Yay for buying cars :)

[Paul Adams]

Always fun going car shopping

Wife & I have a Mitsubishi Carisma (1.8 automatic) currently, but we're about to give this to her mum as her car has been written off after being rear-ended so today we went out looking for a new (second-hand) car.

Looks like we'll be getting an '03 2.0 automatic Citroen Xsara Picasso after taking it for a spin and just loving that climate control and comfy ride.

Kind of surprised to read about it being considered a "mini MPV", and swapping out the head unit sounds like it could be a challenge without losing the steering stalk remote control and possibly in-dash display.

Head unit must be replaced as we want to stop fiddling with multiple CD-Rs and have the ability to play MP3s - so the Sony MEX-1GP is looking favourite, with the appropriate adaptor and fascia.

[Howard]

so a Pioneer head unit of some description is what I'm after, with the appropriate stuff.

Fixed


Congrats on the new car too I'm glad it's a proper people carrier and not a 4X4

[SilentDeath]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...012343-6415928

works very well for my fiesta, my dads primera, and my brothers corsa + cheaper than headunit.

[Paul Adams]

I always wondered about the legality of those things, as they are radio transmitters operating on the FM band - for which I thought you needed a licence?
I guess maybe the strength of the transmitter precludes it from that, though.

I'm definitely getting a proper head unit though - and the 1GB built-in memory is rather funky indeed.
This has given me the excuse to go through all my MP3s, delete the ones I never listen to and fix up the ID3 tags in preparation

It's remarkable the number of CD albums I bought, ripped and only like 1 track out of the lot... I really should buy more individual tracks online I guess.

I'm going to leave the speakers in place though, I've not been bothered enough to rip out all the cables, install CD-changers, amps and bass tubes since my 405 SRi when I was 21... far too much hassle.

[midzt]

I had an itrip, but it didn't work very well in my car so I bought a FM Modulator instead, works a lot better and a lot more reliable. Although I would of preferred getting a head unit that works specifally with an ipod so that I can acutlly change tracks using the head unit but they cost a lot more than a fm modulator.

[BenW]

IIRC the FM transmitters are illegal in this country.

Why not get a stereo that plays MP3 CDs? That way you burn a cd as a data cd full of mp3s. You can get a few hundred tracks on a cd

[SilentDeath]

Whats stoping you changing track from your mp3 player?

I prefer just having one player, as mainting one 20gb hdd is hard enough... also i doubt any head units could be as nice to use as my rio karma...

Transmitters are suppost to have a licence but with mine for example, im not using any frequency of a station afaik its not used and picks up static when i have transmitter off.

Nones going to care and theres no way i could be caught usuing it either as the range is so low.

[Paul Adams]

The MEX-1GP also plays CD-R/RWs with MP3s - originally I was looking for a head unit that plays CD-R/RWs (or even better, DVD-RWs) full of MP3s and also had a USB input so I can use a small flash drive - but having 1GB of flash memory in the unit's face plate itself is very convenient.

The multiplexing issue with the Picasso loom put me off going for a no-name unit - there are cheap MP3/CD-RW/USB/smart card head units from Denver, but it would break the remote control and possibly lose the dash display too.

Most commonly-used music for driving to will fit on there, sampled at 64kbps, and for the other stuff I can burn a couple of CDs to store in the glove compartment.

Just found the adpator for 20 quid cheaper too, which is nice

[Paul Adams]

Whats stoping you changing track from your mp3 player?

Not sure if you meant the MP3-playing head unit or plugging an external MP3 player into the aux input of the existing head unit, so I'll address both

The remote control feature loss wouldn't bother me, but the in-dash display getting borked would - things like the calculated MPG, clock, etc. are things that can go pear-shaped if you just whack in any head unit that doesn't handle the multiplexing correctly.
I definitely don't want to screw up the in-dash display by swapping the head unit.

While I have a tiddly MP3 player (32MB built-in memory, SD card slot) I only use this for going on holiday or flights - I don't walk/travel anywhere on my own on a regular basis to require a large capacity player to entertain me (I live directly opposite work, it takes me 3 minutes to go from my apartment door to my desk).