Hey all, I am doing some research on a '15 and swapping out thr audio components.

Are there any issues/obstacles in swapping out the head unit? Other than losing bluetooth and rear-view.

For example, in my '15 Silverado, the head unit controlled a great deal of the chimes on the cabin, even the turn signal!

Am I going to be running into the same mess with my T4R?

Other than, "don't do it!", is there any advice or must-have pieces of information you all can offer?

Thanks again, very excited.

Many have swapped it out and had no issues, most of the examples are in build threads, so more reading there! There is a good thread on replacing speakers as well, somewhere around here.



Also, very creative way to get all your posts to make a new thread. Extra points for that fact that all your comments were different. @1engineer you gotta give the guy some credit for this!

.... and here I thought I was the only one who reads a newb's previous posts, just because. He was pretty busy for a few minutes last night. Kudos for reading the rules and working the system vs whining about it.

Here are 2 very helpful threads:

New Maestro Radio Solution

Speaker replacement & Sub addition

Summary: Get a head unit that supports Maestro. You won't lose your steering wheel buttons, bluetooth, backup camera, etc. You will lose the compass heading that appears between the gauges. You will gain the ability to see the air pressure in each of your tires plus some other goodies.

2014 and up you will lose the compass in the cluster if you have OEM nav.

just about to start my swap next weekend, Kenwood 893s and the whole idatalink maestro setup. Hopefully no issues for me

Maestro will even add some features, you really only lose compass on MFD and OEM microphone. You'll need the Maestro RR, T02 harness, ST02 antenna adapter set, UT02 USB adapter, and a Metro FM antenna adapter. Sounds like a lot of stuff, and to be honest it is, but you'll retain factory rearview, GPS receiver (not needing to use the aftermarket mag mount), OE USB (I didn't bother looking into the aux connector, so not sure on that), OE satellite antenna, and steering wheel controls.

I gained better compass on larger nav screen (Kenwood DNX893S head unit), front camera, smarter steering wheel controls, CarPlay, customizable gauges, and TPMS w/battery voltage readouts.

I have my steering wheel controls customized to be:
* up press - flips between the nav screen and the current audio source
* up hold - displays front camera. Can swipe screen to switch to rear camera at any time.
* down press - displays the gauge screen.
* down hold - displays the TPMS screen.
* along with other custom tweaks rather than Maestro's default. I routed the Maestro's USB cable to the back of the glove box so that I can easily reprogram the steering wheel buttons or update the unit's firmware if needed.

Siri audio is also over the USB rather than as low-quality Bluetooth like the OE head unit.

@rayofsi , make sure you have all the optional cables you need before digging in. I didn't and had to make a followup order from Crutchfield as I couldn't source them locally or from Amazon Prime, which interrupted my install and set me back several days.

This is way more cooler and useful than I would have even thought possible.

I was driving on the fwy with mildly heavy traffic. All of a sudden there was debris in my lane and I had no choice but to drive over it (cars around me and there wasn't a big enough gap between me and the ahead of me to allow me to maneuver into a safe lane.

Anyways, I flipped to the TPMS screen to monitor tire pressure and it was really a peace of mind to just leave it on that screen (or flip back to it from time to time) just to ensure there were no leaks. In hind sight, I probably should have pulled over to make sure there wasn't something stuck in the tires or on the verge or puncturing, but that's a lesson learned.

How are you liking everything so far. We just put the Kenwood DDX9903S system with idatalink Maestro in my Fiance's FJ. Its up in Spokane area and will be driving it back to Boulder this weekend. I am excited to mess around with it and see everything it has to offer. We were able to retain the backup camera and shark fin antenna so that was nice.

Great so far! It's an adjustment going back to Garmin and honestly, I prefer the functionality of the nav on the new Pioneer units. We have an 8100 NEX in our RAV4 which has a richer nav UI whereas the Garmin UI feels Fisher-Price-like in comparison. But, the Garmin nav is much faster to set a destination and the head unit interface is extremely snappy compared to the Pioneer. There is latency when switching screens on the Pioneer while the Kenwood is very responsive. Also, the voice on the Pioneer nav only mutes the front left speaker and has limited volume adjustment so if you're listening to music with any real volume the voice prompts get lost in the mix. Additionally, you can add custom maps to the Kenwood's Garmin, which means trail topos! Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that you can load GPX tracks, custom vehicle icons, or custom voices, unlike a dedicated Garmin unit.

iOS 10.3 added a couple of minor features that make CarPlay much nicer. There's now a set of dedicated app switching buttons on what was otherwise wasted space and an Up Next button on the Now Playing screen shows the current list of queued tracks, which was crazily lacking before.

Thank you all for the information.

Mama didn't raise no dummy

Thank you!

Thank you very much! I'll have to look into this further, as I already have a headunit (which does not support Maestro). It's an 8" Android tablet, essentially. I would hate to part with it.

Thanks again.