I've searched the threads, and I've seen a few notes, but I can't find what I'm looking for. Basically, has anyone actually installed an HKEnabler successfully?

A summary of my experiences, for those interested:

I had a previous MINI and had a radio installer put in a new head unit. They said they had to wire around the HK amplifier, and I was fine with that. I bought a new MINI and decided I didn't want to do that this time. I was hoping to use an HK Enabler and keep the system.

As soon as I bought the MINI, later that day, I placed an order for the HK Enabler from the source. When I ordered it, it asked and I told them I had steering wheel controls, and was putting in a Kenwood head unit. I was rather pleased when the enabler arrived very quickly (just a few days from England to the states). In the package was the wiring harness and nothing else. No instructions, nothing. I thought it would just be plug and play and I wasn't worried yet.

A day later I looked at the Kenwood head unit. I noticed that there were no plugs on the HK Enabler that would connect to the Kenwood unit. I thought that was odd. I had a day off coming up in a week to do the install, so I ordered a Kenwood wiring harness, just in case. It arrived a day before my planned work day. It plugged into the head unit nicely, but it had 16 wires connected to nothing else. At this point I could see no way to connect the HK Enabler and the head unit. I sent an email through the web site to HK Enabler people and received a cryptic response saying I needed to "wire it to the car." I figured I would just open it up and see what I could see.

Day 1:
I opened up the dashboard and removed the old radio. Then I stared at the wires. The HK Enabler would connect nicely to the MINI wiring harness, but that was it. I had a Kenwood harness with 16 wires and three different plugs from the HK Enabler harness that didn't plug into anything. There were a total of 10 wires in those three plugs, so it really wasn't clear where any of them went. After staring for awhile, I put the old unit back in and closed up the dash.

I tried again to contact HK Enabler. This time I had a quick response and was told that I did need to connect some wires. It really didn't make sense to me, but I was to cut off one of the plugs installed on the HK Enalber and wire four of them to the Kenwood wiring harness. I needed to wire red to red, yellow to yellow, black to black, and blue to blue/white. The other wires on the Kenwood harness were to be ignored. The orange wire on the HK Enabler was to be ignored. The four-wire plug on the Enabler harness was to be ignored. The blue wire on the HK Enalber harness was to go to the steering wheel controls, wire marked SW. The RCA plug was supposed to go into "amp or pre-amp input, rear and or front." I also received instructions on how to use the button (included in the HK Enabler).

I cut and spliced the wires per the instructions, connecting four of the 16 Kenwood wires to the HK Enabler. All other wires were taped off. Back to the MINI!

Took the dash apart and connected the wires. I had power and sound. However, there were three sets of plugs for the RCA adapter: Front, Rear, and SW. It didn't seem to matter where I put the plugs, the sound was the same. I could not locate any other wires in the car other than what was in the harness with the quadlock plug (connecting to the HK Enabler harness), so no steering wheel controls. At this point I was running out of time, so I put the new head unit in and left it for the night, thinking at least I had some sound for the next day.

 

And if it helps, some pictures:

This is the plug available on the back of the Kenwood head unit:


I assumed that the HKEnabler would actually plug into the head unit. Since it does not, and based on the cryptic email, I purchased a Kenwood wiring harness. It has 16 wires, plugs nicely into the unit, but leaves me with 16 wires like this:


These are the various plugs leftover from the HKEnabler that don't seem to plug into anything I can find, but somehow, I think, are supposed to plug into the head unit. Based on the email, it would appear I'm supposed to cut off all those plugs that I paid to have added and connect them to the Kenwood harness? This is quite odd. There are a total of 10 wires there, too, while the Kenwood harness has 16.

 

Ok, so I cut some wires and found a way around this one (with help from someone else at HK). I did have to splice 4 wires, I haven't found the MINI SW cable for steering wheel controls, apparently I need an adapter for the antenna, but otherwise it did work now...sort of. The unit works, but there is only sound from one speaker. Well, I guess one speaker is better than zero speakers.

 

Oh hey, this thread is back? It disappeared for a few days.

Ah well, my final notes on the HKEnabler:

GET ONE!

I have now put the exact same radio in two different 2005 MINIs. In the first one, I had an installer put in the radio. They wired around the HK Amplifier. The sound was just fair. On the second one, I purchased an HKEnabler and used that. It was much easier and the sound is tremendously better!

 

I'm in the process of installing a Pioneer in my wife's car. I eventually pulled the entire headliner out to replace the fabric on that too. This also makes it a lot easier to find a good mounting point for the XM antenna

 

No issues w mine. I had to cut the ISO ends off the harness (as I was using a JVC radio) and spliced them color to color to the JVC radio. I spliced the blue wire to the power antenna controller (I had no plans to use the steering wheel controls). Plugged
The HKE into the Harness from the car and it worked perfectly.

 

If you wire around the HK amplifier, you should also replace the HK speakers with aftermarket. The HK speakers are designed to work only with the HK amp. They have 2 ohm impedence and no crossovers, and the HK amp applies corrections to compensate for the frequency response of the speaker. The HK speakers would not perform well if driven directly by the headunit.

 

Hi, so what was the problem? is there anything out of the ordinary that you had to do to make it work?

 

Read my previous post.