Metra ASWC connection hookup for 4th Gen 4R's in PLAIN ENGLISH

sgtcombatusmc

New member
Okay, after much fighting, cursing, and one defective module - I finally got my stereo to recognize the steering wheel controls. No thanks to Metra, or their AXXESS interface website, or the PDF they give you, or the application guide.

So I'm going to walk you through it step by step. I'm presuming you've already got the dash torn apart, the negative battery cable removed, etc.)

Step 1. Connect the red wire (Pin 12) to an ignition controlled voltage source. I simply connected it in parallel with my HU.

Step 2. Locate the wire harness for the steering wheel control. (It's the remaining harness after you connect your wire harness up (I used the Metra version) You're interested in 3 wires off of this harness, and 3 wires only.

White with Red (Pin 6)
Violet with white (Pin 7)
Yellow with black (Pin 8)

Now for the connections.

Step 2a. Connect the black wire (Pin 6) to the white with red wire. (I used T Taps on all of my connections so that I wasn't hacking up the wire harness.) This is your ground, so make sure it's good and solid.

Step 2b. Connect the Green with Orange wire (located on Pin 4 of the ASWC plug) to the violet with white wire.

Step 2c. Connect the black with green wire (located on pin 8) to the yellow with black wire.

Step 3. (This may not apply for your deck, but it does for my Sony 770) connect the 3.5mm plug into the back of your HU, it's labeled "Remote In"

Step 4. Cut back or tape off all of the unused wires.

Step 5. Plug the ASWC controller box into the wiring harness. Check (and if necessary reconnect) the wire harness to the Toyota's wiring harness and to the stereo. Reconnect the battery terminal.

Step 6. Start the car. The ASWC is going to start blinking rapidly, then a bit slower, it should pause on blink 4, 6, and 8, as it's identifying that these wires are connected, and then blink a certain number of times for your particular HU (In my case 4 blinks for a sony) , and finally the light will become solid. You should now have the ability to use your steering wheel controls.

(Note: I only have the left side steering wheel controls. But so far, I have full functionality to the HU with them . I cannot attest for what functionality (if any) you'll have with the right side steering wheel controls.)

If the light doesn't go solid, it just stays blinking - then the likely culprit is one of your connections isn't solid. Break out the trusty ohm meter, and check them. Then resolder, recrimp, and repeat until you get the desired results.

If the light doesn't come on at all - verify you have 12vdc to the pin side of the ASWC. If you do, and you still have no light - open up the little cover on the box, and check the voltage between the two outermost pins. It should be 5vDC. If not, your ASWC is defective, time to dig out the receipt and take it back.

Hopefully this helps some of you out there, as I know reading this forum has helped me.
 
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Okay, after much fighting, cursing, and one defective module - I finally got my stereo to recognize the steering wheel controls.

Now for the connections.

Step 2a. Connect the black wire (Pin 6) to the white with red wire. (I used T Taps on all of my connections so that I wasn't hacking up the wire harness.) This is your ground, so make sure it's good and solid.

Hopefully this helps some of you out there, as I know reading this forum has helped me.


Worked like a charm, except I had to take the black wire from the axxess ASWC & white w/ red stripe from vehicle harness together, and connect the black ground wire from the harness going into the HU to make a 3 wire connection inside of the T-Tap.

I thought the module was messed up because it would only blink once when I turned the 4R on, so I called metra, of course to no avail, they told me to remove the T-Taps, yeah right! :thanks: So, I thought, let's just reset it and see if that works. Voila! It started right up and did its automatic programming and I was in business 15 secs later.

Next, I'm going to add the right side of the steering wheel controls for bluetooth, hopefully it will just read it once it's hooked up.

Thanks for the easy to read write-up.
 
Wish I would have known about this when I installed mine, the install was pretty straight forward once I decrypted the crappy instructions, but this would have helped a lot I'm sure. Otherwise it detected everything and worked like a charm once I got the wires hooked up
 
steering wheel controls

Depending on what after market HU you are installing, an easier route is to install this harness with the Metra ASWC controls,
Stock No. 70-8114 Swc add-on Harness W/Rca For Toyota. I paid like $8.00 from Ebay. I do not have the JBL system, I installed this JVC KW-AV70BT Car DVD Player Receiver Double Din Touchscreen 7" Monitor in my 08' T4R. Used the Metra ASWC STEERING WHEEL CONTROL INTERFACE and the 70-8114 Swc add-on Harness. It was as easy as twisting up 3 wires into the JVC harness and plugging in the RCA's to the back of the HU. No splicing any where near the Toyota harness's. Real easy and the ASWC recognized and synced up with the steering wheel controls first time I powered up the unit. Instructions were easy to use and you eliminate that huge mess of wires that comes with the Metra ASWC. Most newer HU have been tested by Metra for compatibility.
 
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Next, I'm going to add the right side of the steering wheel controls for bluetooth, hopefully it will just read it once it's hooked up.
.


Mine did not work with the auto program method. Do you ever get these to work properly?
 
Mine worked first thing when I hooked it up last Saturday. I did not get the adapter for the smaller wiring harness (that has the 3 wires you need to use) so I had to splice into them. It blinked just like in sgtcombatusmc's post. I have the Pioneer avh-p4400bh. 4 wires (3 harness, 1 access 12v) and then the mini plug into the HU's hardwire remote plug (looks like a mini headphone plug).

CHuntMD
 
anyone have trouble with there seek buttons not functioning? mine does it time to time and i use the metra harness and have pioneer deck, i recently update the firmware from 3.14 to 3.15. my seek forward will sometimes respond as reverse, sometimes it takes a while to get a response at all.
 
I was hooking this up a bit late last night and maybe I didn't splice into the harness correctly. It would blink red, then green for a bit, then red again and then it would just settle on a continuous quick red blinking pattern. :(

I'll have to give it another shot this weekend.
 
Just did this today. The white-with-red wire I connected to the chassis ground wire with my head unit ground and aswc-1 ground...that's right, four wires soldered together for the ground. This was after confirming with Metra's tech on the phone that all three are grounds and can be all linked to the chassis ground wire.

All of the other connections are the same as listed.

I paired my ASWC-1 with a new Pioneer head unit.
 
Depending on what after market HU you are installing, an easier route is to install this harness with the Metra ASWC controls,
Stock No. 70-8114 Swc add-on Harness W/Rca For Toyota. I paid like $8.00 from Ebay. I do not have the JBL system, I installed this JVC KW-AV70BT Car DVD Player Receiver Double Din Touchscreen 7" Monitor in my 08' T4R. Used the Metra ASWC STEERING WHEEL CONTROL INTERFACE and the 70-8114 Swc add-on Harness. It was as easy as twisting up 3 wires into the JVC harness and plugging in the RCA's to the back of the HU. No splicing any where near the Toyota harness's. Real easy and the ASWC recognized and synced up with the steering wheel controls first time I powered up the unit. Instructions were easy to use and you eliminate that huge mess of wires that comes with the Metra ASWC. Most newer HU have been tested by Metra for compatibility.

I've been pulling my hair out trying to install the ASWC using the universal harness that came with it, without any luck. I wish I would've known about the Toyota specific harness before ripping my dash apart and cutting up my factory harness 3 times.

My only question is how does the 70-8114 connect to my aftermarket HU? In all the pictures I've seen the only free wires are the ground, power, RCA and 3.5 inch. I have a JVC HU and it doesn't have a 3.5 inch port for the steering wheel controls, but instead a single wire on the harness, so I don't see how I can hook this harness into my HU.

Any help before I drop $10 on the harness?
 
there should be a 3.5mm to 2 wires. i belive it comes with the aswc, check all the package contents. it does tell you what wire to use like brown or something.
 
Question

I just bought a Kenwood DDX9702S and the ASWC-1 and the SWC 70-8114 adapter, do I have to plug in those RCA's of the 70-8114 for it to work? My Kenwood HU does not have a RCA AUX in plugs on it, so I was wondering if just using the 3.5mm adpater to brown wire for my kenwood would work correctly or will I just have to tap into the factory harness with the supplied cable of the ASWC-1?
 
rca is for aux, you dont need it for it to work, let us know how well the metra works, i gave it up and use idatalink maestro
 
Great instructions, much appreciated.

I'm installing a Pioneer AVIC 5000NEX in my 03. When I got to the ASWC part, I did exactly as described above. Turned on the ignition, nothing. No lights, nothing. Checked all my wiring, looked good. Broke out the voltmeter, 12v going to the black box. Finally cracked the box open and tested the two outermost pins (again, as described above)...NADA! Looks like I got a faulty unit.

Gonna go write an Amazon review then package this thing back up. Unfortunately my dash looks like it vomited a mixture of wiring and plastic.....Grrrr!
 
Great instructions, much appreciated.

I'm installing a Pioneer AVIC 5000NEX in my 03. When I got to the ASWC part, I did exactly as described above. Turned on the ignition, nothing. No lights, nothing. Checked all my wiring, looked good. Broke out the voltmeter, 12v going to the black box. Finally cracked the box open and tested the two outermost pins (again, as described above)...NADA! Looks like I got a faulty unit.

Gonna go write an Amazon review then package this thing back up. Unfortunately my dash looks like it vomited a mixture of wiring and plastic.....Grrrr!

just return the whole thing, i got tired of my unit and swapped it out to idatalink maestro, so much better, problem free and its more detailed in the wiring diagram.
 
just return the whole thing, i got tired of my unit and swapped it out to idatalink maestro, so much better, problem free and its more detailed in the wiring diagram.

In retrospect, the iDatalink would have been the way to go, but I'm already invested with the PAC Tato unit. I did get the Metra 70-8114 harness this time around so maybe it'll help.
 
Worked

I hooked it up and got it working, didn't work at first but that's because I used wire taps and one did not make contact. figured it out by watching the blinking lights on setup sequence and then fixed it. Works perfect now. Could not use the RCA connection since my Kenwood did not have the plug in it needed.
 
Received a new unit yesterday, took apart the whole dash again. Turned the ignition on, nothing. In desperation I tried the other AUX jack. It started blinking, went through the detection routine but could not identify my pioneer (7 blinks). I'm thinking this is a ground issue, since plugging it into the other AUX is essentially grounding it right? Maybe I need to try the "4-hub" ground mentioned above? There has to be a simple answer that doesn't involve taking the dash apart again.
 
Ok... so I have connected everything as per the first instructions. I confirmed there was 12V getting to the harness that plugs into the ASWC box. When I plug it in, there are no lights at all. Does that for sure mean the ASWC is faulty, or could it be a wiring issue (even though I confirmed 12V to harness)?
 
Ok... so I have connected everything as per the first instructions. I confirmed there was 12V getting to the harness that plugs into the ASWC box. When I plug it in, there are no lights at all. Does that for sure mean the ASWC is faulty, or could it be a wiring issue (even though I confirmed 12V to harness)?

did you plug the remote to the radio first, then plug the rest in?
you can reset the box.
 

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