It is done! I’ve been prepping and planning to do this swap for a few months now and I finally have it completed. My swap was on a 2002 LX with ML. The new climate bezel came out of a 2001 LC.
It’s really not that hard, just pay attention to what you’re doing, be gentle, and take your time. I followed the pin out guides posted in this thread. All of the wires matched up for me fine, except for 1 or 2. Everything climate related worked first try except the illumination which I didn’t realize until a few days later. The pinout guide I used didn’t have the wires for illumination matched up so I skipped them, there is a different pinout guide that does have those wires. I went in and fixed it with the latter guide, took no time at all. I labeled all of the wires on the new pig tails with their number and what they connected to. Then I went and labeled all of the wires on the vehicle with just their number. Color coordination makes this a breeze, however, I only thought of that after I labeled the new pig tails lol. I just sat in there with a printed pin out guide and marked them as I went. Simple stuff
The biggest issue I had was getting audio to play out of the new head unit. I bought the head unit from crutchfield with the Metra 70-8113 harness adapter. It didn’t work, I probably could’ve made it work but instead I said screw it and installed a fully new sound system.
For the new sound system I went with Polk DB6502 components, a recoil DI550.4 amp, and a 10” kicker down firing sub. The door speakers mounted up with the mounting plates fine and had plenty of room. The tweeters required a tiny bit of modification, if you can do the rest of the project you will have no issues getting the tweeters mounted. Just trim the housing and cut off a little metal piece from the stock bracket, add some 3M double sided tape and boom there you go. The amp and crossovers also fit with lots of room to spare.
I tried to use the stock speaker wire for the new sound system, and it worked for the passenger door, but not the driver door. I figured it was the nav computer harness but I cut it and spliced the wires and it still didn’t work. I just ran speaker wire to that door. As I’m writing this I’m thinking of possible solutions that might’ve worked but hey hindsight is 20/20 lol.
I didn’t mess with the rear doors. 1. Because I don’t sit back there and 2. Extra cost. I may add them in the future but I would need to get another amp to run my sub.
All in all it took me about two weekends to get this completed. I did the actual nav swap in one day. I will miss my wood trim bezel a lot but the added functionality is amazing. If anyone has questions feel free to comment or dm me!
