Hi,

Been getting a bit fed up with the tape player and terrible radio in my old style basic Ford Ka. I’ve just found that one can get a faceplate and the associated adapters to install a standard headunit (think that’s what its called).

Anyway, there are a bewildering range of brands etc out there, so I was wondering if anyone knew a decent basic unit. I’m really just looking for CD / Radio. The ability to read an MP3 CD would be cool too.

Also, if I take out the old headunit in the Ka, will it require a code if I install it again. I don’t think I have the original code, so I’m a bit worried about that. I could probably read the EEPROM if it came to that, but that’s a bit of a pain.

To answer your second question, yes you will need the code. I stuck a 4x50w RMS JVC unit in my Ka, but that was , ooh lordy, 18 years ago or so… Used two hifi speakers with 8″ woofers in the boot as bass units and upgraded the speakers up front to more sensitive units. I have tinnitus now, but that thing rocked, well as much as a Ka can!

For a ford KA with the minimal amount of sound deadening they have and their noisy little engines, you’re not going to hear and appreciate any high fidelity an expensive head unit has to offer. Personally I’d pop down to the local Halfords and have a little play with the cheaper end of the scale units to find one with minimal flashy lights and a simple easy to operate user interface. They pretty much all support mp3’s these days.

Funnily enough I was having a browse in my local Halfords today and they had a bunch of regular DIN standard head units with DAB radio, Bluetooth and a USB port on the front panel to take an iPod or iPhone. There was a Phillips or two and a couple of names I didn’t recognise, all around the £115-140 mark. Any of those ought to give you everything you need. Thinking about replacing my old Alpine unit just to get the DAB facility.

I recently replaced my Fork Ka’s standard unit with a CD player/bluetooth/CD card head unit. Like other posters have said, spending a bunch of money doesn’t make sense – I bought a Wharfedale bluetooth CD head unit from argos. I’m actually pretty impressed with the sound quality (given it cost 60 bucks)… It’s a reasonable head unit for little cash, and sounds as good as the £250 Alpine unit I stuck in my previous Golf.

Aldi are also doing good value decent head units – £40 for a standard CD/SD card/USB and £50 for a bluetooth enabled one.

Both the Wharfedale and the Aldi unit do hands free calling and a2dp (pleying music from your iPhone/mp3 player)…Both also read MP3 cd’s memory cards etc.

Halfords offer crap value for money at this level.

Thanks for the advice. I’ll get a cheapy non flashy headunit (the less LEDs the better) and stick it in.

If you look on ebay you can normally get sony units with the features you want for 50-60quid. not worth spending a fortune as the speakers in a ka aren’t fantastic. At that price leave it in when you sell it or it’ll cost 10-20 to get a code for the original.

you can get the code for the ka unit for free – there several programs free on the web _ used them for when I lost the mondeo code.

Depending on the stereo (RDS3000?), it’s probably compatible with the ford 6 cd changer too, #40 to get that and unless your spending a fortune more than you need tbh.

FWIW Kenwood’s are a PITA – they try to do everything through one button