Everyone do this at you own risk. FitFreak nor I are responsible if
you damaged your car. Or even worse cause injury to yourself.


Okay I think this is DIY is what everyone was waiting for. It's a
great easy to do DIY with very little cash spent.
As you all know the buttons at the dealers cost minimum $120
Well there is a cheaper way. Thats right i said it. Cheaper

Let me start by say DON'T FORGET TO DISCONNECT YOUR BATTERY.
This is very important if you would like to keep your head on
your shoulders. Please take all precautions by disconnecting your
battery at least 15 minutes before you take off your airbag.
PB200114114.jpg?1292079221

 

In order to do this cheap you have to get used.
I did lots of research to get this done. I was so
afraid i would have wasted my money. It turns
out i didn't. Well as you all know Civics have the
same steering wheel. Just a little different than
ours. I think most of the civics that have the same
steering wheel are between 05 and 09 years. I found
a 07 civic 2 door coupe with 3 spoke steering wheel
for me. I found it at WWmotors.com $50 Shipped.
PB200105.jpg?1292079331

 

After i got the steering wheel I took the buttons off and
checked them with my OHM meter.
Someone on here posted on another thread what the ohm
values were so i confirmed it. They were exactly the
same.

no button 10k
mode 3.7k
ch + 1.7k
ch - 775k
vol + 357k
vol - 100k

these values are from our car.

Then I proceeded and took the buttons off the civic
wheel.
PB200108.jpg?1292079732


I started to take the tape off and looked how they were wired.
It was totally different than ours.
I found 4 wires coming out of the audio controls.
2 went straight to the clip and the other
2 went into a Y with 2 more from the cruise.
PB200109109.jpg?1292080327
PB200110.jpg?1292080572


I was wondering what the Y set-up was all about when it hit me.
illumination. so i cut the wires. as shown on the yellow arrows
below.
PB200112112.jpg?1292080325

Then I took the cruise buttons and tested my guess with the 9v
battery. I was correct. So then i tried it again with the audio
buttons. Same thing.

So now it left the other 2 which were the controls that went to
the radio. Confirmed by the ohm meter from before.

 

Now that the hard part was over the install next.
I'll say it again don't forget the battery.

disconnect the battery wait 15 minutes.
PB200114114.jpg?1292081168

after 15 minutes are up start taking this little cover off.
it is located just under the steering wheel. behind it you
will find the airbag harness and a ground. disconnect them.
PB200116116.jpg?1292081210


Now take off the torks bolts off of the steering wheel.
these hold the air bag in place and are located just behind
the paddle shifters. only 2 of them.
PB200115115.jpg?1292081173

 

now take off the steering wheel column cover. there are 3 screws
holding the upper and lower together.



NOTE: as you all know the radio has to come out also.
I am not showing how to take it off cause there is plenty
listed on this site on how to. here is one for example.
http://www.collegehillshonda.com/ins...usbadapter.pdf

Now back to the steering wheel. Some of you might want to
get a puller. I took a chance and pulled. it came right off.
Just unbolt the big bolt. also make sure you unclip your
harness and pull. wiggle punch jerk just don't hit yourself
in the head
PB200119119.jpg?1292081767

 

now you should be looking at something like this.
notice in the picture your clockspring or cable
reel. whatever you want to call it.
PB200120120.jpg?1292082367

As you all know the info on the other threads was very
confusing. So i actually continuity tested the reel for
empty slots and found some all to be explained soon.


Back to taking apart your wheel in order to get the buttons
off.
take these 4 screws off.
PB200123123.jpg?1292082376

along with these 6 screws off.
PB200124124.jpg?1292082469

now take this one screw off. this will take your blank
plate off so you can replace it with the controls.
PB200125125.jpg?1292082929

 

now we will need to merge the audio with the cruise.
so we have 4 wires to connect.
2 will go into the harness for controls.
one wire is brown the other is green with red stripe.
I believe the slots on the clip are 5 and 6.
So i put them in like so. brown to 6 and grn/rd to 5
PB210128128.jpg?1292083114

the other 2 wires are illumination and are green
and red with black stripe. The wires matched up
my wires color for color. so i used 2 wire connectors
and spliced them together.
PB210129129.jpg?1292083120

Now your done with the controls so you can put them
back in the wheel. just reverse all your steps.
oh make sure you tape your wires back up so they
look nice.

 

now you should have the radio out. you should also have
spare wire pigtails from your civic clip. be carefull these
little things break very easy.
make yourself like a 27 inch wires harness to run from the
to the reel to radio.
So now the hardest part for most is going to be locating
the radio side pigtails. I have no clue what size they are.
I just called a few junk yards. told them what i needed and
got it. one radio harness.


Okay now you should have your wires ran nice and neat.
radio to reel.
starting at the reel end. unplug this clip.
PB200121121.jpg?1292082454

now at that clip you will be hooking up your wires to slots
7 and 8.
these will be hooked up to slots 5 and 16 on the radio side.
so 7 goes to 5
and 8 goes to 16

I am not listing colors cause this will just confuse everyone
because we are using pins that are different colors on each
end.

7 and 8
PB210134134.jpg?1292084591


to 5 and 16
PB210135135.jpg?1292084272

PB210136136.jpg?1292084275

5 is top picture and 16 is lower picture.

 

thats is pretty much the end. just put everything
back together and your done. works like a charm.

P1010140.jpg?1292085080

 

That looks great but Reallly super hard to do! Are you saying the dealer will do it for you for min $120 though? For me that would be worth it

 

How do you feel about the design of the airbag, and it being handled, and then re-inserted? Did it mount back up to the same tolerances as from the factory? I imagine it's pretty hard to mess up, but at the same time, the airbag could save my life and I don't want there to be any possibility of mucking it up. Surely there are a few people who had this come to mind right away, like I did.

Great writeup! Thanks! I'd really love to have this feature.

 

I think that is just the cost for the switch

 

Congrats on taking the plunge on this, well done

 

Great writeup Niko! This is the same way I did my steering controls a while back. I too used the buttons from a Civic SI (bought the whole wheel for like $30 on ebay).

To those concerned its really not that hard at all to do this, esp with this writeup. The airbag also fits back without any problems. It would be really hard to mess up the airbag as long as you disconnected your battery.

 

ugh, wish you lived closer. id rather pay to do it, only cause i dont have the time or the garage ( NY winter )

 

I have no idea what your talking about. It's not hard at all. Plus I maid it
even easier with the DIY. So take the plunge and give it a try
As for the $120. thats just for the buttons. I don't think any dealer would
do this to anyones car.




Nothing changes with the airbag. all remains the same. this mod has nothing to do with the airbag. it mounts back just like it came off.






Thanks
hopefully they will make this a sticky so everyone can do this.






thanks you






If i still lived in Dirty Jersey i would have done it for you.
You can always gather the parts and have them ready for summer

 

what are the possibilities on installing a factory cruise control module to a fit base? This is a really interesting project that I might do with my fit however its a base. I'm pretty sure the vol. control wires are in there but how about the cruise control wires? It would be fantastic is the cruise control function is built into the ecu b/c of the DBW and hooking up this wheel gives my cruise control in my base fit. It would be well worth the effort.

Niko could you speculate on this a little for me? If there's even an outside chance it could be done. I'd order a wheel off ebay today.

 

okay let me get this out of the way first. There is no such thing as
there being cruise or audio wires in there(clock spring). It's just a
spring with wires in it that can be used for whatever Honda wants
to. Get what i'm saying? You don't necessarily have to use what wire
they say. All you have to do is just find empty slots and use them up.
It's that simple.
So saying that. Now I'm not sure cause you have a base and i believe
your clock spring is different. So the only way for you to know is by
taking your steering wheel off. By taking the wheel off you can
essentially take off the clock spring and see how many empty slots
you have. By counting these slots you will be able to determine if
you can do what you want.
Now after saying that in a mouth full. I think it will be easier for you
to do audio controls than cruise. Audio only needs 4 slots total.
cruise needs 7 wires total which is more.
Also another note. If you really want to do this and you find out
your clock spring is missing wires. You can always get the spring
from the sport and be able to do all this.

 

thanks for you response. I was just making the statement b/c of the something there car been just dead wires in a harness so that the manufacture doesn't have waste money designing two wiring harnesses. If I can get away with adding the fit sport "clock spring" and cruise buttons to the wheel and the factory cruise wiring happens to be column then voila factory cruise with the base fit.

Wishful thinking I know...

However this is a funny fact. The difference between having heated seats or not in a range rover was the difference of having one little button. Everything was there and you could have spent over a 1000 dollars pre-sale or just 50 bucks for the dash button after.

I'm crossing my fingers that this is one of those times....

 

Nice job & write up, but too complicated for me to try

I was just looking at features on the Honda website. In addition to the VSA & traction control, the Fit Sport model now comes with steering wheel audio controls.

http://automobiles.honda.com/tools/c...Photo=&Change=