Alright guys, I'm wondering what everyone else does here for their HU's.

I decided to not do the Gauge/HU swap on my MR. Last night I installed my HU to replace the stock Radio.

The install went as smooth as it could, but my issue is how far the radio sticks out.

The first thing I did was mount the brackets to the radio so that I could have 4 screws in the brackets. When I put everything together, the radio is flush, but when I put the face plate on the radio, it sticks completely out of the dash. After looking at it for about 5 minutes with a blank face, I decided that look terrible.

So, I tore everything up again and moved the brackets forward on the radio. The issue with this is that the brackets only have one screw on each. However, the face plate is somewhat flush to the dash, but it's obviously not a perfect fit. I'm still deciding on what I want to do, but I thought I'd post and see what others have done to remedy this. I've seen some Pioneers that have a molding around the face plate that kind of blends in with the dash, is that Pioneer-only? I'll have to dig up my box and see if I have a similar adapter, but I don't recall if it came with one.

I'll take some pictures of what I have now when I get home tonight and post them up.

My HU is a JVC HD Radio

 

For best result you can add a backstrap to use the second mount or you can push the cage that the radio comes with in through the front and it will have tabs to bend in on the inside to hold it in but it's not in there very tight and could easily be stolen. or the best thing to do is get the relocation kit put it under the heat controls and get some guages for where the radio used to be.

 

My MR has factory gauges on the bottom already, would I still need this relocation kit if the gauges are already there?

I thought about doing this, but ended up not doing it because I wasn't too confident in how I'd like the end result.

 

You already have the relocation kit where your gauges mount. All you need to do is swap the HU and gauges. I did it a month ago and it's fast, straight-forward, and easy. The most difficult part was getting some slack in the gauge wires when they moved to the upper DIN location. Swap the Boost and Voltage gauge positions while you're at it (put Boost on left). Search for "relocation kit" and you'll find plenty of threads discussing how to do it.

 

Thanks bud.

I decided yesterday that I don't like either option with mounting the radio on the top (either sticking out or receded into the dash)

With the radio sticking out, it just looks ugly. With the radio receded into the dash so that the face plate is semi-flush, you can see the mounting screws on the radio brackets, which just doesn't look like a "finished" product to me.

I didn't even attempt to do the relocation because the "How To" on the forums showed that the guy had a cubby where my gauges are so I wasn't sure if the same applied (plus it was 1am and i was tired).

I'll take a look at it today, hopefully I can get it to where I'm happy.