donbryce

I have 4 cars and each one, except the Lexus, has a docking station for my Sirius radio, which I move from car to car, and in the house, as needed. I stressed for hours on where to put it in the ES300, though, and finally decided that the ashtray would work best. I don't smoke, and the loss of a lighter input means nada anyway. I'll mount one in the glovebox later for use with cellphone or Ipod or whatever.

After removing the ashtray unit and studying the complexities of it's design, I concluded that it would have enough space to accomodate the Sirius with docking station, barely. One complication occurred, which I'll document below. The entire job was about 14 hours.

First step is removal of the cupholder/ashtray unit. No detail needed here, as this is documented elsewhere, (see the last steps here: http://www.carstereohelp.com/stereor...sES300StrR.htm ) ....but briefly, just pop up the plate around the shift and remove the thin trim piece under the radio. Remove the 4 screws and take it to the bench.

Next, I completely disassembled the ashtray/cupholder unit. From memory, and this is much easier to follow with the unit in front of you:
- remove 4 screws, 2 on each side, holding the cupholder to the body.
- remove the screws holding the steel frame and 2 side trim pieces.
- remove the frame and cupholder unit. The frame kind of has to be turned and twisted, but it will clear the ashtray unit.
- unhook the 2 big springs and gently pull the plastic frame outward at the bottom to allow the stub axles to come out to remove the main compartment
- remove the lighter assembly and all wiring from the hard plastic compartment unit so it can be cut out to allow room for the Sirius unit to fit.
- the faceplate is hinged separately, 2 tiny hollow pins on each side. I bent a safety pin to make a tiny hook and worked at it until it grabbed the end of each pin so I could pull them out.
- remove the 2 screws holding the white light lens piece to the faceplate back.

The pictures show what had to be cut out to make the compartment. I used a drill chucked with a small 2" wood-cutting blade on an arbor and a hacksaw blade. The plastic is like old-time Bak-e-lite, or phelonic, extemely hard, resistant to heat (it's an ashtray, right?), and extremely BRITTLE, so work very carefully.

The gray goop in the pic is some JB WELD which I added to compensate for cutting a bit too much. The rib is where the backing plate will be mounted.....See next post

donbryce

The next job was to fabricate a backing plate to hold the Sirius dock. This took some time to make up a cardboard template. If I did it over, I'd have made the plate about 1 1/2" wider so the Sirius wouldn't rock when the buttons are pressed. I added a second piece later to compensate.

The pictures show what happened next, when I discovered that I'd cut off the complicated little closing piece that mates with the pin thing on the inside back of the steel housing. This is what Lexus designed, brilliantly IMO, so that the ashtray opens so gracefully when you push on the faceplate, also the reason for the little pin-hinge on the faceplate itself which controls the 'arm' with the roller (fits into the recess at the top of the left side track. The limit of travel is the steel frame which is now removed). At the time, I overlooked this, actually thinking in the heat of the moment that the pin thing was some kind of ground safety for the lighter.

So, the push-and-open-with-grace is now permanently gone, as the closing piece had to go to accomodate the Sirius, and I stressed for over an hour on how to now re-engineer the closing/opening mechanism.

The answer is a tiny tab on the back of the cupholder faceplate. This engages the back of the ashtray front piece. I disabled one of the wound springs, and changed the tension on the other one, so after some adjusting, there is just enough tension to keep the ashtray faceplate closed but not too much to prevent the cupholder from pulling the ashtray open when its pushed. See next post.....

donbryce

As the pic shows, the 'electronic' side of the project was simple enough. I used the 2 power wires from the lighter connected to a cig lighter female connector (the Source, Radio Shack in the U.S., about $7.00) for 12v. The Sirius 5v transformer plugs into this, then the car harness plug goes into the cig lighter plug, as original. The other wiring is the Sirius antenna input, and the FM output to an FM modulator plugged into the back of the stock radio.

BTW, I posted another thread on how to remove the vent to access the radio mounting screws so it can be removed to plug the FM modulator in https://www.clublexus.com/forums/es3...993-es300.html

The last picture shows the docking station pulled straight up so the Sirius can easily be removed. This required quite a bit of fiddling with the wiring inside to allow enough slack to pull it up but not interfere with the opening/closing.

At the end of day, I'm very pleased with the result. The Sirius compartment opens by pushing on the cupholder. Both cupholder and Sirius can be open at the same time too, so the Sirius can 'vent' while operating (gets quite hot), and cupholder can be used. After all, the main objective was to be able to listen to Sirius and have a working cupholder while traveling. Of course, the cupholder can be closed when not need as soon as the lip of the Sirius faceplate is out far enough to grab it with a finger and pull it open.

kyledye25

Wow nice write up. Like how you did that your self. good job. Will probably use this down the road myself. Plan on getting sat radio soon. Thanks

GoodRevs

Very innovative, well done

jwerrrell

Amazing job with diy techniques. I was lazy and went to best buy and had them install new xm/sirius. They wired the magnetic reciever through to truck and then glued mount near shifter. The glue failed and had to be done over because it's so hot here, but it's holding up better now. Yours looks much better. But yeah, sAtalite radio is awesome if you can handle another monthly fee.