2003 LC Tesla Screen Install Write-Up (2 Viewers)

[JOEDIRTE]

Now I have to go look up cameras

@mistered123 Assuming this is the same one you bought over email? Looks simple enough to add a camera. Anything else you had to add in? I might just have to go for it and see when it gets here.

Toyota Land Cruiser LC100 Lexus LX 470 2003 - 2007 12.1

Explore our latest Tesla Style Android Radios. Unique vertical screen, Android system, bluetooth handsfree calling & music, video playback and thousands of apps waiting for you to explore. Factory backup camera is not retained. PX6 Fully Loaded comes with built-in Wireless CarPlay/Android auto...

rhinoradios.com

 

[mistered123]

@mistered123 Assuming this is the same one you bought over email? Looks simple enough to add a camera. Anything else you had to add in? I might just have to go for it and see when it gets here.

Yep that looks like the same one that I ordered - other than Px3 vs Px6.

I also ordered a wired carplay adapter. I tried a wireless one first and it was terrible. This is the one that I have now and it works "ok". Quite often it won't register the first time I plug the phone in and I'll have to disconnect and re-connect the phone, but not a huge issue for me. But I suspect any car play adapter designed for android systems will work fine.

 

[geargarcon]

On my 2003, I have not had to alter the wires on the nav system. Radio works fine out of all 5 speakers.

The boot up time is annoying.(25sec) I have a VERY slight hum. Tried to ground to the same place as the stock amplifier, no help. Turns out these trucks with stock amp have a floating ground. Only way to eliminate hum is to pull the stock amplifier and replace or bypass. You never hear the buzz over roadnoise, so I will leave it.

I have a dongle for Apple car play-works great. Playing back texts through apple car play is a bit garbled( a known issue with CarPlay)- regular turn by turn navigation voice prompts through apple maps is clear.

I find the radio more responsive than I thought it would be. It sounds much better than stock to my ears. Bluetooth works perfect.

I have no Idea how to get the music from USB onto the unit. I know the USB works because my apple car play dongle is connected to the usb connector and it works fine. When I connect a USB drive to the other USB connector the usb drive lights up-but I can't figure out how to get the radio to recognize the drive and move the music from the USB drive to the radio. Must be something simple. I am an apple guy, and have never used the Android OS

Do you have the wired carplay dongle or wireless one? I’ve been trying to decide whether or not to get wireless.

 

[Wetwillie]

Do you have the wired carplay dongle or wireless one? I’ve been trying to decide whether or not to get wireless.

I have the wired one- it's a bit erratic, but does work most of the time.

 

[geargarcon]

I have the wired one- it's a bit erratic, but does work most of the time.

dont these have built in carplay? I just ordered one and I’ve been on the fence as to whether or not I should order the dongle

 

[Wetwillie]

My radio (older version) did not have built in CarPlay

 

[geargarcon]

Well just installed my PX6 Android 9.1 fastboot head unit.

This good news is:

1. A/C works.
2. Boot time is under 5 seconds after initial install.
3. The compass works
   
   The bad news is:
4. I can’t get it seated in the harness correctly. Too many wires.
5. I’m not sure how to route the usb cables into the glove box. (Or anywhere for that matter. They keep getting stuck so they are stuck behind the HU.)
6. My dash lit up like a Christmas tree.
7. Only my front 2 speakers work.
8. My antenna won’t extend and my radio doesn’t work.
9. Bluetooth connects for phone calls, but not for music. Sound is terrible for phone calls.
10. I have a yellow Lamborghini background
11. It thinks I’m driving up a mountain at a 30 degree incline.
    
    need to read back through all of these threads for tips. Anyone have any advice off of the bat?
    
    
    

 

[geargarcon]

Well just installed my PX6 Android 9.1 fastboot head unit.

This good news is:

1. A/C works.
2. Boot time is under 5 seconds after initial install.
3. The compass works
   
   The bad news is:
4. I can’t get it seated in the harness correctly. Too many wires.
5. I’m not sure how to route the usb cables into the glove box. (Or anywhere for that matter. They keep getting stuck so they are stuck behind the HU.)
6. My dash lit up like a Christmas tree.
7. Only my front 2 speakers work.
8. My antenna won’t extend and my radio doesn’t work.
9. Bluetooth connects for phone calls, but not for music. Sound is terrible for phone calls.
10. I have a yellow Lamborghini background
11. It thinks I’m driving up a mountain at a 30 degree incline.
    
    need to read back through all of these threads for tips. Anyone have any advice off of the bat?
    
    View attachment 2245325

So while I am posting questions in both threads, I will only post fixes here since I have an 03 and this is an 03 specific thread.

4. Regarding fit, after a significant amount of pushing and pulling on cables I was able to make it fit... well sort of. It's still not a great fit, but I think its as good as its going to get.
5. I finally figured out how to route the USB cables to the glove box after figuring out how to remove the glove box. It's pretty simple. Just look for the two screws on the bottom of the box.
6. The lights.... well, they just went off... I have no idea what happened here.
7. No solution for the speakers yet. I don't want to splice. I am reaching out to Phoenix about a new harness since that seemed to solve some people's issues.
8. Antenna still wont extend and radio doesn't work. See 7 for same solution.
9. Well after plugging in my phone into the USB it connected with my HU. And while I couldn't find the app for CarPlay it spontaneously loaded up after connecting to the phone. Then I unplugged the phone from the USB.... and carplay kept working... wirelessly. So, I have built in wireless carplay now. Got back in the car today and it automatically went straight back to the carplay screen. Playing music works well via this connection.
10. Still have a yello lambo load screen.
11. Um... I double tapped the 30 degree icon and it leveled out... so ... there's that.

So most of my issues magically fixed themselves. My list is now cut down to mostly stereo/radio issues.

1. Only front 2 speakers work and sound is atrocious.
2. Radio doesn't work and antenna wont extend.
3. Still have the lambo load screen.

So still waiting to hear back from Phoenix Auto on a new wiring harness. Oh and I found this! One cable from the car that doesn't have a home. Anyone know what this is?

Next up to load the ODB wireless connector. After that, backup camera install.

 

[nckwltn]

@geargarcon did you get the new wiring harness? I'm also an 03LX, and am researching before buying.

 

[tucker74]

I installed a PX6 in my '06 UZJ100 over the weekend, this thread was very helpful. The two issues I ran into were with the amp not powering up and then the front DS speaker not working. Instead of completely bypassing the harness with the RCA audio inputs I was able to just tie in the amp power with a t-connector, my harness did not have the pink wire. I did have to splice the two speaker wires under the PS seat to make the DS front speaker work.

Questions:

1. Anyone come up with a solve for the hum? Was going to try to tie the grounds together (HU/amp) but another poster said this didn't work due to the floating ground?
2. I bought a 12V to 6V converter that a lot of WRX guys use, going to see if I can make the stock camera work. Has anyone put an aftermarket in the same spot as the factory (link)?

 

[BamaHeel]

Just installed in my 03 and so far everything works great except no sound from speakers. I even ordered the "top model" which was supposed to cover the 2003 issues I thought. There are a lot of unused plugs so I'm not 100% certain it is hooked up correctly.

Also from the other thread with the detailed write up - I too have the left over harness with the pink plug that would work for a unhooked pink plug but there is no where for the harness to plug in.

Would love any suggestions short of splicing.

 

[tucker74]

You need to tie in wire to send signal to power on amp, see my post above. There is no non-splicing soln, this is also in the FAQ on the Phoenix site. Good luck!

 

[BamaHeel]

Did anyone have a left out factory plug? I do and I can't figure out where it goes.

 

[BamaHeel]

You need to tie in wire to send signal to power on amp, see my post above. There is no non-splicing soln, this is also in the FAQ on the Phoenix site. Good luck!

Where did you tie in?

I looked at the Phoenix website and saw nothing about a tie in or splice - do you have a link? Or do you have any info on what you did specifically?

 

[tucker74]

See post #3 & #4 in this thread, depending on what harness you have - grey wire in aftermarket harness to either pink wire in main radio harness plug or t-splice into wire shown in post #4. I had to do the latter, you don’t have to do each speaker splice -

Tucker

 

[BamaHeel]

Got it sorted and now have sound - had to do steps 3 and 4 to get it to work even though I ordered the "top model".

Big thanks to @mistered123 for the detailed write up and answering my questions.

Only thing now is yesterday with no sound my iphone connected via bluetooth and now it won't but I'm guessing I have to adjust a setting I'm missing somewhere.

 

[Try2Bfast]

Here's some info and a few questions about my install. This is a PX6 unit purchased from Rhino Radios in Nov 2019 into a 2003 LX470.

I had to do the audio wire mods described in the beginning of this thread. Thank you so much OP for this info, no sound without it! I did it slightly different as I wanted to retain the RCA plugs in case I wanted to upgrade to a non OEM amp in the future so I added RCA plugs to the harness that came with the Tesla screen head unit.

You can see I used a pretty heavy (16 gauge) ground wire and grounded by cut and solder to the ground on the Tesla screen harness. After placing the heat shrink:

Good news about this installation: absolutely no ground hum, buzz, alternator noise or anything. This head unit with hard-wire apple play to the OEM Mark Levinson amp and speakers sounds at least as good if not better than the OEM head unit. So I decided to just leave the OEM amp. Downside, this adds a few more connectors to the rat's nest of wires that barely fits in the space behind the Tesla sceen head unit.

 

[Try2Bfast]

Good points about the system:
Climate control is sold. Audio sounds great. Can customize with anything on Android. Steering wheel audio buttons work great (Settings...General...Install Set 8861 command to reverse order of skip buttons actually worked!)

Not so good points:
Android software is a little unpolished. Like you need to remember to click on "Car Auto" to start Apple play. Sometimes the Android operating system hangs up and needs to be restarted. Initial boot takes a while, no back up camera until booted. Screen is very hard to see in bright sunlight, especially with sun reflecting off beige passenger seat. This can be frustrating if you want to adjust climate as its very difficult in bright sunlight compared to the OEM hard buttons for temp up and down and recirc. Disclaimer: I left the shipping screen protector on the system. It would probably be a little brighter if I removed this. The built-in Apple play is pretty sketchy. It takes a LONG time to start up and connect and often needs the phone to be unplugged and plugged in again to actually connect. Once connected its solid, but if driving for a long time like over an hour, the skip forward wheel button will take a long time (10 seconds or so) to actually skip forward. I have seen others say that the Apple play hard dongle is better than the built-in car play but I have not tried it. The built-in mic works but is not very good for phone calls, I have not tried the external mic supplied with the system, but I read that others have had problems with the external mic, not sure if its worth it to try it.

Now for my questions about this system:
(1) It was advertised as having HDMI output for rear entertainment video, but the back panel has a display port connection. I have tried several monitors and both active and passive display port to HDMI cables but I have never got any video output. There is a setting accessed by Settings...General...User Settings to select either the whole screen or just the video to the output but this setting doesn't seem to do anything as there is never any output as far as I can tell. Rhino radios email support told me they don't support this function so no help there. I paste a picture of my back panel below for reference. I also paste pics of labels on the Power Cord for the Tesla screen head unit as this might help to identify exactly which Tesla system I am working with. I bought new head rest monitors and was excited to get this working but no go so far.
(2) The audio always shuts off when I put in in reverse. These is a setting in Settings...General...User Settings to activate or disable this function but that setting makes no difference, it always shuts off in reverse. I wish it would stay on.
(3) With the system installed, my dash instrument lights are ALWAYS dim like I have the lights on at night. So in the bright sun I basically can't tell what the speedo is indicating. I'd really like to get this fixed. I bought the factory Lexus wiring diagram book and found a wire described as "DIM" on one of the factory plugs but it seems that this pin has no wire connected to it from the Tesla screen head unit harness side... Any help on this one would be wonderful.

 

[tucker74]

Steering wheel audio buttons work great (Install Set 8861 command to reverse order of skip buttons actually worked!)

Details here @Try2Bfast ? Would love to fix on mine

 

[Try2Bfast]

Details here @Try2Bfast ? Would love to fix on mine

Click Settings, General Tab, Scroll Down to Install Set and click, enter code 8861, Scroll down to Prev/Next settings and try changing to negative or positive. Maybe this control is not available on all versions of firmware??