First off, for those who missed my post last week I fixed the absolute worst part of the Subaru BRZ by replacing the factory head unit with an aftermarket from Pioneer.
In that post I mentioned that I wasn’t a big fan of the dash trim bracket from Metra and that I’d ordered one from Scosche. The Scosche unit arrived today and I tried it out. Fifteen minutes later it was back in the box with the return label on it.
This is the trim kit I ordered. The center pocket is optional and meant to fill the gap if you install a single DIN unit in a double DIN hole. Not sure why anyone would do that, but whatever. To attach the trim to a double DIN you just leave the pocket out and screw the side plates onto the head unit. So where’d it go wrong? Fitment. To get the holes on the head unit to line up with the holes on the bracket I had to have the face of the brackets forward of the face of the unit. The foremost part of the head unit roughly lined up with the flat rectangular pieces toward the back of the dash trim face. That meant there were these big hollow recesses on each side of the head unit. I didn’t even bother installing them into the dash once I realized this is how they lined up, just screwed the Metra back on and put the Scosche back in the box for a refund.
Good news is this little endeavor wasn’t a total waste. I found that the lack of bass and the at times rough FM signal was the result of a loose connection. Tightened that up and now the bass is heavy and the radio is HD and crystal clear. Not bad.
I’m going to live with the Metra trim for now, but at some point I’m probably going to try this piece from japanparts.com. This seems to be the one that the FT86 forum swears by, so it’s likely my best bet.