FutureDash; the 100-series Toyota Land Cruiser Nav Delete Project
FutureDash Dispatches — 1 May 2025 Updated 15 June 2026
I’ve gotten it into my head that I should do a “Nav Delete” on my 2006 Toyota Land Cruiser UZJ100.
The deeper I go in the forums and the more I study the problem, the more I realize it sits at the intersection of a bunch of my current prevailing interests: Land Cruisers, 3d printing, vintage tech, quixotic projects. I find myself thinking, why doesn’t this exist? and then I could do this myself and then If I can make this for myself, I bet I could sell these.
What, exactly, is a nav delete?
The later 100-series Cruisers came with a factory navigation system that is, by now, a fossil. The nav is useless, the screen is small, the old-school resistive touchscreen feels clumsy in a world of capacitive touchscreens, and it eats real estate in the center of the dash that I’d rather give to a modern double-DIN head unit capable of running Apple CarPlay. This might not be necessary if the truck had Bluetooth, or at least an 1/8” stereo aux port, but it has neither. And it definitely would not warrant an entire popup email newsletter if not for the pesky fact that many of the HVAC controls are on the screen, but they are.
There are three ways to add CarPlay to a 100-series, two of which replace the nav screen, but only one of which is called a “Nav delete”:
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Grom. Buy a Grom Vline or Vlite and keep the nav screen. Both allow CarPlay and Android Auto, though the Vline is a full Android environment and the Vlite is not. Both come with a wiring harnesses to integrate into the OEM display screen and audio system. Both use the original OEM screen. This is the easiest option, the only option that retains all OEM equipment, and the cheapest option at around $500 (for a Vlite).
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Tesla screen. Buy a so-called “Tesla screen” from Rhino Radio, Phoenix Automotive, or AliExpress. These 12” Android screens completely replace the entire center dashboard – the touchscreen, the radio and tape deck, and all HVAC controls. These range from $650-900 depending on source and options.
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Nav delete. Swap all of the w/navigation parts with equivalent parts from a same or similar year non-navigation Land Cruiser. From 2004 to the end of the 100 series run in 2007, all US-spec Land Cruisers (and Lexus LX470s) exclusively came with the factory nav, so the parts cannot be sourced from US Toyota dealers. But in various overseas markets, lower level trims without nav were available. The parts needed could, for a while, be sourced from PartSouq in Dubai, Amayama in Japan, and other overseas Toyota parts vendors. Since the early 2020s, however, a few of the most essential components have been discontinued. At the time new OEM parts were last available, this option would’ve cost around $1800 or so.
Number 3 is what this project is about.
Timeline
2023
September: Bought a 2006 100-series Land Cruiser and sold my 1994 triple-locked poverty package rust bucket 80-series
November: Couldn’t deal with the absence of an aux port and wanted Apple CarPlay. Ordered and installed a Grom VLite VT2. From the get go this was fairly disappointing. It takes a long time to connect, drops the signal, and sometimes just refuses to work. All of these problems got worse over the years.
2025
April: I began researching how to do a Nav delete in earnest. I read through the Post-2003 Nav Delete How-To thread on ih8mud. Created parts lists. Investigated sources. By 2025, a lot of the parts were discontinued. In spite of the difficulties I knew I’d face sourcing parts, I decided to go for it.
April 30th: I began documenting my findings more rigorously. I fed the Nav Delete thread to ChatGPT to summarize and extrapolate from. At this point I was already contemplating making my own drop in replacement for the OEM parts needed for a nav delete. On the same day, I contacted a guy named LCMoneyPit on ih8mud and ordered a complete Integration Control Panel Assembly from a non-nav 2006 via a car breaker he knows in Pakistan.
May: I wire transferred nearly $900 to my new friend. Before releasing the wire, my bank called asking if I had ever met him, how I knew him, and, in hushed tones, “does he have an accent?” :)
June: While waiting on the parts, I decided I should reverse engineer the whole thing and make a product I could sell. Now the parts I was still waiting on would be used for reverse engineering only.
July 14th: After sitting in customs for around 6 weeks, the parts finally arrived.
Follow along
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