As I mentioned in my previous post I bought a car last year. I have been very happy with it, but the headunit in (which was cheap Chinese thing) annoyed me. It would crash often, and just generally be unreliable.
Also, in the 2006 Honda Civic when you remove the stock head unit you lose access to a small secondary screen that display stuff like the date and time, as well as the current AC settings. Not in and of itself a huge issue, but nonetheless I preferred having things work if at all possible.
So when I went to install my new head unit I also purchased a canbus adapter (as they are called) from a company called Connects2. They do all sorts of cool stuff for after market head units and it made the installation a breeze.
However, after installing my new head unit I no longer had the use of the audio steering wheel controls. No volume up/down, skip and play/pause. Ever so slightly more annoying. First I thought it might’ve been an issue with the head unit connector cable, so I bought a new one. When that didn’t work they thought it might be a defective canbus adapter.
None of that was true. What did in fact happen was that I had put the cables together in the wrong order.
I had installed everything by first connecting cables to the car and then the headunit. It was supposed to be the other way around. None of the instructions mentioned this, so I assume its one of those things that is “just known” in the car audio installer world. I only found out about this after googling for months, and suddenly stumbling across an eight year old youtube video (I don’t have the link, sorry), that said “always connect back from the head unit”.
Regardless. I have my controls back. I am happy.