I have the Alpine IVA-W200 and have tried everything to get it to work correctly.

Are your steering wheel controls still working well?

I have contacted PAC and made sure the ground is good by running a wire directly to the battery. It works well most of the time but sometimes does not respond or controls the raido all by itself.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Don't ground to the battery. It actually is NOT a good ground, you end up with a lot of feedback and residual voltage. Find some bare metal that's either bolted or welded to the chassis. If you have a multimeter that tests continuity or resistance take one end put it in the key cylinder (this is always a solid ground) and find a spot to ground your wire to and look for minimal resistance. 0 is best, don't settle for anything higher than 3 ohms <-- even that's pushing it.

 

I to have the Alpine IVA-W200 and have done lots of research on this.

I had problems with inconsistent response and operating by itself.

Now mine works perfect and her is why. After you hook up power to the box there are only TWO wires used from the car's harness that are connected to the SWI. Of course you have to ground a third wire from the car's harness as well leaving one wire not used (white).

Here's where it gets tricky, out of the 4 wires coming from the G's steering wheel harness you'll have used 3 of the 4 (1 - grounded 1 - w/50 ohm 1- w/150 ohm) The directions tell you to connect the remaining WHITE WIRE. Just so happens the only wire on the Infiniti's harness you have not used is white and this may fool you into thinking it needs to be hooked up. I made the mistake of hooking this one up. DO NOT HOOK UP THE WHITE WIRE ON THE G's harness. If you get the instructions from the website you'll see they are referring to white wire on the SWI-Jack box....Not your car.

So that is the basics and should allow you to get it working pretty well. Now for the rest of the story and additional research I found out while solving this problem.

1. Originally I had the SWI-ALP (predecessor to the SWI-JACK). According to PAC it does not accept the same range of values the SWI-Jack does. So this is why I switched and then discovered the wiring problem.

2. Get yourself a multi meter. Ohm resistors (including the ones they give you) are typically only accurate within 5% so buy a pack of ten and use the resistors that are as close as possible to specified values. (I have seen the resistors fluctuate as much as 5 ohms on the 150 ohm resistors.

3. Ground to the frame as close as possible. For me it was behind the shifter bolts go into the frame that hold a bracket for the E Brake Cable. It’s VERY SENSATIVE TO GROUNDING AND I CAN'T STRESS THAT ENOUGH.

4. Finally PAC recommends soldering the connections to the car harness. The do not recommend using "tap Ins" or other easy connectors

I took me a year and a half and two versions of the steering wheel interface adapter. But to your benefit I did a lot of research that will give you the optical installation. I hope it will help you out and would love to hear back from you if it did!!

Now I'm ready for the IVA-505 But then again who knows what will come out in 2009!

 

i installed this today and can't get it programmed. i've tried at least 15 times and have had zero luck. the LED on the PAC box lights up like its supposed to. i just don't think that for whatever reason, its not getting the signals properly from the buttons. what should i do to trouble shoot? should i use a multi-meter to test and see if signals are being sent to the unit from the steering wheel controls? i have an alpine cda-9885 HU and have it set to "1" like it requires. my concern is in the wiring from the controls to the box. iirc resistors may go either way, and do not have specific polarity? i'm not sure what else it could be...