R34 Tiptronic Steering Wheel Controls Converted To Audio Controls

[PM-R33]

The controls on the R34 tiptronic steering wheel appear to be perfect for stereo controls. Up and down for the track selection on one side and up and down for the volume on the other.

Has any one does this before, installing a R34 tiptronic steering wheel onto their car and wired up the tiptronic controls for stereo?

I did a search and couldn't find mention of it anywhere. Why hasn't any one tried it? I think it is a great idea and would bring something modern/factory looking to a fairly old car.

Here is how I thought it could be done:

For example in my car I have a Pioneer headunit.

I would purchase a hard wired remote harness that uses resistors to control different functions. (ie. 18K resistance is volume up, 24K resistance is next track etc).

The tiptronic wiring in the steering wheel would get rewired with resitors put into each button.

Wiring from tiptronic steering wheel goes to hard wired remote harness on Pioneer headunit and hey presto, factory audio steering wheel controls for an aftermarket head unit.

Thoughts?

[PM-R33]

So apparentely no one has done it? I might give it a shot then.

[nicr4wks]

I've certainly thought about it but never seen a 34 wheel for sale, does it bolt straight up and is the air bag wiring the same?

As you've already said getting them functional should be simple enough, would be interesting to see how they are currently wired in the wheel, wether it's resistance or direct wired switches.

[PM-R33]

All Skyline steering wheels bolt into one another. To get the airbags to work the cars have to have the same amount of airbags. So for a R34 steering wheel, it can only function in a series 2 R33 with dual airbags.

As soon as I get some spare cash available i'll buy a tiptronic steering wheel and give it a go.

Will post up my results.

[PM-R33]

In case people have no idea what a Tiptronic steering wheel looks like, it looks like this:

As you can see, perfect for audio controls

[Chris Rogers]

load it with V35 values. that makes interfacing to the deck easier. most of the jap units are 3.5mm input with an external interface for the wheel.

and yes I HAVE done it. didnt do a nissan though but a toyota.

[PM-R33]

Could you expand on the "load it with V35 values"? I don't really understand? Load what?

[Chris Rogers]

use the resistance values for the V35 steering wheel. the FSM is on the net for the G35 and that is the sam thing where the SWC is concerned.

[PM-R33]

Oh ok. Hmmm I thought I would have to use the resistance values for the Pioneer hard wired remote?

These are the values I found after a bit of Googling. Will obviously have to double check they are correct:

8.8k Ω Seek up

12.1k Ω Seek down

16.8k Ω Volume up

23.6k Ω Volume down

[Chris Rogers]

yes you could but if you wanted to change radios - that would not work. what I said will work.

[PM-R33]

Ah ok I think I understand what you are getting at.

[Radioham]

Sorry for digging up old post , but it is a very interesting topic.

I am also very interested to do a audio function conversion for my R33. I was wondering did you end up getting this to work?

Thank you

[Chris Rogers]

short version is yes. if you can find a later car with steering controls and COPY the resistance values across to your wheel then it will work.

[enka]

yes i have this steering wheel, might give it a shot, f*kn cables everywhere

@ts

how's yours goin?

[jrm]

Bumping a massively old thread, but did anyone successfully get this working with an R34 steering wheel,?

Importantly, does anyone know if the wiring is available in the loom for R34 manual -to allow for those extra wires for tiptronic control?

[PLYNX]

Yep massively old thread !

But I don't see it being that hard as I've fitted a triptronic steering wheel to a S1 R33 and use the switches to run my cruise control unit ( pics some where on this forum ).

Best possible way would probably to use the remote control unit of the stereo, strip it and solder on wires to the volume control or other functions you want to run. Then find the plug the four wires that come out of the clock spring, (the fifth will be for the horn) that operate the plus/minus switches and solder them together and Bobs your uncle (unless he has the operation and then he'll be your aunt). The triptronic switches are momentary ones so I can't see why it won't work

Then all you have to do is box up the remote control and put it some where inside the dash with easy access for when the remote battery goes flat and you have to change it.

Clear as mud ? Then my job here is now done !

[jrm]

Good to hear about there apparently being separate momentary lines for each button - that makes things simpler.

So  I guess the only question for me is going to be whether the clock spring on a manual vehicle has a single line for just the horn, or the 5 lines for the 4 switches + horn.

My plan if that is true would be to wire up a box to take input from those 4 inputs, and output that into a standard way (perhaps as Chris said much earlier in the thread with different resistance values per button) - as that would make it easier to fit in with an aftermarket stereo.  Thinking about it then, you could even have different functions for long/short-press or buttons held together, and all sorts.  Something to mull over

Anyway, thanks for contributing!

[jrm]

I found this in another thread about removing the airbag -

  Quote

I changed an R34 GTT steering wheel from auto to manual yesterday, this is a great help but I did come to a hurdle when I realised the horn wiring plug is different between auto and manual due to the tiptronic controls. A simple fix was to use the original auto horn wiring that screws onto the horn plate as there is a screw hole for it and simply breaking off the wiring for the original manual wheel as it is rivitted onto the horn plate. This also involves cutting the steering wheel control wiring which was 4 pin from memory. It's easy work to see which wires you need to cut as they will obviously be joined up to the tiptronic controls.

Expand  

Which doesn't bode so well for the wheels being the same with regard the horn / clockspring - and I'd need to find an auto clockspring to change over as well to add steering wheel controls.  Sounding like a lot of cost & effort!

[Kinkstaah]

My car was auto and we wired controls into the steering wheel (i.e we had an aftermarket transmission ECU and wanted to use the shift paddles to actually shift).

The thing we noticed is after using the wiring "after" the clock spring (i.e not changing anything on the wheel itself or the clock sping itself) that the up and down on each side are linked. There's actually only two outputs to ground on the wheel as opposed to 4.

That worked well enough natively for us as we wanted "shift up" and "shift down" but without any detail whatsoever I remembered thinking/noting down that there was only going to be 2 functions that I could map to the wheel later, as I had visions of mapping it to launch control switches etc once the car was manual.

Car is manual now but I can't find a use for all the buttons anymore, I've made it all too simple