My best attempt to bring the Crossfire interior into the current generation of connectivity, and tried to bring a little style to what is a good building block, if not a little bland. There are quite a few things still to be done. New custom floor mats, leather interior update including new seats, door cards, and steering wheel from mienlenkrad in Germany. You’ll also notice I’ve added depth to the very boring plastic dashboard with chrome inserts with corresponding polished aluminum bezels for buttons, switchgear, giving a much more interesting environment. I even got an aluminum cover for the wing mirror selector. The key IMO is to add parts that don’t look stuck on. Something that looks machined. At least to me.
But for now the head unit and redesign of the comms is complete.
Head unit is a Joying 8.8 android tablet. It is unique because you can purchase an optional meter long ribbon cable to put the “brain” anywhere you wish, giving you really good options.
Joying makes several accessories for this head unit. I’ve installed them all. Bluetooth controller which needs to be hard wired to the unit. Front and rear cameras. Dual 4g cell antennas inside the dashboard, as well as a gps antenna also mounted in the dashboard. Finally a hard wired mic, also buried in the dash.
I removed interior body panels in order to route all wires properly, there are no exposed wiring in this install.
In order to perform this mod you need patience and a very delicate hand. A dremel, a proper trim removal kit with plastic tools but also metal picks of various sizes. You’ll also need the AOZ double din kit. You’ll need the aluminum iPad easel which you must mod to use as the brace for the screen. A 3D printer to fabricate the back screen cover to cover the ribbon cable.
Last thing is patience and a clean and well lit working environment. I made sure everything including the illuminated door sill plates were changed to a green hue to match the dashboard lighting. It only looks different in photos because of my garbage cell phone camera. But everything is indeed green.
Can’t really convey how good it feels to have my stereo connected with a 4G SIM card and have all my media, navigation, music, movies, even video games all running on this unit with the coupled controller in the double din area.
The screen does not block your view of the road, when seated the top of the screen bezel is actually level with the base of the windshield.
Once I have the leather and other upgrades for the interior done I’ll post a new series of pictures. Then the second phase starts. I have totally new aero bits nobody has done. All of these are in the spirit of the car. No huge wings or gaudy nonsense. A new grill as well. All as a package to bring some modernity and a tad more aggressiveness to the crossfire. They are definitely in the Brabus/StarTech spirit.
Final upgrade will be an AMG swap.
