Possible to use aftermarket carplay headunit designed for 2007-2014 into 2005?

[aa240sx]

I've got a 2005 Ford Expedition Limited 2wd with the rear seat entertainment package, factory in dash radio with sat (no nav). We're actually the original owners (inherited from father) and she runs great with over 175K miles super well maintained.

We're getting by with using the rca jack inputs on the rear seat dvd player and the dvd/aux input for getting audio from our phones.

However, I really want to get carplay on this now 20 year old SUV. Seems like the only route is to go with a double din setup and aftermarket, but there seems to be a ton of availability for carplay units designed for the expeditions made from 2007 to 2014. I know Ford did a dash redesign in 2007 to accommodate larger screens, but I also know the actual electrical connections didn't actually change.

My question is has anyone adapted an aftermarket carplay unit designed for 2007-2014 Ford Expeditions into a 2005 Expedition?

I know the headunit could be marginally larger, but from images I've seen online it seems that these aftermarket headunits are using some type of bracket to fit into the dashboard. I'm wondering if I could get it to fit into a 2005 opening without the bracket?

Thanks for any insight on this! I know it's a pretty obscure subset of owners that are probably even considering this, but my motivation for doing it is again because there seems to be such a wide availability of carplay headunits designed for the 2007-2014 Ford Expeditions. I feel like steering wheel integration, rear seat dvd integration, etc will be better if I use one of these units vs an aftermarket double din that will also require lots of wiring.

 

[LexpeditionKy]

Simply call Crutchfield, see their webpage. Anyone can use their free tech support. They can guarantee a matching unit and even put the correct wire connectors on for you. They have full instruction videos to match what they sell. I just got a nice unit for my 2012 Expedition.

 

[KennyT]

Tell me what kind of unit you went with as I'm thinking about a new one for my 2014 limited.

Simply call Crutchfield, see their webpage. Anyone can use their free tech support. They can guarantee a matching unit and even put the correct wire connectors on for you. They have full instruction videos to match what they sell. I just got a nice unit for my 2012 Expedition.

 

[aa240sx]

Ok diving in! Here's the unit;

Amazon.com: Android 14 Car Radio Stereo for Ford F150/F250/F350 Expedition 2004-2014,Mercury Milan 2006-2009,Lincoln Mark LT/MKX with Apple Carplay Android Auto Touchscreen Bluetooth/GPS/WiFi/Backup Camera/SWC : Electronics

Amazon.com: Android 14 Car Radio Stereo for Ford F150/F250/F350 Expedition 2004-2014,Mercury Milan 2006-2009,Lincoln Mark LT/MKX with Apple Carplay Android Auto Touchscreen Bluetooth/GPS/WiFi/Backup Camera/SWC : Electronics

www.amazon.com

Listing says it fits 2004 to 2014 Expedition, but I know it's actually 2007-2014. Will be in uncharted waters trying to get this to work, but I'm up for a challenge. I think my main issues will be

1 - getting this to work with my rear seat dvd player (I know the physical stereo wiring harness appears to be the same between 2005 and 2007 models but there is a separate wiring harness for the dvd player that I will need to splice into)
2 - getting this to work with my factory subwoofer (I know the physical stereo wiring harness appears to be the same between 2005 and 2007 models but there is a separate wiring harness for the factory subwoofer that I will need to splice into)
3 - getting the parking brake wired up so this will function 100% without having to be in park
4 - getting the steering wheel controls to work (i will be happy if only the volume controls and mode change works...)
5 - getting headunit to fit in space. pretty sure it's going to sit proud of the dashboard and likely 2-3mm wider and taller than opening and I'm ok with that.
6 - wiring up the rear backup camera (likely the easiest of these challenges)

I know that most of these types of headunits are pretty generic and the manufacturer simply adapts the main unit to fit a particular mount for a particular car as well as creating a wiring adapter to make it 'plug and play' for a particular car. The interesting thing is the pictures in the listing (haven't received it yet) show a wiring harness that includes not only the stereo, but the dvd and subwoofer harness. The optimistic side of me hopes these two devices will also end up being 'plug and play'. But, because this is not made for my specific expedition, it's this gray area that I'll be struggling in.

Anyone do this type of installation before, please chime in with any advice please!!

Considering this is a 20 year old vehicle now, no I'm not too concerned with how 'factory' or 'clean' my install will be. My main goal here is functionality and getting my expedition up to more modern features.

As a side note - I also need to diagnose an issue that's recently come up as the entire right side of my vehicle no longer has sound. I'm hoping the new stereo corrects this, but we shall see.

 

[aa240sx]

So quick update for anyone actually curious, using a carplay unit designed for a 2007-2014 expedition and trying to get the harness to work with a 2005 Expedition didn't work. I tried following the pinout guides etc, but the unit I have which was a crappy amazon unit which I've already returned kept blowing it's fuse.

So, I've gone ahead and ordered a Metra wiring harness for the stereo and a separate harness to retain the factory DVD and ordered another crappy amazon carplay headunit. However, this time it's a generic double din 7" screen unit so assuming I can get the wiring from this unit to properly play with the metra harnesses, I'll report back with my success or failure.

This is the unit I'm currently waiting for;

Amazon.com: ATOTOZONE A5L Double-Din Car Radio Android in-Dash Car Stereo with Wireless CarPlay/Android Auto, GPS Tracking, WiFi/Bluetooth/USB, ChatGPT-AI Head Unit, 2G+32G, A5LG2B7T : Electronics

Amazon.com: ATOTOZONE A5L Double-Din Car Radio Android in-Dash Car Stereo with Wireless CarPlay/Android Auto, GPS Tracking, WiFi/Bluetooth/USB, ChatGPT-AI Head Unit, 2G+32G, A5LG2B7T : Electronics

www.amazon.com

 

[aa240sx]

Unit arrived today! Will update you with my installation experience and hopefully success. I've got adapters from Scosche, Red Wolf and Metra in too.

 

[aa240sx]

Success! I was able to connect my Atoto A5L and retain all the previous functions included with the premium sound setup. I even found an STL file online so I could get a better bezel fitment with the dash.

Ultimately, the adapters really did all the heavy lifting. The only modification I did was tapping my dvd adapter's amp to the amp turn on as well as grounding some of the wires to the ground. I never had to ground the parking brake wire since there's a setting in the unit to just turn off this feature so you can use the unit 100% even when in motion.

Right now, I'm struggling with the following;

1 - steering wheel controls
2 - rear view camera - more of a cable issue really since I'm just waiting for a longer cable
3 - dvd audio - not sure why but I get conflicting simultaneous audio signals when I run the DVD player
4 - carplay - right now I'm plugging in for carplay, but prefer wireless not sure what I'm missing direction wise with the A5L unit.
5 - getting video on unit to simultaneously output on dvd screen. I know that has to do with video input, but not sure how to do it.
I will say the clarity of the screen is super impressive for such an inexpensive headunit and the ability to control sound through EQ's as well as the subwoofer is awesome.

 

[whtbronco]

Steering wheel controls seem to require a bit of fiddling on every vehicle I have tried.

 

[aa240sx]

Steering wheel controls are super finicky, and I'm definitely not a good troubleshooter. My method has always been just randomly try different things and hope for the best.

But.. in this case. It worked! To be clear this only worked with my Atoto A5L unit so I wouldn't assume this could work with any aftermarket Carplay HU. What worked for me was to take the orange SWC key wire and connect that with PIN 18 of the harness. I also took the brown wire and grounded it. I did not do anything with the other SWC key wire from the atoto harness.

The next steps were all done in the app on the device. I basically would tap the icon with the function I wanted on the steering wheel control (volume +), then tap (not long press) the steering wheel control physical button. This caused the icon on the display to change color. I tested this with 3 other buttons then backed out of the app (assuming changes were saved, of course). Tested the buttons on the wheels and they worked!

1 - steering wheel controls - check!
2 - rear view camera - more of a cable issue really since I'm just waiting for a longer cable. check! long cable arrived and I wired up the rear view camera. remember to also connect the red conv wire at the extension.
3 - dvd audio - not sure why but I get conflicting simultaneous audio signals when I run the DVD player. Still not resolved.
4 - carplay - right now I'm plugging in for carplay, but prefer wireless not sure what I'm missing direction wise with the A5L unit. check! You can actually choose to go wired or wireless in the settings screen for this.
5 - getting video on unit to simultaneously output on dvd screen. I know that has to do with video input, but not sure how to do it. Still not solved. This is actually the last thing I need to figure out!
I will say the clarity of the screen is super impressive for such an inexpensive headunit and the ability to control sound through EQ's as well as the subwoofer is awesome.

 

[aa240sx]

Just a quick update on this issue

5 - Getting video on unit to simultaneously output on dvd screen. I know that has to do with video input, but not sure how to do it. Looks like at least for the A5L units, I cannot take video from the unit itself and output or dual zone screen it to an external monitor or rear seat dvd monitor. The A5L unit does have a video input as well as HDMI input but those only bring video signals into the device to output the screen on the device only. Oh well, may be some day I'll get a front camera to use with the video input which could be useful for parking purposes.