I want to put a bigger screen in my Taurus, but keep Sync. I am on 3.4 already, so I know I can probably do this, but I want to check here before I spend money. My first thought was to put in a 10 inch screen from an explorer, but I want to know first if the climate section can be enabled on the 10 inch vertical theme, being that I will be moving the climate controls to the glove box. If not, are there other big Ford/Lincoln screens that might work with what I am trying to accomplish?
Before you go thru all the custom fitting and trial and error, you should probably check out the “Tesla style system” screen options which already do all this and more. They are not cheap, but will at least fit and work with simple installation.
This is just an example:
Tesla style systems – AutoTecPro Navigation Systems
Yeah I bought the one for my car. I lost the heated steering wheel and a couple other things. It also loved to freeze up all the time and cause weird hvac issues. Hence the reason why I was looking at retrofitting an OEM screen in.
Although I have seen the OEM screens retrofitted into older vehicles, with varied results, I have never seen anyone fit one into a Taurus. I think the biggest issue you face is the mechanical and cosmetics concerns. I have seen some retrofits using a Lincoln Navigator 10" screen which are rather straight forward.
Here is a thread on a swap into a Flex…
Retrofit 10 inch in a 8 inch screen vehicle - Ford / Discussion - CyanLabs Official Community
Yeah I’ve retrofitted iPads in vehicles before so I know exactly what kind of fabrication I will need to do. My main thing is finding out whether the portrait 10in theme in Sync 3.4 supports the climate section. If it does then I know I can move the climate controls into the glove box. If not, then I will need to some up with something else.
The 10" Landscape (Lincoln) will support what you have now, as the display is just formatted for the larger screen. The 10" Portrait screen should work the same, but I have not seen the portrait screen retrofitted into an older vehicle. Sync 3.4 will support both formats (asbuilt must be set properly).
Your Taurus is a CGEA 1.2 vehicle, so there are some limitations with Sync 3.4 in the CGEA 1.2 electrical architecture due to Ford focusing on the newer CGEA 1.3 architecture. If you have the climate controls displayed and functional now on an 8" screen, there would be nothing that I am aware of preventing them from working on a 10" screen.
The only thing I can think might need to be done is a firmware update for the APIM, depending on the year of your vehicle. This is only for compatibility to the portrait format screen.
Ok that’s good to know. I’ve never seen pictures of the portrait screen showing the climate section as I know the home button is moved down to the bottom on that theme so I wasn’t sure if having climate enabled on the 10in portrait theme would break things. The car currently has the climate section on, and the system as a whole functions completely the same as it did with version 3.0. The car is a 2019, and when I installed 3.4 I was able to enable calm screen without it resetting on it’s own so the firmware is high enough to support that natively.
I am not that familiar with the portrait layout. I was not aware the climate is not being shown on these screens. This would be a video driver restriction or something for the portrait format is so.
The 10in portrait screens in the explorers don’t need it enabled because all the controls you would need are below the screen. I have checked the as built for quite a few explorers with that screen and I show the climate is disabled for every one I check, so I really don’t know if it is as simple as enabling it like you can on the 8 inch screen or if the theme breaks when you do. Or maybe nothing happens at all. One thing to note is the climate section isn’t enabled for the explorers that have the 8 inch screen either. (2020my and newer)
I just looked for some and found the Explorer screen video, which does not have climate on the screen. I have never looked at this before, but it looks like even though it should work, Ford has chosen not to support the climate features in the portrait mode. I looked at a few Explorer asbuilts and found the same thing as you, all the climate features are not enabled. I would suspect that this was just a choice Ford made for the layouts. They are strictly relying on the hard panel with LIN connection for the climate controls. I would think that it would technically work, but the portrait layout does not support the interface.
If you could fit it, the landscape 10" screen does support all of it.
That’s kinda what I was thinking. I’ve seen this kind of thing with other ford vehicles too, like the Escapes and such. Enabling it on those vehicles works fine depending on the climate type, but I feel like ford disables it to reduce confusion for the end user. Personally I see no reason why it’s disabled in the explorers other than the fact it’s easier for the user to just use the buttons below the screen. The screens aren’t that hard to get a hold of near me so I might just pick one up and hook it up and see. I could easily sell it if it doesn’t work. It would definitely fit in the Taurus with a custom made kit which won’t be too hard for me to make. Getting the screen cable might be a task though…
I agree with that. I usually use the panel controls in my F-150. But they are easy to read and use.
There are 2 cables, I believe for the portrait screens. The LVDS (video) is the standard APIM cable, although you will need a longer one, readily available online. The separate power cable for the screen, if present, will need to connect to switched accessory power. This is similar to the Sync 4 screens.
Sweet. I appreciate the help
Let me know what you find out and end up doing…
Will do. I am going to go to the salvage yard on Monday and check to see if that trashed ST is still there. If it is I’ll have the screen then. Might be able to get the cable too, but I do know they incorporate it into the dash harness a bit and if it’s not easily removable I’ll just buy the one you linked.
If there is a separate power cable for the screen make sure you get the connector…
Will do. Looking at pictures on ebay it doesn’t look like it has one, but I’ll grab it if there is.
So I have an update. I was laying in bed last night and thought to myself why don’t I just go into the testing settings, and enable the 10in portrait theme, and then try clicking one of the temps in the corner to see if it brings up the climate. Keep in mind this is still with the factory 8 inch screen so I knew it wouldn’t look correct to begin with. I enabled the theme, then clicked one of the temp numbers in the corner and the climate menu did come up and it looked alot different. It definitely looked like it was designed for the theme. However, being that I could not see the nav bar on the bottom I do not know what it looked like. To be honest even if the climate button doesn’t exist on the bottom, at least I can click one of the numbers on top and get to it that way. I am gonna see if my screenshot USB drive works while it is in that theme and I might be able to get a better idea.
So I got some screenshots, but I guess I did not know that it takes the screenshot based on the screen installed. I figured it would take a screenshot based on what the APIM is outputting. Nonetheless, this is still promising being that the climate menu does in fact exist on the portrait theme.
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