Hey guys,

Posting again after completing a double din swap on my 04 G35 coupe.

Everything with the headunit works great and have been really pleases. BUT I haven't been able to get the steering wheel controls to work AT ALL!
I'm using the Metra Axxcess ASWC-1 and this is what I've had to troubleshoot so far:

1. Nothing lighting up on the box, even knowing it was getting power. Problem was bad ground. Ran a separate, dedicated ground wire to the ASWC-1 and fixed that problem.
2. Not detecting steering wheel buttons. The box will come up with the rapid green/red flash, go to 7 green flashes, and then 2 red (which I believe means it detects a Kenwood Radio) and then it goes to a slow green/red flash which means it didn't detect the vehicle. The instructions say to hold the volume up button after turning the ignition on, but that does absolutely nothing to change the sequence I described.
3. I am aware that certain Kenwood stereos require a resistor placed between the ASWC-1 and the headunit. I talked to the tech support at Metra and they said I could just manually program the ASWC and didn't have to worry about the resistor. So I have tried the manual program sequence. This is what I get; Turn the ignition on, hold the reset button for 15 seconds, release and then press the volume up button. The LED is supposed to go solid green after a few seconds but it doesn't. (The instructions say I might have something wrong with my volume up button)

So at this point I believe there is something wrong between the volume up button and the ASWC (Button itself, wire, or wire connection between M39 harness and ASWC harness)
I started by tapping in to the Red and Green wire on the M39 harness with these https://www.crutchfield.com/S-IReRoI...xoC5DwQAvD_BwE

Thought that those might not be making a good connection, so I cut the red and green close to the plug and used Posi-products wire connectors (the ones i used on the main Kenwood harness connections) to connect those wires to the respective Green/white and gray/red wires coming from the ASWC and STILL having no luck with it working.

Finally, I hooked up a volt meter to the red (remote control A) wire to verify the buttons were actually sending some voltage when pressed. I can press any button by itself (volume up/down, power, mode, seek back/next) and no voltage changes. However, if I push both the volume up and the seek back buttons at the same time it shows 10 volts. Same thing if I push volume down and seek next, also 10 volts....


So I have no idea what to do with it at this point. Should I also put the volt meter on the green wire (steering control B) and see what it reads? Does anyone know what the voltage should be when you press each button on the steering wheel? I'm really at the point of just throwing in the towel, I'll have to take the whole dash apart again if I need to get to the red and green M39 wires, and that's after already taking everything apart and putting back together twice (car is my daily driver so I can't leave it taken apart)


Thanks, I welcome any insight and advice!

 

So, the steering wheel switches are a resistor array - different resistance for each function all done with only 3 wires. Your AV factory service manual is here:
https://www.nicoclub.com/service-man...F2004%2Fav.pdf
(click "download" at the bottom of the window to get the pdf)

Here's an excerpt from that manual showing some test values, although I don't know if you had a base system, Bose, Nav... And I have no idea if these stock switches will be able to communicate with your custom rig, but hopefully so...

 

Were your steering wheel buttons working before u did the kenwood and ASWC install?

 

Thanks for the quick reply!

As I was reading your post and came across the diagram I realized I might have found my mistake...I don't remember grounding the remote control ground (yellow wire) from the steering wheel controls. I ran a dedicated ground to the ASWC, but don't think I did for the remote control ground.

I will double check that and then report back!

 

Hopefully thats your issue!

 

So the issue was that dang ground wire...I somehow forgot to hook it up and run a ground for the steering wheel controls, even thought I did run a separate ground for the ASWC.
Hooked it up and turned the ignition on, pushed the volume up and after a few seconds it detected the radio and it's working perfectly!

So glad to finally have those buttons working, thank you guys for the replies! That diagram was enough to spur my memory and make me think back through everything.

 

Nice!