Hello all,

I recently installed a VLite2 in my 2012 TL. It took some time for me to decide that I wanted to keep it, but I did just finally reinstall the center dash vents that were such a pain to remove... so now I'm committed! Good info on this unit and its installation process is surprisingly hard to come by, harder to come by in the context of a 4G TL, and impossible to come by in the context of a 6-speed TL (ended up not mattering, but I half expected a surprise), so I thought I'd record some thoughts and tips here:


Installation:

1. The installation manual Grom includes with the unit for the 2012 TL is wrong. It depicts a different head unit with different wiring harness connectors and a different number of fans on the back. I thought I had been sent an incompatible unit until I tried connecting the provided harnesses and found they fit just fine. The insert with instructions on how to find the reverse wire is also wrong - you'll have to use a meter to find the right wire. I found that one of the wires in the OTHER provided pass-through wiring harness (it was brown, pin 15 IIRC, but test before you pierce) carried +12V in reverse and 0V otherwise, so I was able to install the unit with no mods to the vehicle wiring at all. Why Grom did not wire this up from the factory is beyond me.

2. The hardest part of the install is the removal of the center vents above the radio, which MUST come out to access the top two radio mounting bolts. Every video I could find on removing the radio (there aren't many) skips this step. I have a service manual, which states that a special tool is required. You don't need Honda's special tool, but I had to order a long-reach hook & pick set because my vanilla set was too short. The service manual says to hook the rear lip of the ducts and pull the vents out - first on one side, then on the other. I found that each side will come partially free, but the center clip and rear clips stick HARD. I popped each side partially loose and wedged a non-marring nylon prying tool in the gap to keep it from popping back in, then had to pull RECKLESSLY hard to get the remaining clips to come free. Indentations were left in the plastic where I had hooked the back of the ducts, but nothing was damaged.

3. Even after you unplug all the connectors, the radio won't come all the way out unless you remove some plastic cable stays that will probably break and leave you with a maddening rattle inside your dash. From the passenger seat, you can access the back of the unit well enough when it's pulled out as far as it will go to do the install without removing them. Put a rag over the console plastic so you don't scuff it when you pull the radio halfway out and tilt it forward.

4. Use some diagonal cutters to clip off the corner of the glove box shelf insert. It cut surprisingly cleanly and you'll never be able to see it.

Set up:

Now for the fun part. Out of the box, this thing is USELESS. The control "joystick" is not properly mapped by the unit. The jog dial works as you'd expect - rotating it moves your cursor around in the active app pane in Android Auto, much like it would in the few OEM AA systems (think Mazda or Alfa Romeo) that don't have a touchscreen. The 8-way directional joystick is kind of a joke. Left and right are mapped exactly the same way as rotating the jog dial. This means that there's no way to move from one app pane into another, or into/out of the vertical taskbar on the left. Up, down, and all four diagonal directions do nothing.

I got in touch with Grom's tech support over this, who were generally responsive in 24-48 hours. They instructed me to set the DPI setting to 160, which causes the screen resolution to be set so low that the taskbar moves from the side to the bottom, and only 1-2 lines of text fit on the screen at a time in Google Maps. The crippling problem is corrected, though: Up and down on the directional joystick move you from the taskbar into whatever app pane is above your cursor. The only way to move between left and right panes is to move down to the taskbar with the joystick, rotate the jog dial to place the cursor under the opposite app pane, and then move back up. Less than ideal, but functional.

I was unsure about keeping the unit like this, as it really feels half-baked, but I found a workaround that brings it much closer to fully-baked. Open Android Auto's settings, and check the option for "Enable Taskbar Widgets". This brings back the old Back/Pause/Forward buttons for media control that lived in the taskbar before AA went to a multi-pane layout (they will only appear if you have on app occupying the whole screen, otherwise you'll get the normal taskbar) It ALSO forces the taskbar to be at the bottom of the screen. Now you can set the DPI setting to something useful without crippling the unit - I found that 115 feels about right. Hopefully Google never obsoletes the taskbar widgets or updates them with a vertical taskbar version.