Ok so I finally got around to doing the Nav and Bluetooth bypass on the 2007 RX350. Please do this at your own risk; I am not responsible if you burn some thing up. If you have any question please ask and I will try to help as much as possible.

My camera decided to die so I don’t have any pictures. If I can get the camera to come back to life I will post pictures of all of these steps.

First the Bluetooth bypass. If you have the VAIS technology SL2Vi installed you will be able to get video in motion. You will also be able to get ipod to work including the folders in motion.

Step 1: remove the head unit. The forum is full of instruction on this. Use the search button and you will find several DIYs on this. If you have questions about this please send me a pm and I can try to explain further.

Step 2: once you have the head unit removed. Now remove the screen. There are 2 bolts under the screen where the head unit use to be. Once you remove these 2 bolts. The screen will pull forward. No need to take it out all the way. You are only interested in the 1 plug on the back. This is the plug nearest to the driver side. It is white plug with several wires. It is listed as 26 pin connector but has lot fewer wires than that. If you count the number of pins it should have 26 pins.

Remove the plug. The wire that you are interested in is red wire in the middle of the plug. Be careful there is another red wire on the same plug but it is toward the end. You don’t want to cut the red wire toward the end. See the picture of the plug M5 below. Tape both ends of the cut wire so there is no chance for the wires to touch any thing. Now cut the white wire at pin number 8. tie the plug side of this wire to pin number 1 (white wire with black stripe). tape the body side of the wire so no chance of short.

Step 3: Put everything back together. This should free up the Bluetooth and ipod.

Now the Navigation hack during motion

This is little more complicated process. Just to give little background. I originally built a little pulse generator to fool the navigation system. It worked well but problem was that the actual pulse voltage was changing in the original system but my pulse generator was only producing fixed voltage since I was not looking at the speed of the car. So I had to abandon this method and had to go to a switch set up. They way it works now is that when I need to input an address I have to hit a switch. Once I am done with the input I have to turn the switch back on. This may be too much pain for some people but for me that is all I could come up with for now. I may change the setup in the future but for now it is working well. So below are the steps.

Step 1: remove the tool tray out of the luggage compartment. This is easy; just open the door to expose the tool tray. Lift the back of the tool tray and pull it toward the back of the car. It should slide out. Once the tool tray is out you should see a DVD player on the passenger side.
Step 2: unplug the large white plug on the back of the DVD player. The plug that you are interested in is the largest plug on the back of the DVD player. This is 24 pin connector. There is only one wire that you are interested in. it is brown wire located at pin number 4. There is only one brown wire so it should be easy to identify.See the picture below for the N3 Plug.

Step 3: cut the brown wire. Make sure to leave enough wire on both sides to splice in the new wire that you are going to run to the front of the car next to driver side.

Step 4: take 2 wires, each 20 foot long. Connect one wire to the plug side of the brown wire that was cut in the step 3 above. Connect the 2nd wire to the body side of the brown wire that was cut in step 3.

Step 5: rune the 2 wires to the front of the car on the driver side. This is fairly easy. I put my wires under the door scuff plates. The scuff plates can be pulled up easily. These are held in with clips only.

Step 6: run the wires to where you are going to install the switch. You can get “ON” and “OFF” switch from local radio shack or auto parts store. Here is the link to the switch that I used. http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...entPage=search

Install the switch and land the wires on to the switch.

When the switch is in position “1” the system works just like it would be from factory. When you want to input the address into navigation while moving just flip the switch in position “O”. This will cut the speed signal to the navigation ECU. So the ECU thinks that the car is stopped and all of the buttons are released. Once you are done with the entry, flip the switch back and everything should be back to normal. If you forget to flip the switch back the Nav system will be choppy.

I did this stuff 2 weeks ago. Every thing is working so far without any issues.

Good luck

 

picture of N3 plug

 

Thank you... will try it this weekend ;-)

 

Does anyone know if this will work on the 2008 RX400h?

Rich

 

Nomi,
I'm just confirming that you mean to tap/splice the plug side end of white wire pin#8 into the the white/black stripe wire of pin#8, and not completely divide the pin#8 wire.

Also, do you know what the pin # is of the middle red wire you completely divide. Thanks

 

you will have to cut the pin 8 wire completely. the plug side then connects to pin 1 and the body side just gets taped up so it does not get shorted while driving.
good luck.

 

Just curious, did you use a self-tap or did you solder it to the pin#1 wire?

 

i soldered it. i always do that. i think that works the best in the harsh environment of car

 

Nomi, thanks for the bypass instructions. I tested it this weekend with great success. The instructions were very easy to follow and it took me about 30 minutes to get access to everything so that I could test it before making it permanent. I did not hide the wires yet or install the switch. My 2008 Rx350 has an unused switch in the shifter console (above the traction control switch). I was wondering if the Radio Shack switch you referenced fits in that location? Otherwise, I was thinking I could buy it from Lexus at some unreasonable price – but at least it will look very professional.

The second question is about hiding the wires. You mentioned that the door kick plates are held down by clips but I didn’t see any and I was afraid to just pry away at it. Can you provide more details on how the kick plates are removed/replaced?

Thanks again for this great hack! It costs a lot less than the commercially available bypass devices with essentially the same positive results.

 

My switch is installed under the little door on the left side of the steering column. My car has little flip lid so no one knows that there is added switch unless they open the lid. I just had service done from the dealer couple of weeks ago and they did not notice any thing. If you want the original looking switch and would like to put in next to the shifter, you can get what ever switch was suppose to go there and i can help you get the proper connections done as long as you have a ohm meter. I helped a fried with this last weekend. He bout the switch that had height adjustment settings. We even got the light within the switch working so you can see the switch at night. So let me know what you buy and i will try to help.
as far as the door kick panel goes. it should have 3 to 4 clips that are hidden under the kick plate. Just put you finger on one side and pull up. it should pull up with little force. I have lights in the kick plates so i had to unplug the lights other than that it was easy.
hope this helps

 

Putting the switch where you did is a much better idea. It eliminates the need to get into the console area, and as you suggest, is a little more discreet. And thanks for the clarification on the door edging clips - I'll be a little more assertive pulling them off knowing I won't break anything.

 

I have a 2006 RX 330. Will the Nav speed sensor trick work for this as well? Same brown wire? Has anyone tried this?

Thanks

 

It's easy enough to test. Just cut the wire as per the previous instructions - if it doesn't work just resolder and tape it back up. Testing it out should take about 10 minutes to access the DVD player, locate the connector and cut the wire. It took me 1-2 hours to run the wire up to the front of the car underneath the door runner boards. As Nomi recommended, I added the switch to one of the blank switch positions under the flip down door to the left of the driver console. The switch I used was also from Radioshack. http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...00&tab=summary

 

Nomi, I have been frustrated by the lack of functionality of the NAV when in motion. Your posting helps with that. I do not know what you mean when you say "free up the Bluetooth and ipod." I understand that it will bring the ipod in to work in the system, but what does it do to Bluetooth? Allow it also to work while in motion?
Thanks

 

with this hack you can actually use your blue tooth in the car. for example prior to making these changes, i could not dial out from the touch screen, i had to dial the number from the phone it self. Now i can dial the numbers while in motion. I have found out that this is kind of dangerous so now i let the passenger dial the number instead of me.
as far as the ipod goes, prior to making these changes i could not do much other than song up or down. Now i can select folder, playlist and browse thru songs and select the one i like. Again i let my passenger do this most of the times so i can concentrate on the driving.