Add volume buttons via kit or used steering wheel?

[Spud2388]

Just wondering if I can snag a used steering wheel with the radio buttons off eBay and use it for parts to add the buttons to my 14 Express. The kits are about $175 for the buttons, wiring harness, and trim piece whereas I can grab a whole steering wheel for $100- $120. I don't have the voice recognition and most of the wheels do, so would that create a wiring issue? I would assume the button just wouldn't work. Thanks

 

[Ricks Ram]

Just wondering if I can snag a used steering wheel with the radio buttons off eBay and use it for parts to add the buttons to my 14 Express. The kits are about $175 for the buttons, wiring harness, and trim piece whereas I can grab a whole steering wheel for $100- $120. I don't have the voice recognition and most of the wheels do, so would that create a wiring issue? I would assume the button just wouldn't work. Thanks

Yes you can use the complete wheel. As long as it's for a 13 and up. You can just change out your left side button if you chose to or leave it. If you upgrade to the 5.0 RA2 , 8.4 RA3 or 8.4 RA4 radio the voice controls will actually work as well.

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[Spud2388]

Awesome. Actually just upgraded to a pioneer unit and one of the options to activate The phone was using the phone button on the wheel, which I don’t have. So there is no module needed for this? Thanks for your help.

 

[zrfraser]

Thanks for posting this, I hadn't thought of going this route and seems like it would be much easier.

 

[Ricks Ram]

Awesome. Actually just upgraded to a pioneer unit and one of the options to activate The phone was using the phone button on the wheel, which I don’t have. So there is no module needed for this? Thanks for your help.

Not sure about the pioneer unit but on the Chrysler unit it's a plug and play for the voice controls as long as you have the RA2,RA3 or RA4 voice compatible radio. It sounds like your truck came with the RA1 base 3.0 radio which is the only one that's not voice compatible. On the Chrysler radios you will also need the rear view mirror with the microphone plus a different mirror harness for the radio to hear your voice commands and make phone calls. They are easy to install. The harness is around 25.00 and you can pick up the manual dim microphone mirror used on ebay or car-part.com for around 40.00 to 50.00.

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[Spud2388]

So I just completed the install and it doesn’t work... I picked up a wheel off eBay that had voice, volume controls, and heat. I snatched the wiring harness, rear buttons, front buttons as it was silver trim and had the voice buttons, and the rear plastic trim. The voice buttons work just fine but the rears don’t to jack. I am running a pioneer with the idata link maestro. The harness has the connectors for the heat elements which I’m not using, would that cause an issue?

I’m going to throw in the stock unit and see if they work with that. Maybe it’s the Idata link messing stuff up.

 

[adurm]

You may have to hold the volume up with ignition on to get it to recognize. At least that's the way with the axxess unit.