2017 Honda Pilot headunit black box on 2016 Pilot

Hey All, I wanted to say thank you for all the information provided in this thread. I recently bricked my 2016 EX-L Head Unit by rooting it, and I had to replace it with something else. I wanted to add in my experience. Some of this info may be repetitious, and some is the little "gotchas" that I came across along the way. To be specific, I upgraded from 39542-TG7-A11 (2016 EX-L no RES/ no NAV) --> 39542-TG7-A13 (2018 EX-L no RES/no NAV)

1. Rooting via HondaHack appears to be relatively safe, but I think I got into trouble when I also added SuperSu and also BusyBox. I was attempting to install Viper4Android and remove the crappy factory DSP/EQ settings from my radio. Also, Android Auto with the amazon dongle does "work", but it's not very elegant. I didn't find it reliable enough that I would want to live with it every day. That's just one man's opinion.... At the end of the day, I borked my device screwing with this stuff, and ended up with a 2018 head unit anyway, which appears to be much more reliable.

2. Ordering a new head unit from LKQOnline was relatively painless from a process perspective. The hard part with this process is that the part numbers and item descriptions are all over the place. The part I ended up ordering was listed like the below. As you can see, no honda part number at all. There was the part number for the 2016 non-NAV head unit listed in the description 39542-TG7-A11, but that isn't what they sent me. What I actually received as 39542-TG7-A13. It has already been said previously, but I will stress it again, this site is a crap shoot. You really have to check the details before you order. If you are not sure, I don't think calling them will help. Probably better off coming here and asking for advice from the hive mind IMHO....


3. The part I received was an exact replacement for my radio, meaning it was a clarion unit with the same exact plug configuration as my existing radio. As long as you stick between 2016-2018 and match your trim level, this should be plug and play. That being said, the part they send me was cosmetically NOT GOOD. The radio screen had a bunch of scratches, the bezel was chipped up, and the mounting brackets were bent to hell. Be prepared to swap out all these parts from your existing radio (Unless of course yours are in worse shape). Swapping the screen is not hateful, but it is going to take patience if you are not comfortable with electronics. You have to take the top off the radio unit and disconnect two ribbon cables to remove the screen. Not very hard, but not for the faint of heart either. Interesting tidbit, they sent me ALL of the wiring connectors as well. Looks like they just yanked the radio out of the dash and cut the wires off instead of taking the time to unplug them. Having these wires may come in handy. I have plans to try and power it on my work bench and unbork the radio. So far, I can't figure out the secret sauce to make this think come alive on a straight 12v power supply, but that is a conversation for another thread.

4. The Anti Theft code was interesting. I used the site previously quoted on here with success Honda Radio / Navigation Code Retrieval and Reset Instructions. The primary thing I noticed here is that it DID NOT MATTER which VIN I used on this site. I tried it with both the VIN of my vehicle and that of the donor car, and the codes produced were identical. The second code I was given worked like a charm! The largest gotcha here is the serial number of the radio. The sticker on it has a long alphanumeric number on it: ABCEFG123456789 When inputting that into the website, you have to omit the first seven characters: 23456789. That's the only way this works. No idea what the logic is behind that one.

5. After install and code input, the radio comes to life, but it has all the settings from the previous user. At this point, it's probably best to just go to the factory data reset option, and wipe this thing clean. I don't need random person's iphone settings on my radio, or the violet background colors, or the wrong time zone....

6. Only other really annoying thing is the android auto. For some reason, when I first fired up, the volume was all the way down. I struggled for a moment thinking something was wrong. Then I realized I just needed to turn it up to hear it. This lead me to the discovery that when I am in Amazon Music, there is no indication of what the volume currently is. It is not showing on the Driver's information screen and there is no Volume indicator on the screen for android auto. That is really annoying to me, but it is what it is. I have not yet figured out if this is by design, or a byproduct of this hacky little endeavor of making a square peg fit into a round hole. Losing the read outs on the driver information screen was unexpected, but I rarely used that anyway, so not a big loss for me. Just be aware that that appears to be a thing when you change radios to a newer model. I'm using an Alpine PWD-X5 in my system, so I have the annoying byproduct of two separate volume controls for my stereo as it is.

That's all I can think of at the moment. Sorry if I repeated information, but I hope this is as helpful to someone else as it was to me.

Thanks!

I'm totally spamming this post now, sorry. I had screen problems with my swapped radio and I wanted to share what I found. When I first got the radio the plastic bezel and screen was scratched to hell. I popped the radio and the screen assembly apart and put my 2016 screen and bezel assembly onto the 2018 black box. That worked for about 6 months, but then my screen started exibiting strange symptoms. It would not respond to touch all the time. I would go to touch it and it would sometimes respond, sometime lag, and sometime appear to be completely frozen for about 30 seconds. My first though was that the underlying system was hanging, but it turns out that the actual LCD panel was going bad. I was torn about what to do because I assumed that the plastic bezel and LCD screen were a pair that could not be separated. I took a risk and did surgery on the leftover parts I had from my 2018 radio swap. It turns out that the plastic cover/bezel and the LCD unit itself can be separated. You have to take the circuit board off the LCD panel and reveal a single hidden screw under the circuit board. You also have to disconnect a ribbon cable that runs from the plastic bezel to the screen's board. Anyway, I managed to take the LCD screen module from the 2018 radio and marry it to the bezel assembly from my 2016. Effectively all the guts from the 2018 radio I got are now in the car, and the only remaining parts from my old radio is the plastic screen and vents. Hope this helps someone who may have a similar experience.

I'll get the model number when I can get home and look at the sticker, but it is wildly different from the part number on my OEM 2016 EX-L radio w/o Nav and RES. Both my radios look like the pictures you posted, old and new, respectively. My 2016 Pilot DOES NOT have the white and blue connectors. Again, I assume that is because I do not have NAV or RES. I still haven't had a chance to tear the car apart again and see if it will work. I tried it last weekend, but I did not have the security codes to unlock the new radio. It powered on fine, but I had forgotten in the last 8 months what the secret sauce was to get the proper code. I thought I needed the VIN from the donor car, but that wasn't the problem. I was entering the wrong serial number from the new radio. The website only wants the last few digits, not the full number. By the time I came back here to reference my own post, I had already put the car back together. I will work on it tonight and see if the radio with the white/blue connectors will function.