Roofmount and awning fitted plus new Chinese PCCM

Evening all, been a lurker for a while and now I've finally got my 996, I thought I'd post my first couple of things on the car. First of all I went with one of the Chinese PCCM copies from Aliexpress - super quick delivery from Ottowin, well packed and no damage. My background for many years was working in car audio and security products, so fitting this unit was no issue. The car came with a crappy mechless single din Pioneer unit and the Bose fibre optic amplifier replaced with a 4 channel amplifier. Fitting was a couple of hours total including cutting out the required sections from the radio/climate dash hole and mounting the double din cage (a 100mm cage is needed and not the 113mm cage), plus of course moving the climate module down (luckily for me I'm half an hour from Design 911 and picked up the new climate trim from them) I'm an iPhone user, so the Carplay facility on the new unit meant I didn't have to buy one with bigger RAM and processor. FM radio works well, unit is quick to boot up and pair to my phone. Display resolution is good and Carplay looks great on the screen. I wasn't holding out for much in the way of features or even the GUI, however, it has DSP, EQ, listening position and pleasantly surprised by main graphics screen including the radio screen. I'm not using any of the speaker outputs so can't comment on how the built in amplifier sounds, but so far through the aftermarket amplifier (that I am just about to change out for a JL Audio XD700/5) it sounds fine. I haven't really messed around with the sound settings as I'm going to fit the new amp when I'm back from holiday. Is the Chinese PCCM clone any good - well for £180 it is pretty damn good and I'd happily recommend one. Is it as slick as my Pioneer double din in my Mk4 Golf R32?? Well no, but I love the OEM look of the PCCM clone and if we are comparing prices then the Pioneer was the best part of £1000 when it was brand new! Secondly....... Roofbars.... I do like a road trip, having done some trips through the UK, France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany - and this year is no exception.... so the 996 is going on a 16 day 2000 mile road trip in 3 weeks. Last year in Switzerland and Italy it was damn hot and I loved having my awning mounted on my Mercedes GLA45AMG to give some sun cover at the campsites and didn't want to miss out this year. Knowing that the Thule roof mounts were no longer available and not willing to pay £700 from Porsche (especially when I didn't actually need the crossbars). I found the thread on here that says to use the Mazda 5 Thule feet kit which I managed to find on Ebay for £30 delivered. My awning has some quick release mounts that I purchased so the job was to try and make this work for the 996. Mounting notes for roofbars- if you are using a set of cross bar roof bars then the Mazda mounts will need to have a section cut out of the rubbers to allow the roof mount "flaps" to not get crushed - simple to do with a stanley knife. I came up with a solution that works for me and my Yakima quick release mounts. This was to turn the Thule feet 90 degrees. I still had to make some cutouts for the roof "flaps" to clear. The mounting screw thread pins that come with the feet kit are the same thread, so no need to use any other parts. I mounted the pins upside down - purely so that I could slide the Yakima mounts with the awning on. Mounting the pins the "correct" way made the thread sticking through the mount too long for what I wanted. I'm also a qualified Radio Amateur and next year I plan to take my Yaesu HF/6m radio on a road trip through Europe and do some portable operating, so the driver's side mounts that are currently "spare" will be great to make a decent HF mobile antenna mount (I use a Yaesu FT-857 ATAS-120 in case anyone is interested!) Modifications to come after coming back from holiday are wheel refurb (they are not bad but the rear 2 could do with a quick spruce up), front and rear wheel spacers, short shifter kit, replace shitty LED side light bulbs with Phillips Ultinon bulbs, replace rear bulbs with full LED set - but currently waiting to see how good the Founders Parts new rear lights look. Feel free to ask any questions about the PCCM or the roofbar fitting kit. If anyone needs any help with fitting a PCCM unit around the Essex area then I'm available to help. Cheers, Andy - 996.2 C4S (Car under the black cover is my Mk4 Golf R32)

Epic mate! Absolutely love everything about that post.......

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Cheers! I've always been about finding solutions / OEM / OEM+ upgrades etc. I'm on the look out for a 997 3.6 airbox next to neaten up the engine bay as they have a nice smooth lid and do the airbox resonator delete with BMW panel filter. Wheel spacers are going on when I get back from the road trip and I'm trying to find a rear cage as I just think a 996 with cage looks great! I've got a 991 steering wheel on the way too (which I will get retrimmed as I fancy a little top dead centre marker in silver) as I find the 996 wheel too big and skinny for my liking - especially having a Golf Mk4 R32 which has a great steering wheel! The 991 wheel is a pretty easy fitment, either with the £200 boss adaptor or the fairly unknown VW spline adaptor which is what I'm going to use as it's 1/10th the price of the boss adaptor!

Thanks for posting this info, particularly the Feedback on the pccm. I have been contemplating one Of these units so might just pull the trigger now. Also in Essex.

Andy - any chance of a link to the exact unit you bought on Ali Express....?

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Hi Simon, Yeh it's the base model Owtosin from their official store on AliExpress. If you are Apple user then this base model unit works just fine as all it's doing is mirroring the Carplay function through an Android app, so you don't need loads of fast processing or RAM. If you are an Android user then you might want to pick one with better processor / memory. Also my unit only has a single camera input, but again unless you want to add 360 degree cameras then there is no need to buy a higher spec one. There is often plenty of deals/discounts popping up AliExpress - I paid £182.15 including the USB DAB add on. Free delivery and no import tax. Don't forget you need to order a 100mm double din cage - just buy this from Ebay for £11-£12 delivered. Don't buy a 113mm kit by accident! If you have a Bose amplifier then you need to check to see if your original unit is fibre optic. If you still have a CDR22 then this is not fibre optic, if you have a CDR23 then this will be fibre optic. I'm not sure on the PCM unit if they were or weren't fibre optic. If you do need a fibre optic adaptor then these are available from the Owtosin store as well along with car specific reverse cameras. Hope this helps and more than happy to give any help / advice on fitting.

Nice one. Thanks. I have pulled the trigger and one of these is on a boat / plane on the way to me. I have the original PCM double DIN unit so if Co-Pilot is right, i shouldn't need to buy an additional cage. Thoughts? And I don't have Bose so hopefully this'll be plug & play, although I think I might need a radio adapter. Did yours come with a microphone that you installed or are you suing the built in one?

nicely done @Andyccr

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Hi Simon, from what I've seen/read, then if you are removing a PCM unit then these already have some sort of factory fitted double din cage. What I did with my new unit was use some cloth "Tesa" tape (proper wiring loom cloth tape) and made it a pressure fit into the cage. You will also not need to trim the mounting "lugs" which are used to hold the top mounted climate control in either. I'm not sure what connectors a non Bose PCM system will have though! So you don't have door speakers or rear subwoofer (or passenger floor mounted if a cabrio) ? You might need to add an ignition feed from the driver's footwell upto the radio hole (you can't use the cigarette lighter as it's permanent feed). My PCCM unit came with aerial adaptors included. Yes mine came with a microphone, for now I've just stuck it just to the left of the steering column but I will be moving it after I come back from holiday to the factory location on the dashboard to hide it away. Mine didn't have a factory microphone as my car originally just came with the CDR23 single din CD player. More than happy to give you some help and advice on install, feel free to send me a picture of the back of the PCM when you've removed it and I can help more. If you get really stuck and don't feel you can do it, then you are welcome to head over to me on a Sunday (I'm based on the north side of Chelmsford) and I can help with the install. I'm away round Europe in my car for 2 weeks from the 20th of this month though. Andy

Thanks Andy. Very kind of you. I will give it a go myself. And call for a nurse if I run into trouble! Enjoy the trip away. A trip review always goes down well on this forum!!