Upgrading the terrible 8” 2020+ CarPlay/AA Radio to a Kenwood & Maestro RR

My 2022 Pro 6MT doesn't have JBL. It does have the "Premium Audio", but it's still the flimsy 1/2 lb paper speakers found in every other Tacoma and no subwoofer. Personally did the cheap Kicker upgrade that everyone does for a minor improvement.

I don't think they've ever offered JBL with any manual transmission truck. Just like pig and elephant DNA just won't splice, manual transmissions and JBL *cannot* coexist.

 

Did you add an amp/sub setup? I have a 22 and trying to see what adapter can use existing harnesses but send power to amp and rca’s

 

So for anyone curious, I got all the parts and tried it out yesterday. First step was to splice the kenwood pigtail to the maestro. I did so with all of the wires except for the ANT CONT and the REMOTE CONT. I forget what ANT CONT is for, maybe power antenna? REMOTE CONT was for steering wheel controls if you’re doing the Maestro SW. Since I’m using the Maestro RR I use a 4 pin wire harness from iDataLink that goes straight from the Maestro to most aftermarket radios. All the OEM integration going from the Maestro into the radio happens there. Happens through that little harness.

Next step was to flash the Maestro which is basically programming it for a Tacoma and how you want your steering wheel buttons to work. You can customize up to 2 functions per button (click vs click&hold). I chose to add a screen off toggle to my Siri button (hold) and I also clipped the volume and seek buttons. It never made any sense to me for volume UP to be to right and down to the left, while seeking (feels like a horizontal function going from one song to the next on a radio) are vertical. So I made my seek buttons be volume and volume be seek. I programmed my new volume buttons as hold functions to be mute (-) and loud (+).

You enter the radio’s serial number and some other stuff and that’s it for flashing. Takes maybe 5 minutes, 10 if you’re a slowpoke at choosing steering wheel options and surf the options a bit.

Next was a simple radio removal from the truck, pull off that front AC and radio trim panel and remove the 10mm bolts. Pull the radio and disconnect all the plugs, set radio aside.

Plug in the maestro harness (HRN-RR-TO3). There are two white connectors and a black connector. On the truck there are three main plugs (black, gray and white) and a black 10-pin speaker wire connector. The maestro white connectors will go to the white and gray truck main connectors. The black maestro connector will go to the 10 pin speaker connector.



Plug in any other adapters, antenna, USB, gps antenna, satellite tuners, etc. Plug in the Maestro and run the OBD jumper over to the OBD port and plug into the single wire on the Maestro harness.

This is unique to me as the Maestro actually runs the radio. The power from the truck goes to the maestro first and then the maestro powers the radio when it knows the key is flipped. In other words, if the maestro is not plugged in, even having your radio plugged into the harness which is plugged into the truck, will not work.

I started it up and everything worked including my custom steering wheel map EXCEPT the backup camera. The way the backup cam works is that it needs a 6V power, a ground, and then it outputs a video + and - to the screen as an image once it is powered by the 6V. The factory radio supplies the 6V when it senses the 12V reverse signal from the truck. The Maestro is supposed to supply 6V power to the camera anytime the ignition is on, so that you can access the camera via the camera button on many aftermarket head units. The maestro is supposed to also provide the reverse signal to the radio which tells the radio to automatically switch to the camera for backing up.

my kenwood is not getting a reverse signal at all from the maestro and the maestro is not powering the camera currently. Not sure why, may need to warranty out my maestro. Part of the problem is the truck is a manual trans. Per iDataLink support, they say the auto trans tells the maestro it’s in reverse over the CAN system. The manual can’t do that because it uses a simple reverse switch. So I purchased a month of ALLDATA and determined the location of my factory reverse wire on the stock wiring. It corresponds with the light green wire in the white plug (circled). There was no wire in that spot on the maestro harness, I put that light green wire there. I found 4 light green wires that corresponded to nothing on the truck harness so I de-pinned all 4 of them using a simple depin kit from Amazon. I reused one to populate that reverse spot. So obviously with no reverse wire in the harness, there is problem #1 solved. Customer service told me to use that green wire I added and tie it to head unit. OK, easy enough. I did that and now the head unit should switch to reverse when truck goes in reverse. That is the pink wire in the second pic. I didn’t have any light green so I just used pink. No big deal. It is now connecting the kenwood straight to the truck’s reverse input via the maestro harness.



the next problem with the Maestro and the 6V camera power has not been solved yet. Customer service told me that there is a specific wire on the maestro that should have ignition power and that that is what jump starts the whole 6V camera feed process. If that doesn’t have ignition power, then I need to figure out why. If it does, then they say the Maestro is faulty and I’ll need to warranty mine out.

so we will see. None of this is that big of a deal, thankfully I know what I’m doing. If I was a novice at electrical this would really suck to try to figure out. I’m just excited everything else worked and as soon as I have this straightened out, I’ll be able to chunk the junk stock unit on the shelf. Plus, this will nicely make it easier to add an amp since it has low level pre-amp RCA outputs.

Overall the stereo is really cool and should retain EVERYTHING the stock radio had. There is a “vehicle settings” section for adjusting door lock, lights, etc settings like the stock radio had. The maestro does a very good job of taking over. It will still tell you what door is open, tire pressure, etc. you can clear codes from the radio as well as setup 2 screens of 5-gauge clusters for monitoring your favorite data. It is a really cool setup.





Maybe this thread can help the next guy. Will update more as I go.

 

Went and checked the wire they told me to check, it had 12V when key is on. So unless they made a mistake in their diagnostics, I need another Maestro. Honestly might just buy a cheap $20 6V adapter from Axxess at Best Buy and call it done. I can wire that into my maestro harness in like 5 minutes after I pick one up tomorrow vs waiting a week or two for the warranty hassle and having to reprogram the maestro and all that. Plus if the maestro ever malfunctioned on me outside of warranty I’d end up going this route anyways.

 

I think you lose some displays in the center gauge cluster display. Is that correct?

 

Not sure what you mean. You mean like functionality from the Speedo/tach cluster disappear? If so, haven’t seen that yet but I also didn’t drive at all with the radio in place. However, I did drive without the radio at all to the hardware store and didn’t notice anything in my cluster not being there anymore.

 

I think it doesn't display nav info or the radio info

 

That might be correct, though I don’t have Nav and I haven’t seen any music info on my cluster so far. Maybe I need to dig more.

 

Sweet, I actually have a 6V adapter. I got one in my frontier backup cam kit I bought long ago and didn’t need it at the time because I put in an HD Kenwood camera. So I’m going to splice this in and see if it’ll work afterwards. I’m essentially bypassing the maestro for running the camera function.

 

Hi guys i am looking for amp for Tacoma 2020 TRD PRO JBL , please tell me if some body got one. Thank you

 

Hi guys i am looking for Toyota TRD PRO 2020 Amp. if some body got one let me know. Thank you

 

2020+ don’t display those in the center screen.

 

Yes it does. Go to the music note tab on the display to show various the information. Go to the circle with the triangle to display Nav info. Of course, you need NAV on the Entune to display this.

 

My 22 doesn’t. Premium without nav or JBL. I was disappointed because you can’t see radio info while on CarPlay. My 19 had the tab. I have 4 tabs, the “i”, the truck, the triangle, and the settings.

 

I have the music tab but nothing on it.

 

Yes, that is what others have reported that have aftermarket stereo. Not a big deal honestly but I do like using the compass and having the road names on the display.

 

I’m still on stock radio for now, still nothing there as far as music goes.

I don’t have Nav so none of the Nav stuff is there regardless.

 

Then I don't know what's going on. You said you installed the setup yesterday. There's several different models of the stereo too. I was just noting that there is a loss of OEM functionality, as noted by many posters on TW, that is all. No biggie.

 

Sorry, there’s been some miscommunication. My “installing” up until today was preliminary and all just troubleshooting to make sure each component would work. I had some hang ups with the backup cam & reverse so I didn’t actually officially install until today once I got it all sorted.

this is also funny….idk what 2021s are supposed to do but I had 0 function on my music tab on the cluster. Now that everything is installed, I DO have a functional music tab. Which honestly doesn’t surprise me, the Maestro does an excellent job of integration. I can still control door lock settings, auto lights settings, etc. just like the factory radio could. And now I can view OBD data on the gauges screen, I can clear codes from the radio, etc. It is really slick. I just think it’s funny that I had nothing on my music tab from the factory and now with the maestro I do.