'05 SE V8 Pioneer AVIC-F90BT Install

We're planning to take the 4R on a road trip this month (NY <> FL ) so I decided it was time to do something about navigation and better iPod/MP3 integration.

I decided to go with the Pioneer AVIC-F90BT because it had all the features I wanted at a reasonable price.

Our SE has the 10-speaker single-disc JBL sound system (non-RDS) with the Rear Seat Audio, so I went with a PAC TATO kit for the audio connectivity, PAC SWI-PS for steering wheel controls and a Metra 95-8202 dash kit.

The PAC units were very easy to work with, and a nice surprise was that the TATO came with a 4runner-specific harness for the SWI-PS and the proper R1/R12 and R5/R10 plugs.

I only had to solder 4 connections to hook the TATO harness up to the AVIC (after removing the unused outputs from the black AVIC connector):


The car doesn't have the R9 connector for vss/reverse/park on the factory nav, so I had to tap into the main harness. I pulled VSS where it enters the HVAC ECU on A16 pin 8 (Violet w/ Red stripe):


For reverse, I used 1F pin 10 (Red w/ Yellow stripe), which is the connector right next to the fuse box in the driver's side lower panel:


I ended up doing a hardware bypass so I just grounded the park wire.

I placed the GPS antenna on top of the HVAC ducting to the right of the center speaker, it seems to be pretty secure there and I'm getting great signal.

I was a little worried about how the Metra kit would fit (having read some horror stories), but it isn't too bad. I didn't have to trim it at all and my only complaints are the small gaps at the top and bottom, and that it sticks out very slightly further than the stock plastic surround.


In those pics you can also see the TATO (black box) sitting on top of the wiring harness, and the SWI-PS hanging down. After it was programmed I was able to tuck it down beside the HVAC ECU.

I pulled the driver's side a-pillar trim to route the mic wire, that turned out to be much easier than expected as once the grab handle is removed it slides right off by just pulling the top towards you and wiggling a little to free it from the dash.

I have to find some stronger tape to hold the mic itself in place, but I'm very happy with the location and it seems to pick up voices just fine.


Finally, a couple shots of the finished install, & the truck.

Nice install, it looks great. I was interested in that unit as well for price/features but the 700bt that I looked at took SO LONG to boot up. How is this one for you?

Yeah it does seem to take a long time to boot up, I've been doing some reading over at avic411.com and I'm hoping to make some tweaks to decrease the boot time.

Good luck, it's a sweet unit. I really like it and love all the tweaking you can do to it. Let me know how it goes or what your impressions are after you've lived with it a while.

One more question. It sounds like you kept the factory speakers and amp for now and just swapped the head unit. What kind of difference in audio quality did it make for you?

f900bt

The F900 boots up pretty slow, but the remote start solved that problem!
I would love to find out how fosheezy got his (eclipse) gps to look so good in the dash? looks like a custom fabrication. Check out his LED upgrade pics and you can see the stereo.

I'm not sure, but I think Fo_Sheezy's HU is the factory unit, and the factory surround.

I do have a different dash kit that seems like it would look better, but it's for the JBL w/ RDS cars where the radio fills the whole space that's black in the cars with the 'regular' JBL systems.

I'd love to get my hands on one of the RDS-style surrounds & hvac controls to swap everything over, but haven't had any time to go scouting around the local junkyards.

rdrunner said:

Good luck, it's a sweet unit. I really like it and love all the tweaking you can do to it. Let me know how it goes or what your impressions are after you've lived with it a while.

One more question. It sounds like you kept the factory speakers and amp for now and just swapped the head unit. What kind of difference in audio quality did it make for you?

Click to expand...

After living with it for a little while I'm going to say that overall the sound quality is better than the stock stereo. I think some of that has to do with the 4v pre-outs on the F90BT, I've heard that the TATO won't give as good results with HUs that have 2v pre-outs. I am thinking about opening the dash up again and tweaking with the gain settings on the TATO to get a little more volume out of the system.

Overall, I'd say that while there are definitely some issues with the Pioneer (slow boot times being the biggest, other minor things like not resuming from where an MP3 left off, muting rather than pausing MP3 playback during nav voice prompts, other minor stuff, no way to change radio presets via the steering wheel controls), but I'm happy with it.