How to Swap 2.5gen steering wheel to 2nd gen

When I bought my 2007 SR5 I knew one thing that needed to be upgraded was the steering wheel. It was worn to hell, only usable with a cover, and it didn't have steering wheel controls built in.

Six months later, it's time to attempt this project. Figured I'd do an in depth write-up to help anyone else that would like to attempt this.



Some notes:

• The steering wheel itself will bolt right up, 2007+ sequoia, 4runner, tacoma, wheels that look similar will be compatible (wiring may vary)
• You will need a new airbag to match the 2.5gen design wheel
• If you just want to swap the wheels/airbags without messing with controls you can do it in about 15 minutes flat. The wiring is the hard part here.

Parts list:

• Steering wheel with desired controls and grip. I went for the cheapest I could find on car-part.com. I specifically avoided ones with the lane departure/adaptive cruise control because I had no use for those buttons. I paid $100 (including shipping) for mine out of a fire damaged 2014 Rock Warrior. Also worth searching for the "Steering Column Assembly". It seems in most cases they include the wheel and controls in the package as well. Might be able to get a better deal this way.
• Needed to get new steering wheel trim pieces that got lost in the salvage yard ($10 for both) PN 4518604030C0 & 4518704010C0
• Airbag. Cheapest I could find was $300 shipped on ebay through a seller that looks like he has sold a lot of them.
• Pin to add to J45 connector. Thanks to Jeff_5_7 for the tip on these. You can likely come up with a hacky was to attach the wires but this is better for $10 shipped. (Hint: I actually completed the install without these, but using them is the right way to do it).
• Old headphone wire to wire controls to radio without a PAC converter

Tools List:

• T25 or T30 Torx bit
• Phillips screwdriver
• 19MM socket
• Torque Wrench
• Steering Wheel Puller
• Multimeter
• Assorted electrical connectors
• Assorted hand tools

My first stop was this thread to review the wiring diagrams to see what would work and what wouldn't.

There are 3 connectors in question. J45, z3, z2. All three of these are part of the clockspring. A quick google search revealed that the clockspring design is unchanged between the 2nd and 2.5nd generations, therefore all the connectors should plug right in. z2/z3 are spinning side of the clock spring and they feed through the clockspring and output to J45 inside the wheel.

• z2 - Cruise control
• z3 - Steering pad controls

Pin locations (Looking towards female side of connector)



Spending some time with the wiring diagrams I came up with the charts below. Listing which pins were used for what on the three connectors for 2007 and 2014 years.



This snip shows how z2/z3 and J45 connect. ie. J45 pin1 feeds to z2 pin 4. I couldn't confirm what J45 pins 7 & 11 connected to inside the wheel but you could always test for continuity if needed.



Here is a summary of the changes:

• 2014 added SW3 and moved SWG to J45 pin 3.
• 2014 added the "DISPLAY" button to the wheel via pins 2&3 on z3
• 2014 removed a horn ground from z2 (this doesn't affect anything)

Remove the Wheel

1. Make sure wheel is perfectly straight before starting
2. Disconnect battery, wait 5 minutes for electricity to dissipate, pump brakes to help dissipate.
3. Remove plastic trim on either side of steering wheel, one surrounds cruise control
4. Loosen 2 torx (T30?) screws that are now exposed. Note, they do not come all the way out. These hold in the airbag to the steering wheel frame
5. Pull airbag towards you
6. Disconnect airbag, use tiny screwdriver to pop up connector locks then carefully remove. Place away from your work area
7. Unplug z2,z3 connectors
8. Use 19mm socket to remove spindle nut. It's on there pretty tight. Use your legs on the wheel or have someone help hold the wheel still. Do not rely on the steering wheel lock mechanism, you will break it.
9. Use steering wheel puller to pop wheel loose.
10. Congrats your wheel is removed.

Install the Wheel

1. Put the new wheel on straight. See pictures below of difference in what one tooth off makes. 1st pic one tooth left of center, 2nd pic one tooth right of center, 3rd pic is centered. Don't be like me and remove the wheel and try to fix a 1degree angle, that is taken care of with an alignment.
2. 19mm socket to put the spindle nut back on, torque to 37ft/lbs, pretty tight.
3. Plug in z2/z3 connectors
4. Plug in airbag
5. Seat airbag and screw in, I couldn't find a torque spec for the torx screws but I tightened them very tight.
6. Congrats your new wheel is installed.
7. Plug in the battery and start the truck from the passengers seat (just in case the airbag does go off you don't want to be in front of it or reaching across it. Airbag check light on dash should come on and go off like normal.

Access J45 connector

1. Start the truck and turn the wheel 90 degree to expose phillips screw behind wheel, remove screw
2. Turn wheel the other way, remove that screw.
3. Separate steering wheel column trim. You only need to take off the bottom, don't mess with the top.
4. J45 is on the passenger side of the wheel towards the bottom
5. Note: Airbag related circuitry is wrapped in a yellow sheath and should not be messed with.

Wire the Display Button
I used the DISPLAY button on the wheel to do the same function as my INFO button on the dash. To cycle through distance to empty/mileage/trip timer/etc (functions vary if you have optitron dash). The info button is a simple circuit that activates as the positive is connected to ground. I pulled the dash and tapped into connector L2 pin 2 (green). This gets wired to pin 9 on J45. Pin 10 on J45 gets wired directly to ground via your favorite grounding point.





Illumination
My truck was wired for illumination and steering wheel controls (even though it didn't have the controls installed) in 2007 and already receives the positive feed through pin 12 on J45. Outputs to pin 5 on z3 inside the wheel. However, in 2007 they used the ground from the steering wheel controls (z3pin8). In the 2014 setup I needed to add a ground to J45 pin 10. I suspect this was to limit interference with the delicate resistance circuitry. This new ground does double duty, grounding the DISPLAY button and the illimitation circuit. Since we already added ground in the step above there is nothing to do here.

If your truck was not wired for steering wheel controls (some Grade models might not have been) you will need to add the ILL+ signal. The easiest way will be to pull from one of your buttons on the lower left dash (RSCA, Rear Window, Bed Light). Here is the wiring diagram for 2007 for the Illumination circuit. You want the ILL+ side. ie. the yellow wire in pin 3 of J38 (Curtain Airbag Cutoff) would do it. But any would do. Use your favorite wire-tap method to tap in.





Cruise Control
If your new wheel comes with cruise control it should work. They are the exact same part number. However, mine did not work. Not sure what was wrong with it, all my multimeter tests showed it was working fine. Ended up swapping out my old one and it worked no issue. There is no extra wiring needed, plug and play.





Steering Wheel Controls
This could be a whole post in itself.

The 2007 SW controls used 3 wires, SW1, SW2, SWG.

• SWG is ground (common to all switches)(gets grounded into radio to limit interference)
• SW1 controlled Seek +, Seek-, Vol +, Vol-
• SW2 controlled MODE, On Hook, Off Hook, Voice.

Wiring diagram below. Quick note on reading wiring diagrams. In a section like this the circle with a letter inside it indicates which connector the pin is on. The green wire is pin 6 on connector (A), J45.



Here is the complete wiring diagram. Note the resistor ladder. In order to not have 8 different circuits the way the SW controls work is by having 2 circuits (SW1 and SW2) that send different voltages to the radio, depending on what is clicked. For example, if you follow the wiring through the MODE button it passes from the Spiral Cable (clockspring), through the mode switch, then back out to SWG without passing any resistors. However if you press the Vol- button the circuit now includes 3 resistors. You can figure out the resistance for each button with a multimeter.



My radio (Sony xav-ax100) accepts SW control input via a 3.5mm jack. Your standard set of headphones (without a microphone) are wired like this a common ground, and a left and right channel. To wire in the steering wheel controls to my radio we would wire SWG to the ground ring, and SW1/SW2 to each of the LEFT/RIGHT rings.

My Sony radio allows me to set custom button setups in the setup menu. Basically you choose the fuction on the screen then press the button on the wheel. If you don't have this option you will need a converter. Something like this. But, mine can be customized, so I can save the $70.




There is one issue though. Here is the wiring diagram for the 2016 steering wheel controls.



It has SW3! A third channel to send voltages through. But our 3.5mm jack can only accept 2 channels. You could simply wire up 2 of the 3 SW channels and the ground but you would loose 4 buttons.

First thing I did was test the controls on the bench. You don't need to have it installed to do this. Just hook your multimeter in Ohms mode up to the corresponding pins on z3 and press a button to find out the resistance. These were my results.





So each set of 4 commands uses the same resistance ladder. After some experimenting I came up with a solution to be able to utilize only 2 channels of inputs. Simply tie SW2 and SW3 together! But wait. That means that the onhook/left button would send the same voltage, and the same for all the other corresponding commands. To solve this I added an additional 3.7k resistor coming out of SW3 before connecting it to SW2. This added 3.7k of resistance to every command, brining it up to 3.7k, 4k, 4.7k, 6.8k. It worked! Well, it worked 90% of the way. it turned out that the difference between 3.7k and 4k was too close so my radio couldn't differentiate between enter/back button. But, I didn't need the back button anyways so I just ignored it. The radio needs "clearly defined" resistance ranges".



That's it. The whole process took weeks to plan and learn how to read wiring diagrams, order parts, rent tools, learn to use my multimeter, etc. The actual install was completed in less than 2 hours.

This is one of my favorite mods so far. It may not be the cheapest but it really brings the interior of the truck up a few years.

Here to help if you have any questions, I don't want to let all this useless knowledge go to waste.

Obviously always take extra precaution when working around airbags... it's basically a loaded gun.

 

Bookmarking

 

Nice work very well detailed. I have posted some similar information around but nothing this in depth or detailed.

My small contribution
https://www.tundras.com/posts/2333306

 

Found my way here after reading about the 2.5-gen wheel for sale and your response. I'd love to do this mod...but man, that's a lot of $ for not much gain. In the future, but I think I'm gonna stick with stitching up my Loncky leather wheel wrap I got one of these days!

 

Cheaper than a new truck!

I justified a portion of the cost because my steering wheel was worn to hell already. It was only the cost of the airbag at that point. And I'm still hoping to sell my airbag to recoup the some cost.

But, for me it was worth it. Steering wheel buttons and the upgraded look will help me be happy with this truck for a long(er) time.

 

For sure. I'm not saying I'm on eBay right now looking for a deal but...

Is it as simple as getting the 14-21 Tundra controls/airbag and bolting/wiring it in? Checking out Tacoma wheels right now. I'm wondering if swapping the wheel will mess up my controls on my Kenwood deck...they were linked via the Maestro setup...

 

It's a very quick/easy swap. You'll have it off and on in less than a half hour. Getting the wiring figured out will take a bit of effort. I have everything detailed above. Happy to help with any questions.

If you already have maestro you're a good portion of the way there. There will be a little more wiring to get all the controls to work (the 14+ controls have 3 control wires vs 2 in the 07-13). And the display button is a totally different hookup.

 

Sounds like a future project already...I've got a lot done in the last couple of months, but I still have:

-shocks/springs to replace
-Coachbuilder shackles to put on
-rear USB ports to install
-stereo to install (Soundstream amp, JBL speakers, JBL sub...not to mention build the sub box!)
-cab mounts to upgrade

Oof...I think that's it? :|

 

5 months later I was finally able to sell my old airbag for $150. Helped to recoup some of the costs.

 

amazing write up! I'm considering doing this!!

 

Thank you so much for the write-up OP! I can't wait to do this when I get my truck back.

 

I’m going to do this, it’s only a matter of time at this point. Thank you OP!

 

Almost a year later and still working flawlessly. Haven't been able to test the airbag yet, lol.

If anyone is trying this feel free to reach out to me with any questions.

 

Great write up, adding to this long list of mods to do!

 

what a legend. where are you located chris?

 

Thanks a ton for this post. I almost have this sorted on a 08 Sequoia sr5 non jbl non nav which as far as I can tell so far has identical wiring. I'm starting out without steering wheel controls just like the original poster. I'm using a 17' Tacoma wheel because that is what I could find on the cheap. I just have a question for the op regarding the horn. You state that in 2014 they removed the horn ground from z2. It looks like from the photos you are now using the number 1 slot on z3 for this. Is this an either or scenario where either will work? It looks like in the photos you have you are no longer using the horn ground for z3. Thanks!!!

 

Hey man - happy to assist. I still count this as the number 1 mod I've done to my truck. Still working flawlessly over a year later.

It looks like from my notes above that no modifications need to be made to the horn wiring, just for some reason, the newer wiring removed a redundant ground wire. I've attached the circuit diagrams below. I think it must be due to the way the horn contacts are set up on wheel itself. On the old wheel the the ground can either go through the Cruise Control switch or the Steering Pad switch, in later models they changed it so it only grounds through the steering pad switch. In both cases the key is that the signal is sent to the horns from the 8 pin on the J45 connector. So, by connecting the wheel with no modifications the horn should work just fine.

Really the only tricky wiring comes in adding the "display button", which is totally optional and wiring the steering wheel controls audio to actually function.

Also, wiring in the illumination circuit, which even though it illuminates in blue instead of orange like the rest of the buttons, looks good to me. Note the buttons won't dim properly the way I have it wired. In order to do so you need to wire both the positive and negative sides of the illumination circuit at the wheel into the rest of the illumination circuit.


Please don't hesitate to ask any other questions. I put a ton of time into figuring this one out and am happy to assist others getting it set up.

 

you are a wizard

 

Thanks, looks like both connection options terminate at pin 8 on the j45 connector so it should work either way.

Regarding the illumination wiring I'm not so sure what this would look like. The switches I have do not have a second input for another illumination wire. Seems like if the illumination wire coming in at j45 does not dim with the rest it was designed like this to begin with?

Lastly with the resistor you mentioned it didn't work perfectly but good enough for your purposes. Is there is a different resister that 3.7k that I could try that might work better?

Thanks!!!

 

Illumination:

Illumination positive will be pin 12 on the J45 connector. Don't worry about the dimming part, I don't even know how you'd make that work, may not be possible because of the common ground with the horn.


Resistor:

Looks like I used a 3.7k resistor in my setup. This may be something you have to play around with and see what kind of separation of voltages your head unit is looking for. This is something you can do with the steering wheel installed; you are making the connection between the J45 (the connector at the bottom of the steering column) and the head unit after everything is installed. You may be able to find a different resistor that works. The issue is you have two sets of buttons outputting the same 4 resistances. You need to add a resistor to "shift" 4 of these up into a higher range. The issue is as you get to a higher range it seems like it is harder to tell them apart. (the difference from 0 to .33k is a lot easier to detect than 3.7k to 4k, even though they are both 0.33k jumps).

Play with the resistors you have on hand. If you understand what you're trying to accomplish you should be able to guess and check from here. If you don't have resistors I recommend buying a variety pack from Amazon - I got a pack of like 100 in different values for like $10.

 

Nothing crazy going on here, just a careful reading of the wiring diagrams. Learned everything as I went.

 

Did you get it figured out?

 

Yes, I got the buttons on the left working. The right buttons not yet, I need to get the resistors.

 

Awesome man - glad to hear it.

 

I thought I had it working but it looks like this headunit is not sensitive enough to pick up the low ohms and has a hard time telling what buttons it does recognize apart. That said another forum said this headunit requires additional resistors to make sw1 and sw2 work properly.

Two questions:

1) Did you use 1/4 or 1/2 watt resistors? Sounds like 1/2 watt are for powered applications and since this is just signal/switches 1/4 watt should be ok?

2) Did you put the resistor in sw3 wire behind the airbag in the steering wheel and then tie into sw2 or did you do this further downstream behind the raidio running an extra wire for sw3?

Thanks!

 

Can you share the link to the other post. I'd be curious to read that.

These are the resistors I used.

ELEGOO 17 Values 1% Resistor Kit Assortment, 0 Ohm-1M Ohm (Pack of 525) RoHS Compliant

$10 ELEGOO 17 Values 1% Resistor Kit Assortment, 0 Ohm-1M Ohm (Pack of 525) RoHS Compliant

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072BL2VX1


I put the resistor on the connector exiting at the base of the steering wheel, prior to the wire running to radio.

 

Great, I ordered one that are the same spec.

Here is the link I was referring to.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/atoto-a6-pro-review-and-installation-guide.685199/

Unfortunately I'm still not 100% sure where you put the resistors. Sounds like you are saying inside the steering wheel before the clock spring? Or is it after?

 

I am pretty sure I literally just stuck the resistor in the J45 pin holes, after the clock spring. J45 shown in the picture below, resistor is not in yet.

 

@chrisf111 so I’m trying my best to understand the controls section of your write up. If my current original steering wheel already has controls would I need to go in on all this wiring or would it be a bit more plug and play? Also when you say you can program your controls via the radio is that necessary per your set up or for all applications?