Hey there. Yesterday I installed and bypassed all of the factory ML (Mark Levinston)

What you want to do is completely possible and difficult. Haha.

I ran a Beatsonic MVA-23L with a Pioneer AVH-2330NEX deck and a couple Hifonics amps for the system. I replaced the mid woofers in the front doors and kept the dash speakers working with my own crossover network since I didn't want to loose the sound stage of the front tweeters. If I end up not liking I'll end up diconnecting the tweeters and running a 2-way speaker in the door as stated above.

One of the bigger road blocks I ran into when running the system was the fact that I had to run all the cables through the rear firewall and that sucked. I had to run 3 sets of RCAs a 15ft antenna extension and my remote wires for the amps.

The second problem I had was finding a good place to mount my amps since there is not much real estate behind the carpet panels in the trunk once removed. I opted to make my own amp rack that sits over the EVAP canister hump in the trunk. This made it easy to hide all my wiring below the amps and also give me plenty of real estate to mount my amps.

I do this work professionally and it took me 12 hours to complete the stereo, amp rack, amps and amp bypass, so plan accordingly if you want to take on this project. Also I wanted to run a backup camera, but ran out of time since I didn't want to just zip tie it to the strange recoiling harness on the trunk lid.

The last thing I have yet to tackle, but plan on trying is making my steering wheel controls work with the aftermarket radio. I need need to find the wires that come from the clockspring assembly and run to the gateway ECU and use an ohm meter to test the resistance values of the buttons a they are pressed to create a resistance network that I can input into an iDatalink MaestroSW module to control the radio.

It may help to have a basic parts list as well and here's what I have from memory.

• 4 GA amp kit
• Fused power distribution block for amps
• Ground Distribution block
• 3 Pairs of RCAs (Front, Rear, Sub)
• Metra 82-8148 - (Rear 6.5" conversion brackets for rear speakers. Some state above that the doors have 6.5" all around and thats not correct. The rear doors have 4" woofers components in a 6.5" housing)
• Metra 72-8104 - Speaker wire harnesses so you don't have to cut speaker wires in rear doors
• Trunk carpet for MDF Shelf
• MDF for amp rack
• Antenna extension (My Beatsonic kit came with one)

I hope this helps, I have a ton of info about this job, but I'm making this a quick writeup in-between my classes.

One more thing, the front left door speaker wires are technically in the large plug on the amp as Violet and Pink wires, but they run into the NAV module and then out so that the NAV module can cut out the music and talk to you while navigating. You will want to get the front left door speaker after the nav module on the output side if you plan on disabling the factory NAV like I did.

Here are some pictures for inspiration.

-Mitch


Factory Amp Location

Most of the speaker wires are in this plug. All but the front left door speaker.


Factory FM antenna connection

Amp Rack

Amp Rack

Amp Rack

Stereo installed

 

Please update if you figure out the steering wheel controls!!! I couldn’t be happier with my install but that is the only thing that irks me, especially since my Alpine has no volume ****.

Seriously, that would be huge

 

Yeah I'll keep you posted. I saw your post on Reddit a few weeks back and meant to comment but forgot.

 

Thank you so much for posting photos of your install.

Is there no way to get the BeatSonic dash kit without 3 switch holes?

 

I have been looking into integrating the steering wheel controls. I haven't made a ton of progress yet, but I does seem like it will be more difficult than I imagined.

Most steering controls plug into the clockspring (spiral cable), and then run down the column to the stereo. The LS sends the SWC (Steering wheel control) signals from the clockspring, to the Gateway ECU (Located on the left end of dash, behind the vent and expandable coin tray area). I purchased a steering wheel control button assembly on ebay to perform a teardown, and see if I could located a common ground and then determine the resistance network of the switches as they were pressed, but it just so happens the the right side buttons for the info display on the cluster plug into the left side SWC buttons for the radio, and then run into the clock spring.

My initial idea of finding the wires somewhere at the gateway ECU, or on the column has been complicated by the fact that the display and reset buttons share the same wiring. This would mean If I cut and rewired the SWC buttons to an aftermarket SWC module with custom firmware, it would render the right side buttons useless.

It would appear that the resistance network for the buttons on the wheel are truly MUX (Multiplex), and the gateway ECU is decoding the button presses and sending MUX signals to the OE radio, OE amp, and center display on the cluster.

 

I figured out the steering wheel controls.

I used an ASWC-1

Pink from ASWC to Green on Pin 3 of the 6 pin harness
Blue/Pink from ASWC to Pin 6 of the 6 pin harness
(Pin 3 and Pin 6 are the two that oppose the blank pins on the connector. They are on the opposite end of the blanks)

ADD a 68ohm resistor across the Pink and Blue/Pink

Yellow/Green from ASWC connects to 12v+ (I tied it into the red ignition wire on the ASWC)

Power it up, and it auto programs.
The reason this works is because the wires that connected from the Gateway ECU to the radio are CAN BUS. The ASWC supports the CAN protocol on Lexus vehicles from 2002-2009 with the same protocols.

Viola, steering wheel controls on the LS430

-Mitch

 

Mitch - thanks for taking the time to write this thread, very helpful. I have a couple of questions on another thread, but it looks like yours is closer to what I’m attempting. I replaced my factory. Nav / HVAC controls with an Android unit - picture below. So far so good, has a few quirks, but I’m OK with it. It has a tuner built into it, CarPlay and it’s own SIM card for streaming, videos, etc.

My factory ML amp / sub / speakers / or all are blown. Sound quality is awful and it was before replacing the HU, which I knew about. Now I’m thinking of gutting all ML components and replacing amp, (4) door speakers with coax and sub. Only factory item I’ll use are the speaker wires from the factory harness. I’ll also replace the rear camera with one from the Android kit, which is a must anyway.

Here’s my question - any negative downstream effect from unplugging and removing all ML components in the trunk?





Thanks again.

 

Another question about speakers - I want to use these Morel in all (4) doors; https://www.crutchfield.com/p_210MU6...-MKII.html?l=C

Crutchfield lists that they’ll fit in the front doors, but not the rear doors. Do you know why and if these will fit relatively easy in the rear doors as well?

Thanks

 

And yet another question - see the picture below of the back of the Android unit. To be clear, this replaces the factory Nav / HVAC control at the top of the dash. There’s only (1) set of RCA out wires and (1) set of RCA in. The RCA in wires are plugged into a jumper harness between the Android unit and the factory harness on the cassette deck. How can I wire this unit directly to aftermarket amp with only (1) set of RCA outs?

 

I'll try to answer as best I can, but I'll probably need more pictures of that wiring harness. More specifically, where the green (pair) and purple (pair) run to in the harness on that Android unit you have there.

The Input/Output operation of the ML system is a bit tricky. From the factory, the ML head unit, and amp at the rear only have one pair of audio wires that run in-between the two, This connection is just stereo signal and its output from the head unit at a fixed volume. An aftermarket stereo typically has 4 speaker outputs, or 2 pairs of stereo signal wires for fade and balance control. The ML system as designed uses a multiplex network of various modules that can send audio to the amp. The speakers' balance, fade, and volume, characteristics are all controlled by this multiplex circuit. That is why you need to have some kind of "Amplifier Interface" that connects an aftermarket radio to the factory amp in most cases since it does the communication on the multiplex circuit after removing the OEM head unit.

Your Android radio must have some kind of interface that feeds or injects its audio into the ML system somewhere. We need to find that connection to possibly exploit it.

One solution that I see at the present moment is to use an RCA splitter and run 3 sets of RCAs from the Android unit to the rear for a 4 channel, and a subwoofer. This would allow you to potentially "prewire" the car for another potential unit upgrade in the future that has a more traditional 6 RCA pre-out configuration.
The other option you have is to run 2 sets of RCAs (for Stereo sound and subwoofer) and either buy a 4 channel with a "Stereo" mode (internally replicates a single input source to all 4 channels), or use an RCA splitter in the rear.

-Mitch

 

As far as the rear speakers go,

• Metra 82-8148 - (Rear 6.5" conversion brackets for rear speakers. Some state above that the doors have 6.5" all around and that's not correct. The rear doors have 4" woofers components in a 6.5" housing)
• Metra 72-8104 - Speaker wire harnesses so you don't have to cut speaker wires in rear doors

 

OK, thanks for your response. I’ll gather more info and take some more pictures of the back to identify the connections and report back.

 

Hey @mitchjl22 , when you say "to pin X on the 6 pin harness" which other harness are you referencing? I'm going to be upgrading to a Double-din with the Beatsonic MVA-24 for an ML w/ Nav here very soon and making sure I'm getting all of my parts together.

Thanks,
-Stylo

 

I have a 2005 Ls430 and I've had best buy to replace the cd player amp and door speakers, but now my car battery is draining down in about 3 days...what could be causing this