[04_Toaster]

Anyone that still has a 2004, 2005 or early 2006 xB without steering wheel controls can have them. Have to do a junkyard trip to harvest some items but can be done.....do not be denied! It cannot be done buying parts from dealer or online that I could find or at very least have to spend way more money. This cost me about $30 for the junkyard parts, about $160 in OEM HU and 6 new speakers, $200 for pristine 06.5 wheel shipped from Canada.
You could take whole wheel off tC if you didn't already have wheel with controls but one small thing to note is that the silver on the tC wheel is darker than silver trim in xB, more like pewter. Small thing but it is a thing. Another thing might be the CC stalk on the tC wheel that will just be decoration as it will not run aftermarket CC that I know of. xB not wired for cc due to actual throttle cable instead of drive by wire which requires physical connection to tb to do Cruise Control. Those stalks have more than 2 wires like the OEM stalk does on tC. Same thing on xA wheel I would imagine. Mine is 2006.5 xB wheel so it is not leather and has no Cruise stalk.


*****disclaimer - do this at your own risk. I am sure there could be other methods but this is what I did and what I used. I will not be listing any specific part numbers....due to not knowing them or them even being available at this point.

 

[04_Toaster]

*** reserved for pics and specific procedure **

 

[04_Toaster]

OK, this project all started with item found in FS threads and my usual motivation to upgrade things..........2006.5 steering wheel with audio controls to work with recently upgraded stereo to t1806 and the nice handholds and it being oem upgrade. I like oem upgrades.

Got wheel, airbag, controls and 2 spiral cables that were not in plug n play shape nor did they have correct plug for gray connector in 04 harness.....

OEM t1806 to pair with wheel.................

....which has the 20 pin connection that has the steering wheel control wires on this end...................

(20 pin is lower plug, pwr/spkrs are upper right, cd1 is small plug center left up top)


Next step, ( after much searching online, in forum threads & my soul), was taking myself to junkyards to harvest what I thought I would need to make this work which was all the stereo harnesses, column harness 12 pin black connection to spiral cable, the spiral cable itself & the wheel harness from controls to spiral......because the control harness in the wheel I got was modified. All this was off 06 or 07 tC with steering wheel controls and a t1807 hu.

Read thru many wiring diagrams to come to conclusion that I only needed orange/pink/green wires in steering column harness with black 12 pin from spiral cable on one end and the same 3 found on the white 20 pin harness on the stereo end.........

I happened to have large ball of old wiring from old projects and managed to find a harness to some old cruise control that actually had right size green pinkish and orange wires in it. Used those to elongate the new forming harness in pic above..............We'll get to the white wire coming from black connector in a bit. You will need it

Pic of new harness all tested and dressed for permanent action...........

OK, white wire is to connect to the existing black 12 pin column harness with single white/red wire from it which is only wire for no audio control harness. This is the horn wire coming from new spiral cable/wheel harness. Spiral details/observations coming next.

 

[04_Toaster]

OK that covered stereo to steering column side of spiral cable. Need a spiral to do horn, stereo controls and keep airbag happy. This was fun to figure out. Was getting denied in both directions whether by 04 with it's measly 3 pins............

and also by the 06 or 07 tC spiral....because it didn't have this gray connector like the 04 spiral did........

at this point I hooked up the 04 spiral, put wheel back on and didn't want to think about it for awhile. Next morning led to coffee fueled hardheaded dissection of one of those seemingly unusable spirals that came with the wheel to see what makes these work. Eegads, you say.......but this led me to finding out that the piece on the back of spiral with gray connector that tC spiral didn't have is a separate module that unclips from back of the round spiral part. Now one of the previous day's denials was that the gray connector on spirals received with wheel was that the gray female connector was different and would not allow me to plug the 04 male gray connector in column to the other spirals. Dang! So anyway, lightning struck and got idea to remove the gray plug module from the back of the 04 spiral which would plug into column harness, onto the back of the tC spiral which did have the prongs for it like the 04 does. I opened this module on the other spiral not being used and it had 2 little gears attached to a small circuit board. I surmised this to be associated with steering input for VSC or traction control. Yeah, went with that idea and put the gray connector module on the back of tC spiral. Fit perfect and I started to think I might just win here............

those are pics of the 04 spiral with module removed...note single horn wire connection to wheel. Pic below is of xB controls with tC wheel control harness to spiral installed.........

note - steering control wires, horn wire to airbag and tC cruise control 2 wire connector all going to black 12 pin connector that goes in wheel side of spiral cable. I REPINNED NOTHING. I just tucked cc cable inside wheel out of the way.

 

[04_Toaster]

Alrighty then after all that here is what I ended up with.............

tC wheel control harness to 06 xB controls, 04 VSC module attached to tC spiral & the stereo to column side of spiral cable harness.........now we might have magic. Test fit everything and thought magic but not yet........so I started permanent reassembly by routing harness to stereo area with other stereo harnesses/antenna and pulled other end to steering column side..............

So at this point, the wire pin for horn was being super defiant to come out of connector and I had about enough so out come the wire strippers and just tee'd into the dang thing and taped it up. That way at least this whole thing could be reversed easily if need be. I know getting the pin out of connector and plugging it into spot in 12 pin connector where the white wire making the horn honk was would be ideal cleaner install and it still bugs me but whatever, moved on.....

Newly modded tC spiral in place, fit same as 04 no issues.............

All plugged in and secured in column.................

04 column 12 pin for horn just dangles tucked up with other harnesses inside column shell...............

Back in it's shell............

Wheel back on.......

Airbag and horn connected and back in place............

 

[04_Toaster]

Now at this juncture it would seem to be just install stereo and be done and in reality it should've been and was............except for one major detail that ended up being easy fix after another episode of something that almost made me bail on this like the spiral cable almost did. So, I connect up stereo and put it back in and all was groovy with key in ACC. Controls working beautiful just as intended, horn honking thinking yea but when I decided to start car and make sure all was good then too......THE AIRBAG LIGHT WOULDN'T GO OFF!!!!!! I hooked up my code reader and no code, searched on resetting airbag code procedure and was just thinking through all I did and then out of the blue I wondered if I had clicked the airbag keeper clip down in place or not. Hmmmmmm? So I undid battery again and undid the torx for airbag and to my joy found I had not clipped in the airbag retainers. Yea? So I put it back together and hoped for best, connected battery and started up car but light stayed on.......just long enough for me to start getting bummed again and then.......IT WENT OFF!!!! ALL IS GOOD!!!! I post all this extra detail in case someone else tries this and these are stumbling blocks I ran into but bottom line = working oem stereo audio controls on 04,05 & early 06 xB's that do not have the connectivity already in their wiring harnesses. I have dug through every thread associated with this on more than one forum and did not find any win in them, only questions and redirects to aftermarket and such. I know these cars are14-16 yrs old but maybe all this will help someone else out there still wanting such ammenities in oem format.

vol up/dwn
track/saved station up/dwn
mode switching between disc, AM, FM, FM2
mode turns on hu and holding it turns it off with a beep
holding track up/dwn on disc takes you to track 1
holding track up/dwn on radio seeks to next station in whichever direction

everything I need and want it to do..........

 

[campos]

Thank you for this thread... I have a 2005 xb... I am looking for a steering wheel with radio and phone handsfree controls...

I have an android head unit that has handsfree options..

[email protected]

Please can you point me in the right direction


Thank you again

 

[04_Toaster]

I don't know about wheel with phone controls for our year models, only audio controls. Not sure if newer Scions have them or not or what other wiring would be required. You would probably need whatever wheel has controls and be able to run that spiral cable and at least part of the harness. If your stereo has that capability I would think there would be some way to make it happen. The hard part will be getting spiral compatibility with that capability. I stuck with oem stereo and oem stereo controls. If I add anything further it will be GROM audio usb/ipod/aux/bluetooth adapter off cd1 on back of oem stereo to provide connection to phone but there will be no controls on steering wheel.

 

[campos]

Tc and rav4 wheels from 2005-2010 are direct swaps?

Perhaps starting with a wheel with audio controls.... Then grafting in the phone handsfree control?

I seen a 2006 xb steering wheel with audio controls.. Is that a direct swap into my 2005....airbag and all?

Thank you...

 

[04_Toaster]

This thread is all about adding 2006.5 xB wheel & audio controls to any 2004, 2005 or 2006 that didn't come with them using oem parts. Mine is 2004. The wheel I scored is from 2006.5. I updated my 04 oem stereo to a 2006 oem color changing one that has the 20 pin connector needed to run oem wheel controls. I believe you at least need a t1805 or higher number hu to have the connection. The one I went with is t1806. The t1801 that came in my 2004 and the t1804 from 2005 do not have the necessary 20 pin connection on back of the unit. I used the tC spiral to have all the pins in connections on wheel side and steering column side to run controls and took the vsc module off my 04 spiral cable and put on back of tC spiral cable so I would have everything to make audio controls, airbag & horn happy. All the instructions are above. You will have to go to junkyard and seek out parts yourself. There is no place to buy them ready to plug in. As far as other wheels, I believe earlier years of tC, RAV4 , Corolla or Matrix may work but I am unsure of which ones specifically.

 

[campos]

Thank you... I will post my progress

 

[scortracer]

Dude yes! I am so glad you were able to get this done. I would have definitely been out of my comfort zone if I had actually tried this to mine I assumed it was near plug n play. Enjoy the wheel and glad to see mod I wanted to do come to life.