Advice sought - double din receiver install

After you take the passenger right side panel and you remove that clip inside, the big large glossy panel is the one in which you need to give a good tug. Just wear some protective gloves so your oil grease from your hands or your nails don’t get or scratch the panel. It is one big giant piece so just work small pieces at a time.

There is no clear documentation on the factory mic. It is up on the head compartment near the rear view mirror. When it comes to mic audio, you don’t want to be trying to adapt that mic to your new head unit. The new mic is much clearer and made for your head unit so best to use the new one. I ran the mic through the passenger A-pillar side due to convenience and tucked it all under the head liner just left of the rear view mirror. You’ll need some sort of leash tool or something to help run the wire through. I do recommend you put a protective sleeve on the wire since all throughout the vehicle are very sharp metals that will make small cuts on the mic wire when rubbed and shook around. I used a 1/4 size split wire loom tubing you can find on amazon. If you run the passenger direction, it helps to take out the glove compartment to tie wrap things up. If you go on the driver side, there are a lot more panels and gets tricky running up the wire to get to the A-pillar. If you never worked with the A-pillar before, it is a PITA. There is an airbag in the A-pillar so the usual recommendation is to have the negative battery side removed so no power to the vehicle if messing with the pillar. There is one clip on the very top of the A-pillar that requires you to almost blindly push together two tabs with two fingers to be able to take this clip out. Certain documentation recommend that you cut the clip out, but i was able to reuse. This for me was the most difficult part of running the wire. Once you get through the top clip of the A-pillar, the rest are basic clips you can pull the panel out. Some people I’ve seen on YouTube just attempt to tuck the wires in, but I’m not knowledgeable the situation the airbags deploy whether they will get caught with the wire. If you remove the pillar, the mic wire can be tie wrapped to avoid the air bag. Running the rest of the wire from there is straight forward.

Idatalink maestro programming is extremely straightforward. I recommend you try default settings first but be ready to reprogram to customize as you learn all the features. One thing that bit me was that you need to remove all the connectors from the module when connected to the vehicle to reprogram.

Usb was retained with no issue with the recommended adapter.

The only thing that wasn’t to my liking is the harness attempts to adapt the aux to rcas and my head unit requires rcas to adapt back to aux causes a reduce in quality when using the factory aux Jack. I use CarPlay now so I never need to use aux, but if there is a device that needs aux port, it won’t sound as good as it did with the factory head unit.

 

This video is the best one that shows how to get to the headunit.

Here is a video on the a pillar. There are some variations of the Toyota clip. This video is similar to the older style with the locking wing ends, but the tabs look very similar to ours. This video has two annoying clips when our car only has one...thankfully. The styles are similar of the clip from older Toyota’s being a black one. The black one from older Toyota’s was a bit much difficult to remove via pushing the tabs together, but a bit easier when rotating 90 degrees. Our gen Prius made it even more difficult to remove via the 90 degree method, but the tabs are a little bit easier to press. The way I do it is I first identify where the clip is and remove just enough weather stripping to enter underneath the air bag( of course be careful around the air bag). I then rotate the clip so I can access the two tabs to get a flat head on one tab and my finger on the other tab. Use a combination of underneath the airbag and over the air bag to rotate it slowly with some pliers, while being very careful. The two tabs allow to press in so the two triangle locks that hold the clip to the metal goes flat. The clearance doesn’t provide good access so you may have to work your way around. The clips are about $3 at dealership if you find the process or removal to be so painful. I had to replace one time due to me trying to understand this clip better. I find if you can remove if via the two tabs, that is the easiest if you give it a bit of upward force with your flat head while pressing in the tabs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHRZcmA1A9U

Keep us updated.

 

Sadly doing stupid things is the way we learn. All my learning experience is from spending countless weekends and a lenient wife allowing me to tinker with the car. I’m not sure if techstream has a camera tester, but that would’ve been my next suggestion. But using techstream is a great, but a scary tool for a beginner.

Just you wait, you’ll probably want to upgrade your speakers, add an amp, and possibly a subwoofer. I do recommend the dash speakers. It’ll enhance the vocals of any song. An amp is recommended if you upgrade your door speakers.

 

2019 Prius LE owner here.. Factory Head unit without JBL.
Want to install a Kenwood Excelon DDX9906XR using the RR Maestro and adapters Crutchfield recommends.
Think I can handle dash and radio removal.
Is the Maestro and iDatalink HRN-RR-TO2 wiring adapter pretty much straight forward plug and play?
Debating if I should have it professionally installed.

 

It will take some soldering, I bought these things called heat shrink with solder (red ones, just look on amazon). You’ll need to connect the head unit wiring harness to the TO2 kit but that’s about it as far as soldering. It’s super easy, just use a heat gun and the solder flows out and heat shrinks the wires at the same time. It’s the rest of it is by no means easy but not rocket science either. If you’re handy I say go for it!