Receiver Upgrade

There wasn’t anything wrong with the Alpine CDA-9833 the previous owner had installed. I could tune in the radio, play CDs and connect it to my iPhone using a combination of old adapters (it was originally set up to connect to an iPod). I recently learned I could burn any combination of MP3s to a CD and it would allow me to search through the disk for whatever track I was looking. It even supported using a folder structure for artists/songs/podcasts, etc… Like I said, I never paid it much mind.

The trouble was the iPhone connection was unreliable. Seemed like the slighted nudge of the connector could cause ERROR 02 to display on the unit and the only way to fix it was to turn off the ignition.

I found a new Bluetooth version of the receiver online for a shade over a hundred bucks. It even supports making phone calls and dishing out commands to Siri so I says to myself, “Mark” I says, “just do it. What could go wrong?”.

Doesn’t look like much of a change but it is. Not that I ever use the phone for calls but apparently I can be heard just fine using the included microphone which is currently mounted just below the instrument cluster. The USB supports FLAC audio as well as charging but the cigarette lighter conversion and panel port updates already provide convenient, rapid charging.

At one point I managed to blow the ACC fuse but was stoked to see the voltmeter still working on the Add-a-Fuse circuit.