Alpine ILX-F511, F509, 507 brake bypass mod

I searched high and low for this answer and couldn’t find it. Now that I figured it out and now I will be posting the answer for someone else to find.

Problem: I could not access various setting’s, menus and a variety of features on my head unit. I pumped the handbrake, regular brake restarted the vehicle and/or head unit with no success. Some crucial options for sound like EQ & and even fade/balance were unavailable due to the stupidest fucking reason that any high end mobile electronics manufacturer could think of.

I bought this from eBay: https://ebay.us/m/AFvzV3

This item seems to be a second version, note that there are only three wires to connect, not a fourth yellow wire.

The instructions for this bypass were not 100% clear so I ended up just cutting and splicing on my best guesses and it freaking worked.

Remember that you need to focus on the stereo side of this issue, it has nothing to do with the truck.

I bought this head unit from Trail Grid Pro so my wiring was pre-connected and I had to pull some tape to get access to the correct wires.

Overall, I wish I had done this when I bought the unit. I also wish it was done for me by Trail Grid Pro, send me a waiver!

I will also not be updating my head unit until I absolutely have to: I have a completely rational fear of some dipshit OSHA minded moron updating software and rendering this wiring/relay hack obsolete.

The attached pictures should guide your connections. Good luck.

 

You do not need the fouth wire for the iLX-507. Older models & other brands may need the foot brake wire, only need the parking brake wire for the iLX-507.

When I installed my iLX-507 I used a MicroBypass (not Bypass Micro) cause they claimed to be the original & if true I wanted to support him. I had issues where the bypass sequence delay time once powered on was too short in order for the bypass to work every time. I contacted MicroBypass who.was very responsive & very helpful, after some communication & testing we came up with an appropiate delay time to work reliably. The iLX-507 had just been newly released at the time so he had not encountered this issue yet. Mine was originally 4 wires & I let him know that the foot brake wire was not needed so he removed it to futher downsize the module size on the replacement.

I also tested a PAC bypass module, while it worked reliable the delay time to initiate the bypass sequence was much longer. Not a big deal but can be annoying. With a longer delay can see the settings icon appear once the sequence is initiated. Too short of a delay it won't bypass reliably like on a cold start up, usually only a restart. I prefer the custom MicroBypass I got (which should be a standard item now), the bypass sequence is already activated before the home display pops up.

 

BTW I highly recommend the RUX-H02 volume knob. It has it's quirks but I wouldn't want to be without it. I hate push button volume control & missed the volume knob on my old Alpine.

And if you want a remote, I'm using the RUE-4202 (although my old remote worked also). The iLXs don't officially have a remote for them but they do have IR remote functionality.




BTW, the LED on the RUX-H02 is pretty damn bright at night & is annoying. I used some LED dimming film I had to take care of that though.



Edit: I also installed a screen mirroring dongle to the HDMI input for the heck of it. I never use it though but I can post details if interested.

 

One last thing, in regards to firmware updates, they actually added features & resolved bugs so they are recommended. I never had any issues with every single update I installed but YMMV so that's up to you

v5.0.001 is the last FW that can be installed using USB flashdrive. I'm on the latest v6.0 which can only be installed via OTA & wifi. I noticed no differece from after v5.0.001. You won't get the OTA feature unless you update to v5.0.001. v6.0 seems to be the last update, there hasn't been a new FW for quite a while now.