New Head Unit

[ALake]

Just taken delivery of a new double din touchscreen head unit for my rav, along with a pile of Connects2 wiring harnesses and fascia bits. I'm hoping this will all work my my existing steering wheel controls/microphone etc.

Wish me luck - I'm going in when the weathers dry!

[ALake]

Hmm, not sure if anyone else has done this, but the Connects2 fascia I got doesn't seem to be very well designed. The front panel is designed for single or double din usage (you have to remove the centre bar) but the brackets that come with it aren't going to fit my double din unit! They seem to be like the original brackets, but twice as high so the lower part fouls on the bottom half of the Pioneer unit.

Starting to wish I'd bought the generic chinese job from eBay now!

[ALake]

I may be the only one following this thread but if anyone else is thinking about this I wouldn't bother!

My 6 cd/bluetooth compatible unit obviously doesn't work with any of the Connect2 adaptors - they are supposed to enable the steering wheel controls but the adaptor simply makes the new head unit go mental (volume up and down randomly etc) and the toyota microphone is a non standard connector so I can't use that either. Plus the connects2 fascia adaptor is a right shonky bit of kit that barely fits!

So I'm giving up this as a bad job, returning it all for a refund!

[ALake]

Well I finally managed to get this working. What I didn't realise is that the 'factory fit' 5 cd unit with bluetooth seems to be a bit of a botch up. Its a standard audio unit, but tucked inside the dashboard are two boxes (motorola) which seem to be the bluetooth and steering wheel control adaptors.

Little did I realise that these were inline of the the wiring harness, so when I plugged in my Connects2, I was effectively wiring these two together! Stripping the original ones out and plugging the connects2 stuff all together and all is good! I'd assumed that the steering wheel control was built in to the stereo but its not on this model.

Next problem - how accessible is the handbrake switch wiring? I'm going to try and wire up the new stereo so you can watch a DVD when parked, and that means feeding a cable to the handbrake switch wiring. Anyone know how to find this, or is it a case of pulling all the various fascia panels off?