Hello to all. I know this it my first post (I hope I'm posting in the right section), and I must confess that I am not a Lexus owner, however I am an installer, and figured this might help some of you out. The closest thing to a tutorial I was able to find was a half-assed description telling you to remove one panel, and then you're given a link to go pay someone for the rest of the instructions. The whole idea behind a club forum is to help each other out where you can, so that is what I'm hoping to accomplish by this picture tutorial. Please excuse the quality of the pics, as they were only taken with my iphone.
Usually the only time that anyone needs to remove the radio is if a cd is stuck, OR if you're installing an ipod integration unit suck as the USA-Spec unit. This is what I was installing when I took the pictures for this tutorial.
Anyway, here it goes:
1. Remove the bezel around the shifter, using your hand as shown in the pic. It's only plastic clips holding it in, so it won't take much to release it.
2. Carefully remove the bezel containing the heated seat switches, and cigarette lighter plug. I used a fancy plastic tool to prevent possible scratching, etc. You can use your hand and pull from underneath, just be very careful not to break it as it's only plastic held in with plastic clips.
3. Take a look behind that bezel you just removed in step 2. You'll see 2 10mm bolts. Remove those using a suitable ratchet. The pic shows the 10mm bolts already removed.
4. This is where it gets a bit tricky. There are TWO more hidden 10mm bolts holding the radio in. You'll have to look RIGHT up to see them. You'll need a decent sized extention on your ratchet to reach these. In the pic below, you can see my ratchet extension sticking out from the dash.
If you've gotten this far, then you're all set!
5. The entire lower portion of the radio unclips, and comes out. Putting it all back together is just as simple....just do the exact reverse to what you did to remove the radio.
