bud is not as anal as you or I about such things. That is why I was not pressed to bond and paint the kit.


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## WLDock (Sep 27, 2005)

WRX/Z28 said:


> Looks great! I have one question though. Aren't you worried about heat with the amps mounted upside down? I might have suspended the rack like a shelf, and mounted the amps to it right side up... making sure to leave some room above for ventilation of course...


 Yes, I though about the heat issue. I am banking on the active cooling doing the job...will see this summer if there are any issues.




> Forced Induction Cooling
> Clarion’s XH line of amplifiers feature forced induction cooling. This is a two-part technology. First, the heatsink design of the amplifier maximizes air flow across the switching devices to hit them with a blast of cool air. Air is then injested into the core of the amplifier and expelled through the ends of the amp. The second part of Forced Induction Cooling is the computer controlled cooling fan. A thermal sensor connected to the heat sink of the amp combined with programming logic in the amplifiers core decides the appropriate speed for the fan to maximize cooling while minimizing fan noise.


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## 2DEEP2 (Jul 9, 2007)

Say Walt, you doctored up them pics man?!! I don't remember anything looking as goods as what you show in here.

Nay, it really came out very nice for a $1500 budget.

Pioneers speakers were pretty good straight out the box.


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## kizz (Jun 22, 2009)

WLDock said:


> Yeah man, that is what I used and it worked fine for several days and then stopped. When you put a DYD in now the menu never shows, it stays on the screen saver. I don't know if that has somethings to do with it but I will check when I can spend more time with the system. Tim was saying something about having to go through some other menu or something to get it to play????


weird, i haven't had a problem yet. hope you get it all figured out.


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## knifey (Nov 22, 2008)

Good call on the AI kit. I tried the Scosche at first but it was an ugly and didn't fit well at all. The AI is also ten bucks less in my neck of the woods


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## WLDock (Sep 27, 2005)

2DEEP2 said:


> Say Walt, you doctored up them pics man?!! I don't remember anything looking as goods as what you show in here.
> Nay, it really came out very nice for a $1500 budget. Pioneers speakers were pretty good straight out the box.


 Hey, I am getting good at using the free photo editing software GIMP.  Yeah, I agree...not sure how much more I could have done given the budget. Yo Anth, you remembered all the changes you made? We had to discconect the battery and lost the settings so we will need to tune it again.



kizz said:


> weird, i haven't had a problem yet. hope you get it all figured out.


Man, right now I don't have a clue. Maybe the wires came undone or the relay went bad?



knifey said:


> Good call on the AI kit. I tried the Scosche at first but it was an ugly and didn't fit well at all. The AI is also ten bucks less in my neck of the woods


Yeah, the Scosche may be beefy and flat but it fits like SH_T from the pics I have seen. So you have experienced the same thing? I will use the AI if I ever do another VDUB.


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## jaydub (Feb 22, 2010)

Those riveted factory speakers and the difficulty in matching Volkswagen's dash textures always made for fun installs when I had my Jetta. Nice work!


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## WLDock (Sep 27, 2005)

Well, I finally got the PAC Audio SWI-CAN adapter in so......I hope to get the steering wheel controls working, figure out why the DVD picture won't show, and perform a final tuning session.


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## hunter660 (Feb 23, 2009)

WLDock said:


> OK, let's get this started. What should have taken a matter of minutes took almost a couple of hours....and that was landing the main power wire on an empty spot on the buss bar of the fuse box, removing the trim pieces in the car, and running the wire back:


What did it take to install the power wire here? I have extra spaces on my Jetta, but no studs to mount the terminal ring to.


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