Toyota Radio Install Help

[NorCalKid]

I have attempted to install 2 after market radios into Toyotas in the last few days and have come up with the same problem. Like the cheap a$$ that I am I decided to cut the plug and splice the wires together instead of getting an adapter, but from the wiring diagrams that I have everything is hooked up right. Both radios will turn on and say that they are playing but I get no sound through the speakers. Any words of wisdom? Thanks

 

[Cowboy_80]

I have attempted to install 2 after market radios into Toyotas in the last few days and have come up with the same problem. Like the cheap a$$ that I am I decided to cut the plug and splice the wires together instead of getting an adapter, but from the wiring diagrams that I have everything is hooked up right. Both radios will turn on and say that they are playing but I get no sound through the speakers. Any words of wisdom? Thanks

Wire the connector back in and get the adapter. Other than that, did you check fade/balance/volume on the deck? Stupid question, but electronics get funny when power is removed.

 

[dhcomp]

search the internet for wire color codes, installdr.com is normally pretty good.

Is there some sort of factory amp? if so, good luck, you have to bypass it

 

[dyeager535]

Seriously. Time spent trying to figure out problems like this are well worth the $20-30 install kits. (assuming all are as cheap as the last one I bought)

 

[dhcomp]

and just the harness you need is less than $10, go to walmart

 

[AJMBLAZER]

Plan ahead and buy them on eBay. Got the install kit with wiring harness AND the dash adaptor for the wife's XL7 for $14 or something off there this past summer.

 

[lectric80]

I have attempted to install 2 after market radios into Toyotas in the last few days and have come up with the same problem. Like the cheap a$$ that I am I decided to cut the plug and splice the wires together instead of getting an adapter, but from the wiring diagrams that I have everything is hooked up right. Both radios will turn on and say that they are playing but I get no sound through the speakers. Any words of wisdom? Thanks

If it has a factory amp, it will either need to have the speakers rewired, or you can usually find the wire that runs to the amp, and connect it to the blue power antenna lead on the radio. This is how we got my buddies Camaro with the Bose speakers to work, until we got new speakers.

 

[pvfjr]

If it has a factory amp, it will either need to have the speakers rewired, or you can usually find the wire that runs to the amp, and connect it to the blue power antenna lead on the radio. This is how we got my buddies Camaro with the Bose speakers to work, until we got new speakers.

Ditto. If there's amps, don't give up on them. They can REALLY help the sound in there, and take a lot of the work off of your deck. The one in my pathfinder as a little bit of a pain to get figured out, but I got it eventually. I had the same thing, all the speaker wires wired up properly, and no sound. Then I figured out that if I turned it up really loud, a tiny bit of sound would bleed through, sounded like some headphones a few feet away. Eventually figured out that I had an amp, and got the remote wire figured out. I actually got pissed cause I didn't know which wire it was, so I just kept touching 12v to the leftover wires with the radio on, then all of the sudden I found the right one and got blasted away. Was so loud, I thought I shocked myself for a sec.

 

[NorCalKid]

Should have learned to just get the harness after messing up the first one but I am a little slow. I did mess with the volume, balance, fade and all that, no luck.

As for the amp one of the cars doesn't have an amp for sure but I think the 4runner should. So what all do I have to hook up for the amp? The power antenna wire to the power to the amp?

 

[readymix]

Post up the year, make and model and someone may have a schematic for you.

 

[pvfjr]

Should have learned to just get the harness after messing up the first one but I am a little slow. I did mess with the volume, balance, fade and all that, no luck.

As for the amp one of the cars doesn't have an amp for sure but I think the 4runner should. So what all do I have to hook up for the amp? The power antenna wire to the power to the amp?

The stereo should have a blue wire labeled "remote" or "amp" or "turn-on" or something like that. Depends on the brand I suppose, but they're pretty much always blue. Once you get that, you just gotta figure out what wire to hook it to.

Another thing that can cause no sound, is if you hook a couple of the speaker wires up to a common. Like, somehow, if you hooked a positive and a negative speaker lead up to ground, the deck would detect the short, and disable the internal amp to save itself.

 

[NorCalKid]

I have a schematics for both and they say everything is hooked up right.

I remember not hooking up a blue power antenna wire, so I will go back in there and figure see if I can figure it out. Thanks for the help

 

[BadassBlaze]

Your problem is most likely with the factory amp. OIn my 96 4runner, the amp was behind the stereo down low, almost mounted on the tunnel. It's an extremely small silver amp thats finned. With the harness I had, you just removed the amp and plugged the harness from the radio into the plug that attached to the amp. Pretty simple once you figure it out. I personally would bypass the factory amp because its a POS...once I replaced the speakers with inifinity kappa's the factory amp would run out of juice (i.e. could turn the volume knob as far as it would go and no distortion, and not all that loud). Hope you figure it out. I also think that the harness I had for the aftermarket radio also had two plugs on it, once that had the power, switched power, and ground, and the other plug had the speaker wiring and it connected to the plug that connected to the amp. Hope this helps somewhat