LandCruiser 79 Series (Single & Dual Cab) Upgrade Guide

Your 79 Series is the ute body of the 70 Series range, and you'll have one of two cabs. In a single cab you get a long tray and a short cabin. In a dual cab you get a second row and a shorter tray. Both share the same dashboard, the same front doors and largely the same electrical architecture, so most of your interior and front-end upgrades are common to both. The differences show up at the rear, where tray length, rear doors and rear seating change what fits and what's worth fitting. Work through your ute one area at a time, from the head unit and audio to lighting, steering controls and mirrors, and you'll know which collection to shop for each.

Anything you touch on the dash, the airbag system, the lighting or your forward view can also touch the Australian Design Rules. We flag those points as we go and link the compliance reading rather than repeat it here. This is a practical map of the 79 Series, not a legal opinion, so confirm anything that needs certifying with a licensed automotive engineer in your state.

Single cab vs dual cab: what actually differs

Knowing which upgrades care about your cab choice saves you money before you spend it. The front half of your ute is shared, so anything living in the dash or the front doors is the same part either way. The rear is where the two bodies split.

Multimedia and head units

The factory head unit is the first thing most 79 Series owners change, and for good reason. A vehicle-specific unit drops into your original dash aperture, keeps the screen low and central, and brings wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, navigation and a reversing camera input to a cabin that was never built with them. The dash is shared across the 79 Series range, so the same units suit your cab either way, with no change to fitment.

Two reasons beyond looks make a vehicle-specific unit worth it. Fitting the screen in the factory location keeps it out of your forward field of view, which a tablet-style screen perched on the dash doesn't. A matched unit also keeps your factory steering wheel controls alive, so volume, track and phone stay on the wheel. Both points sit in our reading on ADR compliance, worth going through before you settle on a screen size.

Fitment-matched units sit in the LandCruiser 70 Series head units collection, which covers the 79 Series ute as part of the 70 Series family. Cameras, antenna adaptors and the extras that finish an install are spread across the broader head units range and the head unit add-ons collection. If you're keeping your existing screen and adding wireless smartphone integration to it, the simplest path is the AutoKit CCPA wireless CarPlay and Android Auto interface.

Audio and speaker door pods

Your 79 Series cabin is a working environment with hard surfaces and road noise, so once you fit a new head unit the factory speakers become the weakest link. Space is the constraint. Toyota didn't design these doors around generous speaker pockets, so a door pod does the job instead: a moulded enclosure that mounts to the door card and houses a larger speaker than the factory location allows, with nothing cut.

Cab choice changes your parts list here and nowhere else. If you're in a single cab, you have front doors only, so it's front-staged and a front pair of pods carries the whole upgrade. If you're in a dual cab, the rear doors let you run a front and rear set for a fuller stage and rear-seat presence. Front pods are identical between the two bodies.

Match the pods with speakers and any amplification from the audio and car audio collections. Get the head unit and the front stage right first, then add rear pods on a dual cab and any subwoofer or amplifier once the front is sorted. A well-built front-staged single cab will out-perform a poorly matched four-speaker setup every time.

Lighting: headlights, indicators and tail lights

Lighting on your 79 Series splits into two camps. Front-end lighting, headlights and indicators, is shared across both cabs and sits squarely inside the Australian Design Rules, because output, colour and aim are all regulated. Rear and tray lighting is where the two cabs diverge, for the plain reason that a single cab has more tray to light.

Headlight parts are common to the single cab and the dual cab. Fitment-matched units sit in the 70 Series headlights collection, with the wider headlights range alongside it. Keep the correct beam pattern, colour and aim on any headlight upgrade so your ute still meets the relevant ADR for forward lighting. A high-output globe or LED that scatters light or dazzles oncoming traffic is a compliance and safety problem. The same logic covers indicators, which must stay amber and flash at the correct rate, and any reflectors you add.

If you're in a single cab, that longer tray gives you more length to cover for tray and rear work lighting, while a dual cab trades tray length for a second row of seating. Work lights, reverse lamps and tray lighting suit either body. Plan placement around your tray length, and wire any rear-facing white work lights so they only operate when appropriate, not as a permanent rear light.

Steering wheel and controls

The steering wheel and its controls are identical across the 79 Series range, so nothing here depends on your cab. When you fit a new head unit, keep the factory steering wheel controls: volume, track, phone and voice stay on the wheel, and you keep both hands where they belong. A vehicle-specific unit integrates those controls as part of the install. Go generic and you may leave them dead, which sends you reaching for the screen instead.

If you're changing the wheel itself, or anything touching the airbag and the clockspring behind it, you're into a safety-critical job with its own ADR considerations. We cover that in the steering and airbag reading linked from the ADR compliance hub. In the common case, choose a head unit that retains the factory controls and your wheel keeps working as Toyota intended.

Mirrors

Your door mirrors are common to both cabs, and mirrors are a real ADR area because your vehicle has a minimum standard for rearward vision to maintain. A reversing camera fed into a new head unit helps you at low speed, but it supplements the mirrors rather than replacing them, and you still have the factory rear vision requirement to meet. If you tow, carry a wide load on the tray, or fit accessories that block the standard mirrors, plan your mirror upgrade so the ute still meets the rearward vision it was built with. What mirrors have to achieve is set out in the ADR compliance reading.

79 Series upgrades by area

That's every upgrade area mapped to where it's the same across both cabs, where it differs and where to start shopping. Use it as a checklist as you work through the build.

A sensible order of works

Building your ute up over time works best in a sequence where each stage is useful on its own. Start with the head unit, since it changes daily driving the most and adds CarPlay, navigation and a reversing camera. Front speaker door pods come next, so the new unit has something worth playing through. On a dual cab, follow with rear pods. In a single cab, look at a subwoofer or amplifier from the audio range instead. Lighting sits outside the audio chain and can slot in at any point, with headlights the highest-value front-end upgrade and tray lighting a function of how you use the tray. Take on mirrors and steering alongside the relevant job rather than as standalone projects.

Favour vehicle-specific parts over generic ones the whole way through. The 79 Series is well supported, so you rarely have to compromise on fitment, and a part made for your vehicle is the one least likely to raise a field-of-view, lighting or rear-vision question later.

Related guides

For the compliance side of any upgrade you make to the dash, the lighting, the steering or rear vision, start at the ADR compliance hub. Shop by area in 70 Series head units, the audio and car audio collections, or the 70 Series headlights and headlights ranges. Cameras and adaptors that finish a multimedia install sit in the head unit add-ons collection.