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Might be a bit far for you but I recommend Toyotec in Redhill. I recently had some MOT issues and my local garage quoted over £1500 for the work without a wheel alignment. Toyotec quoted £1120 *with* an alignment.

An even better approach is to offer them cash, but only do this if you trust their work.

Forgive me for sounding slightly cynical, but you might want to get a quote from somewhere that isn't a stealership.

No offence taken. You need a subwoofer to listen to Bassnectar or you're only getting about 30% of what they recorded in most cases =P Sadly I've never been to a Bassnectar gig as they only play shows in the US, it's on my bucket list though. And they don't just play their records on stage, they mix them live in the same way they would in a recording studio when producing an album, so there's variation for the live event. Some electronic bands I'm sure do just play pre-recorded stuff on stage, but if the fans love it then that's all that really matters right?

None of the above bassnectar.net 😄

It does look like there was a factory option that had steering wheel buttons: http://japan.toylexparts.com/harrier/521120/acu30w-awpgk/235w/001/2/8401/845489f

Yeah that was my guess too, my car audio guy said a lot of cars are pre-wired though. I guess it might depend on whether there was an original option for the controls to be there, if so they might put the wiring into all of them just to make the assembly simpler.

Ok so an ebay seller told me that the wheel will fit, but I'm not sure if the car has the wiring in it for the controls to work. Is there any way I can find out other than taking the wheel off and looking for a connector?

We've all done it, this cost me £500 in August. Reversed into a post at a petrol station shortly after having a 12" subwoofer installed. Now I turn it down before reversing so I hear the sensors 🙂

I was thinking of getting an ebay steering wheel with the button controls, should be easy enough for my car audio guy to make them work given that I have an aftermarket stereo. Just not sure if the wheels are interchangeable though, anyone know?

It's not generally a good idea to let it get low enough to make the fuel light come on. The fuel in the tank cools the fuel pump, if you routinely run it down this low you will likely encounter premature fuel pump failure. For more info see: http://www.agcoauto.com/content/news/p2_articleid/195

Maybe you're right, maybe I'm just being over-cautious. There's every reason to think that the issue I had with the socket was just caused by the pins being moved out of place. Further research on the vxdiag interface reveals: - It can be had for about £60 - It's completely chinese-made and there doesn't seem to be a chinese web presence for the company other than a dedicated online store - Supposedly it's much faster than the mini-vci cables, although I never found the mini-vci to be particularly slow - Supposedly it can do stuff that mini-vci can't, such as some of the more involved programming operations which I probably wouldn't want to do anyway I think I have to concede that you're right in the sense that there's no real reason to think that the vxdiag interface is in any way inherently "safer" than the mini-vci cable. I think I'll keep it for now and just avoid doing anything with the OBD socket unless it's necessary. I was only trying to use it the other day to program a key but I had an auto locksmith do that for me now so I have no immediate need for it.

This looks like a good contender for a quality name-brand interface that does the same thing as the ebay ones: https://www.obdinnovations.com/vxdiag-vcx-nano-usb-j2534-diagnostic-interface-for-toyota-lexus-v13-00-022/

I don't doubt that you're right that lots of people use them without an issue @Herbie, but I don't think it would take much of a fault with such an interface to cause damage to a car. Regular scan tools operate using the pin16 12V supply from the car, so there's only so wrong they can do. Presumably if any of the pins on the OBD socket are connected to other pins on it, the system is designed with short circuits in mind so this obviously wouldn't be good but likely wouldn't break anything. But a device that is also connected to a computer's USB bus has another source of power, and at least with the cable I have it appears these are not isolated. If I plug it into the car only - the LED lights up. If I plug it into USB only - the same LED lights up. These knock-off cables are likely made as cheaply as possible, it's not hard to imagine something going wrong in them that could then cause a problem in any of the connected car modules. I'm also told by an experienced technician that there are no fuses in the data lines, only in the power line that supplies the 12V rail to pin16. So yeah I could get another cable off ebay and just like this one it would likely appear to work, but who knows if they can really be trusted or will be safe to use long-term.

For reasons mentioned in my recent OBD thread, I don't want to use less-than-legit techstream anymore. Can anyone recommend an inexpensive scan tool that is able to read all of the modules on a Lexus?

Ok so today the car went to a local auto electrician. They too were unable to talk to it initially, but after moving and testing all of the OBD2 pins they were able to get into it and run a full diagnostic. They discovered 22 communication errors logged in the ECU, which seems like a lot, and also some fault codes related to the aircon which is odd since it works perfectly. They said you have to be very careful with anything that can go into the systems of the car further than a generic code reader, and said that with the price of Lexus ECUs it would be sensible not to mess with non-legit Techstream anymore. So I think I'll be binning that cable. Does anyone know if this programming sequence works for programming a new transponder key without a cable? http://bitsofmymind.com/2016/02/11/how-to-program-a-new-toyota-transponder-key/

Hmmm according to this: http://www.obdii.com/connector.html All variants of OBD2 require pin 5 to be signal ground, but that doesn’t seem to be present on my connector. Chassis ground is there on pin 4 but no pin 5. I wonder if the pin got pushed in..

Hmmm not looking good. I tested voltage across all the pins on the connector: 4 - 0v 7 - 10.21v 9 - 0.02v 12 - 9.99v 13 - 9.99v 15 - 4.5v 16 - 11.3v The battery was a bit low which is why pin 16 was only reading 11.3, but this all looks roughly correct and even with the engine running it still won’t talk to my scan tool. I’ve got another one coming from amazon today just in case but I can’t see an obvious wiring problem.

Sure it could be coincidence if it is faulty but it’s bad either way. Fingers crossed it’s just a wiring issue.

So I finally found somewhere that can supply aftermarket remote keys for a Mk2 Harrier. I tried to program one today and Techstream kept saying "key registration failed", i later learned that they'd sent me a key without a transponder chip so it was never going to work. But then my Techstream cable mysteriously stopped working. At first I thought it was something to do with the laptop, drivers or the fact that it was running in vmware, but after installing windows natively and reinstalling all the software and hitting the same issue I started to wonder. Plugged my generic Autel scan tool in and same issue - it powers up but fails to connect. So now I'm a bit concerned that my chinese Techstream adapter clone may have damaged the ECU. Hopefully it's just a wiring fault but.. still worrying. I was looking for the fuse box earlier but as there's power to the socket I don't think it's going to be a fuse. The car starts and runs and everything works as far as I can tell, the only issue is ODB2 comms.

Thanks, I already pulled all that out and couldn’t find it though.

Where is the interior fuse box on a 2006 harrier?

They said that the harrier is usually sold without an immobiliser so they sent me a remote unit that doesn't have a transponder. They are going to send me a new one with the right chip in it though.

Not sure what you mean, there's no CD involved here. Anyway I found the problem, they sent me a key without a transponder chip so no wonder it doesn't work!

I've just got an aftermarket key that *should* be compatible with my 2006 Harrier. Unfortunately when I try to register it with Techstream it says "registration failed". Anyone got any tips? The remote works fine but I can't get the transponder to register.