Motorola Ihf1000 Bluetooth Carkit Installed - 08 Rx350

[khnitz]

Last Friday I installed a Motorola IHF1000 Bluetooth handsfree phone carkit into my wife's cousin's 08 RX350. The setup works great and she's happy. I used a 68165 harness from Nicestuff Distributing - it connects at the amplifier under/behind the rear seat. It mutes all the speakers except for the larger speakers at the bottom of the front doors. The handsfree audio plays out the midrange/tweeters at the front corners. I may investigate adding a second harness to completely mute out the radio audio when a call comes in.

The only other connection needed was to grab an ignition/accessory signal. I tapped that from the power line to the accessory power socket by the gearshift.

[magicgsm]

Hi! Can you give detailed instruction for connections?

Last Friday I installed a Motorola IHF1000 Bluetooth handsfree phone carkit into my wife's cousin's 08 RX350. The setup works great and she's happy. I used a 68165 harness from Nicestuff Distributing - it connects at the amplifier under/behind the rear seat. It mutes all the speakers except for the larger speakers at the bottom of the front doors. The handsfree audio plays out the midrange/tweeters at the front corners. I may investigate adding a second harness to completely mute out the radio audio when a call comes in.

The only other connection needed was to grab an ignition/accessory signal. I tapped that from the power line to the accessory power socket by the gearshift.

[khnitz]

You need access to the amplifier that is behind the rear seat - I only had to fold the rear passenger seat forward to gain access and remove the seat back cover to get to the connections. It's a tight fit, so getting the connectors loose was a little bit of struggle for my large hands. That said, the Nicestuff harness connects at two of the connectors towards the middle of the amplifier. A connector at the far end of the amplifier, closest to the driver's side of the car (US centric) is the same shape, as one of these two, but it's not the one that needs to be connected.

I should have snapped some photos, but didn't get a chance.

The harness makes the installation plug and play - except for the ignition connection - that I grabbed from the power lead to the 12V power socket by the shifter on the center console.

I think one of my earlier posts ( http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index...st&p=312664 ) details connections on an earlier RX amplifier.

Hope this helps...

[1990LS400]

The harness makes the installation plug and play - except for the ignition connection

The harness isn't "plug and play" if it isn't muting ALL the speakers. Have you contacted Nice Stuff to ask about this issue? ==> info@nicestuffonline.com

I looked at the audio system diagrams for both the ML and standard audio systems for the RX350 -- don't know which system your wife's cousin's RX has. I don't see anything that would prevent all the speakers from muting ... I see only one mute pin on the amplifier and it looks like all the speakers are driven from the same amp that has that mute pin.

Do all the speakers mute if you disconnect the Nice Stuff cable from the amp (return the amp to its original configuration) and ground the mute pin on the amp? If so, it would appear that the Nice Stuff cable is not compatible with the RX350 audio system for the U.S. market.

The audio system diagrams for the 07 RX350 are in the ARRC database which is available through the websites of many public libraries. Diagrams for the 08 RX350 are not there yet but are likely the same as for the 07 RX. If you don't have access to the diagrams on ARRC and need them, post a response letting me know which audio system your wife's cousin's mother's friend's RX350 has and I will upload them to this thread.

I guess if you can not make all the speakers mute with the Nice Stuff cable or by connecting the IHF1000 mute wire directly to the RX350 amp mute pin, you could always use the old "sledgehammer" approach and use a relay to deprive the audio system of power when a phone call is in progress.

There is a wonderful forum with information about installing phone kits and finding an audio system's mute: http://www.siocommunications.co.uk/Forum/index.php Terry Wright's forum is for installers in the U.K. but it has of lot of information that is applicable to cars sold in the U.S.

Everything (which is not all that much!) I learned about installing phone kits, I learned from Terry Wright ... and from Jainla who is a member of this forum.

[khnitz]

I'll take a look at that information to find the Mute pin. As I did not have that information handy, I did not connect it to any particular pin on the amplifier. If there is that Mute pin available, it would certainly complete the Mute effect and get the sytem functioning 100%. Makes sense.

[1990LS400]

I looked at the sizes of the audio system diagrams and see that they are tiny so I will upload the diagrams for the 2007 RX350 that are on the ARRC website. The ones for the 08 RX350 are not on ARRC yet but these may be close enough.

There are three diagrams for the Mark Levinson (ML) and three diagrams for the standard (non-ML) audio system. The mute wire color on the amp of both systems is shown as violet. There are also mute connections shown on the head unit but the amp is probably a better place to pick up the mute since you are already there.

2007_RX350_non_ML_audio_1.pdf

2007_RX350_non_ML_audio_2.pdf

2007_RX350_non_ML_audio_3.pdf

2007_RX350_ML_audio_1.pdf

2007_RX350_ML_audio_2.pdf

2007_RX350_ML_audio_3.pdf