2018 Premium - headunit upgrade?

5617 Views 4 Replies 4 Participants Last post by Avsfan03, May 4, 2019

salsamari

Discussion Starter · Nov 13, 2018

Hi everyone! I really am not a fan of my headunit for the 2018 Forester. I really wanted the black edition and thought maybe that it wouldn't be that big of a deal. I would like to upgrade to have Carplay. My question is, if I upgrade to an aftermarket, will I loose Starlink? I don't care about the silly Starlink features like birdwatching or checking the stocks lol. I really just like that it can tell me if anything is wrong with my car. If I replace the head unit, do I lose the ability to access my car's data through the app on my phone?

I only have 3K miles on it so I don't know how effective that feature is in the long term.

Thanks!

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LouCioccio

· #2 · Dec 31, 2018 (Edited)

I know this is a month old but look here
https://www.subaruforester.org/vbul...link-maestro-rr-apple-carplay-install-784745/
As I was thinking of doing the same. Member jaunton_soop was able to get it working. Looks like he had someone else install. Maybe PM him.
Also found some info at Maestro they are definitely working on an update evidently Subaru change something between the 2017 to 2018 is what I could gather on their forums.

Lou Cioccio

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exwookie

· #3 · Jan 1, 2019

I did a head unit upgrade about a month ago, or so. 2017 forester XT with HK. Pioneer Avic W8400, maestro RR, and idatalink SU2 harness. I retained the STARLINK module, although it’s a tight fit back in there. I retained the back up camera, and have two USBs right under the radio with the help of 2 UBS port extension in the 12volt plug in. Still working out a few minor bugs, but overall, huge improvement over stock. Did I say I love wireless Apple CarPlay!

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LouCioccio

· #4 · Feb 3, 2019

Well I went ahead and upgraded. When I was researching how it was done I figured I (and my son) could do this! One of the remarks my son said, even though in his 20 was an installer for car and home, you probably should have paid someone. I misread on instruction on the forums in haste and probably was a good thing. I went with Autoharness harness because I could keep the rear camera. I did already buy a maestro rr without reading that I needed the SW! So I figured why not have both and buy the SW and also the SU2 harness but to CMA I picked up a second Kenwood harness. This afternoon doing it many times with the RR we were getting a red led comm failure double checking the wiring and re flashing the firmware we still got the red led fail. We did some continuity and voltage checks and determine the RR was not sending voltage to the radio then we went to plan B installed and that one work. I still want to use the RR and least I should be able to do this one as we both did it several times. Like I always tell my scouts when I was a scoutmaster have a plan b and maybe a c.

Lou Cioccio

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Avsfan03

· #5 · May 4, 2019

How does the hk sound with that radio upgrade?

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