Good afternoon. I am looking to upgrade my 04 RX-8 radio I bought the cover on ebay for the radio and a 3 inch radio on ebay, but saw that there are many issues for people that do and especially don’t use the Metra kit.

Is there anything you guys can recommend to me? I’d like to retain my steering wheel controls as well as the AC. The metra kit is a bit pricey but if I have to get it for a functional install I will. The main reason I want a touchscreen is for the bluetooth/ apple play and the reverse camera. Let me know what my best options are in 2024 I haven’t seen many threads on this lately.

 

just ordered the metra kit + axxess AWSC-1 ADAPTER and then the pioneer pioneer dmh-w2770nex

 

I ended up just installing it and extending the wires for the hazard button and shoving the motherboard in the back to retain ac **** controls. I did lose control for the ***** for the temperature and the defroster options but it all works at least, I will save up for the metra kit when I get a chance. I’m in FL anyways so not like I really use those ***** I just need to control how much AC I get lol.

 

That works as well, I gave a try by another approach, stripped everything from the main board down to all LEDs, daughter boards, pots and so on.
It works very well indeed, the issue I have is the lack of space since my head unit is a huge AVH-Z9200DAB .

 

If you buy the Metra kit, the Axxess box will not be capable of updates. They stopped updating the software around 2014.