This will be the 3rd radio we've had in the Jeep. When we purchased the Jeep, the radio was a very basic aftermarket radio. It worked but had no options other than, a radio. We at the very least wanted to use an MP3 player so we went to Car Toys for options. I really don't know much about installing radio's so we settled on one and had them install it. The install was shoddy at best, the radio would push in on one side. We had them "fix" it but soon after it was doing the same thing. We persevered with it for about a year until it finally died. Well, I say died, actually it wouldn't turn off! It drained our battery completely and the weekend after the drain, the battery bulged out from the sides, the starter relay blew, and the jeep wouldn't start. Coincidence?
Because of the awful experience we had with Car Toys I decided to install the next radio myself. After a lot of searching and figuring out what unit would install in our 2008 Jeep Wrangler without hacking the console up we decided on a Boss BE10ACP. I purchased it through Crutchfield along with their wiring harness and another kit for mounting the unit in the console. At checkout they had a service where they would connect the Crux SOOCR-26 Wiring Interface to the Boss Media Player harness for only $25. To me, that was a deal! That made the install plug and play and kept me from soldering and bundling the harness. The picture above shows how the entire Crux harness came attached to the Media player harness. I was impressed.
I disassembled the console to get to the wiring. I also added a USB and Apple Car Play USB port on the lower part of the console where the aux power used to be. I moved the aux power to the other side where the cigarette lighter was so we can plug in a USB charge port. The install was very easy. I ran into one difficulty at the start, no power to the Boss unit. I finally called Crutchfield tech support and they were great. Following the tech through troubleshooting the power issue I found the amplifier fuse was gone from the fuse box. That was a bit disturbing because I never removed it and the previous radio powered up apparently without it. He said it needed a 30amp fuse which conveniently I had, stuck it in, and it powered up flawlessly.
I completed the install without further issue other than figuring out what parts to use for the mounting of the head unit in the dash. After that, it was plug and play. It works great and sounds better than before. What I really like about the unit is we can add front and rear cameras later if we choose. The touchscreen is really nice and the interface is easy to navigate. It is a bit big in the Jeep though. At the time of purchase there were no Media players available with smaller screens unless you wanted to pay over $1k. This one also has the removable screen so we can push 2 buttons and take it with us. That should help prevent potential theft.
If you have a story about a radio/media player install send it in and well publish it for others in the off road community to read about!