Pictures as promised. Sorry for the messy wires, just too lazy to clean it up

As you can see, the bulge is minimal, if you position the box all the way down near the floor pan, as the foam behind the carpet is thinner there. That leaves a fairly easy access to the dip switches if necessary. Just have to remove one trim panel. Hope that helps.

 

Thanks for taking the time to provide those pictures; that has a nice clean look to it. For some reason I was imagining it behind the carpet on the firewall side, so seeing your install helped.

Does that side trim piece just slide off with a little rear facing force or are there clips/screws attaching it? I guess I should do some searching around for I suspect that someone has posted the center console dis-assembly steps.

 

that leather panel on side of shift plate is just held on by clips, out in 2 seconds

 

I had never noticed how easily it pulls off. Getting to the back of the head unit appears to be more involved though. UPS tracking shows my ML+ is already in town. Maybe I will get it tomorrow???

 

to get to back of your head unit, only 4 screws, 2 for shift plate, 2 for head unit.

that's lexus in general, they use a lot of clips and not many screws

 

Doesn't look too bad; though I'd rather have someone with experience taking it apart. To bad I'm not near "Lovely OC".

I found this thread on removal which looks helpful.

 

haha just take your time, it's not too bad. that's a good thread

 

I admit I was really nervous too the first time, but it really is quite simple, just take your time.

One piece of advice: while you do have to remove the radio portion, you can get away with just sliding the nav unit forward enough for you to reach the particular harness you need to unplug without removing the whole thing. It was the hardest piece to remove for me because of the clips all the way around the bezel. The easiest way for me was to get behind the bezel with my fingernails and pull it out around the top (up by the air vents). Don't forget to unplug the harness to the clock first, it's the shortest one. After that you should be able to wire it up and slide it back in without disconnecting all the other plugs.

 

to pull out the radio unit, the trick is to leverage off the two wood trims on the side all the way at the bottom. they stick out a bit. get your finger behind them and pull. you just need to have the guts, it's strong enough to hold the unit and pull straight out

 

Between my desire to start using the ML+ on day one and the encouragement of those of you here ... it's in! I have it behind the carpet for now, but may look into the behind the glovebox mount in the future. If others are able to get a ML+ mounted there I'd certainly be interested in tips and pictures.

The iPod sound and visuals are amazing, and in CD emulation mode I've been able to access a USB flash drive or the iPod's playlists. What I've been struggling with is getting the internal PATA hard drive working, but I will take that discussion over to the ViasTech ML+ thread. Thanks for everyone's help.

 

Right, 4 screws only. No need to remove the nav screen.

Radio screw location, one on each side:


Murphy's law: A screw will fall down if a screw can fall down. Be warned:


Unscrew both before lift the plate: