I have grand ideas of doing this swap so that I can have a nice touchscreen head unit in a spot that I don't have to look down to look at maps or cameras or any number of things. As we all know the stock location is crazy low and not ideal for things like navigation especially.

So this has been done for sure in at least two different cases that I've found, no more. One seems to have routed the ducts down to were the head unit goes and just installed some generic vents on a flat plate there.



The other seems to have made a totally custom bezel. While the custom bezel would be awesome I assume probably the only way I'm going to pull that off is with 3d printing and a lot of cad work so I'm going to stick with the first option while I'm brainstorming this to even decide whether I want to do this mod (probably a little ways down the road but I want to be prepared). Figured I would start this to document things since none of the other examples seem to have done that.



Right now I've found as many photos as I can of the bezel being off and head unit removed.



So right behind where the head unit goes there is this white thing. What I assume that is a box containing the a/c coil and fan but I'm not sure. So what I'm wondering at this point is if in fact I could tap into that to create said vents. That would vastly simplify that part of the job. However my fear is that this area is below the part of the ductwork that directs air based on what selection you choose between front vents, floor vents and defrost vents. If true this means these vents would have air no matter what although I guess you can just close them completely if you don't want air coming from them. I actually see a potential advantage to this though in that I could get all three directions of vents at once. I guess the other option is to figure out a way to route some flex ducting off the stock vents. Obviously the stock vents will need to be closed off as well.

The next hurdle would be relocating the rear defrost and hazard buttons. I'd imagine just relocating the buttons either to the plate where the vents go or perhaps into the dash bezel. Making it look clean might be a little tricky and I'm betting the harness would have to be cut and extended (nothing terribly hard). I also wonder if aftermarket switches could be used to accomplish this. Obviously if you have a 99+ you only have the hazard button probably to worry about. For those of us with the 96-98 dash we could probably chop out the useless cup holder even though the example I found didn't do that.

The last piece of the puzzle would be to create a DIN slot where the vents are. Considering my plan would be to use a big touchscreen head unit I don't think I would even have to make this look super clean but would probably involve some plastic welding.

Kind of thinking of going to a pick n pull and at least messing around in a few third gens in one of those to try and get a better idea of what I need to do before hacking away at my own truck. Need to go anyway to grab some LCAs. I might actually be doing that tomorrow depending on whether I end up doing an activity with some scouts tomorrow or not. Might even be a good idea to grab one of those bezels from the scrap yard and try and create all the bezel parts of this before hand so that when I do tear things apart it makes it a little less work.

Thoughts?

There are a few that swapped the newer center into their older rigs to get the radio higher. I don’t thing an entire dash swap is necessary.

It is distracting looking down at the radio.

Yeah I'm only taking about the center bezel, not the whole dash.

The blower motor is located below the glovebox right above where the front passenger's feet are. You can see the bulge for the blower motor in one of the photos you posted. As for what's in the silver box, I would assume the heater core/evaporator but I don't know where the temperature blend door would be in relation to what's in the photo. Your best course of action might be to take a hole saw to a junkyard and make some access holes to see what's in there.

Or fine the later 3rd Gen in the wrecking yard and start pulling parts.


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Sorry just realized what you were saying here. I don't think there's much height difference with the 99+ compared to the 96-98. It's certainly not close to eye level which is what I want with this. Something were I don't have to take my eyes off the road completely to see navigation or cameras or fiddle with anything on the radio.

So this looks very doable, as you can see in this picture the white piece I'm almost sure is downstream of the controls that send air to the front, feet or window defrost given that the duct that goes to the passenger side vent is coming off of here.



Pretty sure this was a limited with the electronic controls but I doubt things would be in a totally different spot here with regards to whether this is downstream of the controls.

Also I'm pretty sure I don't even have to touch the clock, rear defrost or hazards (although depending on the head unit I use the hazards might be behind the panel).

Doing a rough measurement of where the central vents are it's a little wider than a din and definitely taller. If I want I could probably cut down a little bit and fit a double din unit if I want. The trick at this point would be mounting a bracket securely enough into the slot that I cut that it would be stable and not bounce the head unit around but I feel pretty confident that could be done and I could assess the stability on a donor bezel before installing. Might require some plastic welding. Might even be able to use the ductwork attached to the bezel to help accomplish this and leave the duct in the dash to help support it all. Unfortunately the 2 96-98s that I found at the junkyard had already had the bezels taken so I don't have one to start hacking at just yet.

I am 99% sure I have seen someone do this on a super old build thread, and it's something I am interested in also, but I can't for the life of me find it.

I'm sure it's a thread on this site, but that's about all I know

I wonder if I perhaps found the guy. Found this post talking about a steering wheel swap. This is the first one I've found posted by the owner of one of these swaps. Don't have time to dig into this guy's posts tonight though. https://www.toyota-4runner.org/2379740-post26.html Looks like this guy is really into mods though, he even has a push to start!

Edit: he also swapped the stock clock for an outside temp reader. That would be a great mod to do in conjunction with this.

Didn't realize it was super easy to track all threads he's started which isn't many. None on this mod He hasn't posted in 6 years either which likely means it would be a dead end to PM him. Guessing he got out of the 4runner game.

That's not it, the one I'm talking about took the HVAC controls and swapped locations with the radio, putting them just by the shifter then had some kind of filler for the size difference. If I ever come across it again I will put the link in here, but that may be a long time

it looked something like this, but with the analog slider controls rather than the digital ones, I also remembering it having blue leds for the backlight

please ignore the sloppy photoshop job

personally, if I had the digital controls like this picture did, I'd get one of these overhead controls from a 99-02 suburban:
If someone manages to put this in, I'd love to see it


In theory, everything could fit and you could use the stock 4runner controls and just relocate them up there, taking place of those suburban ones. I'd look more into it but I have a 98 without the slimmer digital controls.

I don't know much about wiring it all together but I'd assume that the sunroof switch could be used to replace the 99+ sunroof ones, as they both only require one switch, the overhead lights would be straightforward, and you'd have homelink too, plus space for now three din slots or whatever else you want to do.

if you compare these pictures you can see that the suburban console has enough depth to fit the slim controls:



If this was installed, I'd go for a windshield mounted Gentex mirror like the 177 I used in my 4runner (you could get it from the same suburban that the overhead controls are from) and you'd have a seamless, more modern look.

It's doable, only would require a few splices, some wiring research, trimming the 4runner controls a little, running extra wire for the controls and a little macguyvering to get it to mount up to the roof.

Someday I'll do some more research into the analog controls to understand how they work and if it's possible to move them up there, but it'd require a lot

Something else I have thought about is putting them where the useless cubby is on the 99+ center consoles but I figure it'd have similar complications that the suburban and bezel relocations do

I think you’re thinking of zacattack20’s build thread. Not sure on the post, but that should help narrow it down.

It would be a lot more possible to do with digital controls. I’m 99 percent sure that the analog controls in 96-00 are cable actuated so that limits how far you can relocate the controls.

https://www.toyota-4runner.org/1823933-post14.html Found it

EDIT: Here’s the other guy on TTORA as well: Dual Sport 4runner | Page 2 | TTORA Forum starts at post 38

This project has been on my "that would be awesome" list for a while, excited to see where you take this. I also have had trouble finding a 96-98 front bezel, they're always missing in the yards.

For fitment, are you planning on having the screen sit outside of the vent holes? I was hoping to find a screen that would fit within the space of the two vents if the vertical strip between them was cut out. This would allow the screen to feel more intentional:

There should be space where the screen will not hit the curved dash lip above it. This would result in the screen not angled towards the driver, but testing with my phone says this would be fine.

Any reason you couldn't just block off the center vents completely? Would probably increase airflow to the other vents, but I rely more on my side + feet vents more for warmth than I do the center.