Help With Estima Radio/amplifier Replacement

[Dave Cullen]

Hi from a new member,

I'm changing the stereo on K-reg Estima as the old one appeared to be bust (nothing coming out of 2 speakers). Having got the new stereo, I find that the old one connected using an external-amplifier (the single-connector-block option) and it's the amplifier that's jiggered.

What I need to do is use the 2-connector option for the new radio (which has a built-in amplifier) and bypass the stereo. However, the speaker connector doesn't appear to be connected to the Speakers, presumably because they are connected to the amplifer. I'm assuming that the other end of the speaker connector wires are "floating" around somewhere near the amplifier itself, waiting to be swapped over.

Question:

Where on earth IS the amplifier? I've seen comments about Previa's hiding them in the passenger footwell, but all I've found is the fusebox.

Any help appreciated.

Dave

[peterc]

Amp is under glovebox - i think !

Black box ?

Cheers

Pete

[lippy1230]

Hi from a new member,

I'm changing the stereo on K-reg Estima as the old one appeared to be bust (nothing coming out of 2 speakers). Having got the new stereo, I find that the old one connected using an external-amplifier (the single-connector-block option) and it's the amplifier that's jiggered.

What I need to do is use the 2-connector option for the new radio (which has a built-in amplifier) and bypass the stereo. However, the speaker connector doesn't appear to be connected to the speakers, presumably because they are connected to the amplifer. I'm assuming that the other end of the speaker connector wires are "floating" around somewhere near the amplifier itself, waiting to be swapped over.

Question:

Where on earth IS the amplifier? I've seen comments about Previa's hiding them in the passenger footwell, but all I've found is the fusebox.

Any help appreciated.

Dave

Try under Front seats

[Dave Cullen]

Still no good, I'm afraid, unless I'm being particularly dense.

Under the front seats is the engine and the ECU box. Under the glove box is the fusebox.

The cables from the radio disappear behind the dashboard, that's all I can see.

Dave C

[fLaMePr0oF]

OK, firstly I'd like to thank all who have already posted on this topic, there are some useful threads and tutorials, however, even taken together they did not quite get me there with the particular configuration of my car. I suspect that I am not alone with this configuration, indeed, there are several 'cried for help' which look like they are comming from people with almost exactly the same challenges I have faced so here is a step by step on bypassing the Toyota amplifier, and fitting and mounting a standard stereo in that big sad empty hole in your dash!!!

Firstly, let me describe my Lucy's configuration: In my dash there are three wiring looms; two are a pair (standard Japanese I believe which are wired thus:- http://www.carstereohelp.net/wireharness_Toyota3.htm) to which you can connect that now famous ISO converter. Then, there is a single 14 pin loom (with only 12 wires) which in my car was actually running the cassette / CD stack (the back of which looks like this:- http://www.carstereohelp.net/wireharness_Toyota2.htm)

IMPORTANT!!! If you want to keep your cars amplifier working to use later / sell on fleeBay or whatever, do NOT (as I did) connect your ISO adapter to the two looms that it fits in your dash and proceed to connect a stereo!!!! no, really, STOP IT, DON'T!!! You see, your stereo which you bought at Halfords or wherever most likely already has it's own built in amplifier, and although in theory the Amplifier Remote wire should tell the Toyo amp this so that it can stand down and simply pass your signal straight to the Speakers, in many cases (certainly in mine with Blaupunkt stereo) this doesn't happen, the stereo will power up, the radio static / music or whatever will charge down the lines at amplified ampage, you will hear a brief 'hiss' 'wine' or 'pop', and the Toyo amp will be immediately and helplessly FRIED. (All of the tall capacitors in my amp shat pools of melted plastic onto the PCB before they expired).

So, your first step is to tip back the driver's seat and look down the side of the far side housing, just behind the filler flap release lever, you will see something which looks like it might be an engine management computer; a black metal box with vents which is held in by 4 screws, (two either end). First you need to remove the 4 screws, the ones on the front are easy, but the two at the back are a *!Removed!* as you cannot get a screw driver to them. (Even my L shaped screw driver didn't quite fit so I had to use just the posie head gripped in a small pair of pliers to remove them.)

Once you manage to get all 4 screws out, give the amp a good wiggle and it'll lift out revealing three looms connected to the bottom edge, and yes... the connectors are exactly the same as the three in the dash! The 14 pin single loom is the input, it runs straight back to the 14 pin in the dash and the wire ends all correspond. The other two take the output from the amp to the speaker and again, they are the same as the pair in the dash. The main difference is that if you connect your ISO adapter to THIS pair and hook up your stereo it should work perfectly, nice... except under your seat is not the best place to install the thing! (NOTE: I've read that some cars have a secondary amplifier next to the sub speaker in the boot and in these cases, hooking up the stereo here will only give you sound in the front. Although I've not encountered this configuration myself, if you find something similar, try the post by 'mrcopierman' in this thread over at estimaclub for help with getting the sub working as well...

http://www.estimaownersclub.com/community/...8.html#msg44938

Ok, now we've found wiring going from the dash down to under the seat and into the Speakers, however, in my case at least, it's only the 14 pin (12 wire) connector which seems to be of any use... While the loom pair in the dash certainly must feed into the system somehow and can power a stereo, and also appear to carry a signal to the amp (otherwise I wouldn't have been able to blow the amp by connecting through them) I can tell you from my experience that this wiring is all but useless... where the wires feed to and how they hook into the audio system is a mystery, but I can tell you for sure that they do not correspond to the amp input wires under your seat, these feed straight back to that 14 pin connector so it's this that we're going to utilise to get our sounds hooked up!

Wiring:-

Firstly, remove the fuses; in the fuse box under the bonnet (over the battery) there are two rows of fuses (in my car there is only one fuse in the top row and 4 I think in the bottom row, the other sockets are empty) remove the first fuse on the left of the bottom row, (15 amp). Also, in the fuse box under the dash in the passenger footwell, remove fuse No 15 (second from the left in the bottom row; 7.5 amp) This will kill all power to the wiring.

Right, here's the tedious part, but trust me, it's not difficult at all so don't hesitate to carry out the next step and CUT OFF the three loom connectors under your seat and bear the end of each lose wire for splicing later. With the single 14 pin connector you can snip the wires as close to the loom as possible to give you maximum ply to work with, but with the loom pair, I'd recommend leaving about half a centimetre of wire behind each pin so that you can use them later as a wire colour reference. KEEP these two connectors as we will be using them shortly ;o)

For the 14 pin connector in the dash, we are going to dismantle the connector and remove the pins so that each loose wire still has it's pin attached. Simply use a sharp object (I used the tip of a potato knife!) to prise open the tiny clips on the sides and fold down the back and two front panels to release the pins. This is going to help us wire the stereo up without having to 'splice' anything; get a set of wire cutters (or use the cutter on a pair of pliers) and 'trim' each of the pin ends on the 12 wires by removing the very end 'clip' (about 1-2 millimetres) by snipping just behind the back of the clip. Then removing the tiny 'lock' which sticks out about a millimetre from the base of the pin and was used to lock the pin into it's plastic connector, just trim it off with your cutters so that you now have pins which are flat on the ends, with a slightly thicker part where the wire connects.

Now, here's the clever bit, take the two connectors that you kept from the loom under the seat and insert each of the pins into the back of the connector, just above the old stump of wire. because you've trimmed the pins they will fit very snugly and if you again use the tip of a knife or something to really wedge them in there then there's no danger they will come out or you will lose the connection. NOTE: at this stage, it doesn't matter what order you attach the wires to the pins, so long each pin is paired with the stump of a cut wire so you have 4 wires going into the smaller connector, and 8 into the larger one. Note, on the larger connector you will be one wire short, i.e. the larger connector originally had 9 wires connected to it, but you only have 8 left after hooking up the smaller connector... Simply leave the ground pin empty (pin 7 on the diagram linked to back in the second paragraph).

Now it's time to bridge the wiring under the driver's seat; Follow each of the 12 wires from the dash, they emerge under the seat so you can check and match each corresponding colour. Because you left a little bit of wire for each pin on the back of the connector into which you have wedged the pin ends, you can see what colour wire each of these 12 should marry to on the double loom wire ends under the seat, just splice and tape each pair. (i.e. Where a pin is wedged into the back of the cut-off connector in your dash, the other end will splice to the same colour wire as the snipped end that it is wedged in next to)

Addendum: I forgot to to note, in my car, one of the 12 wires with the 14 pin connectors at each end changes colour between the dash and under the seat; the cable ground wire has a brown wire attached onto it behind the dash, and a grey wire attached to it under the seat. You can check it by cutting back the plastic and tape at each end which covers the gathered ground and the join where the wire is spliced onto it. Of course, we're not using this wire for ground as we need all 12 to carry the sound / power etc. Just remember to earth the ground wire under the seat (brown with double silver flecks in my car) and snip and earth the ground wire on your ISO adapter (black on mine).

Once you have spliced all corresponding wires, you will be left with a single ground wire under the seat, attach this to anything metal that is bolted to the sub frame. Also, when you connect your ISO adapter in the dash, you will need to clip the earth wire (just behind pin 7 on the 10 pin connector), bear off about half an inch, twist this off and insert it into the ground on the other (all but useless) double loom (again, pin 7 on the 10 pin connector), so that your stereo is properly earthed.

Et Voila! replace the two fuses, hook up your head unit and everything *should* work. (If it worked when you plugged in under the seat but doesn't now, you must have incorrectly matched up some of the wire pairs under the seat, or have poor connections in the dash. Power down and check all of the wires again being careful to note that the pins are firmly and properly inserted into the cut looms, and the colour pairs which match on the back of these looms are duplicated under the seat.)

Mounting:-

At this point, you'll want to mount your new head unit in the dash; there are replacement din facings available on FleeBay and elsewhere to fit western equipment, however, if you have the original brackets which mounted the Toyo head unit, then you should be able to get it rigged up using the original din surround as I have...

(NOTE: If you don't have a pair of mounting brackets, you can either buy some from nip-parts or on eBay for around £30, or alternatively, you can use a strong epoxy glue to attach your stereo's original fitting sleeve to the back of the Toyota din surround and attach a small block to the bottom at the back so that it is supported)

First, I removed the brackets from either side of the old Toyo head unit; thankfully the screws had hexagonal heads (8mm) as three of them were chewed up even thought I had the correct sized screwdriver. I used a couple of these screws later to fix the brackets to the mounting points behind the din as I didn't have the original screws for this. I also used the 4 screws that mounted the amp under the seat to attach the brackets to the side of my stereo. NOTE: although my stereo had corresponding holes on each side to the mounting holes on the brackets, that's all they were; holes! After using pliers to bend flat a couple of the prongs on the brackets which were stopping them from lying flush along the edges of my head unit, I used a well fitting long handled screw driver to literally DRIVE the black screws from the amp into the holes on my stereo, applying pressure on the handle all the time, so that the screws made their own threads. (Well, actually the process pretty much stripped the threads off of the screws as they went in, but they held the brackets in place nice and tightly none the less!)

After attaching the brackets, it was just a case of pulling off the surround (which houses the cig lighter and ETC-PWR button) which was simply clipped in place, insert my stereo and fit the brackets to the small lugs which hold them in place next to the screw holes, (I fitted my head unit in the bottom position but I presume using the top position would work just as well), and !Removed! the brackets into place. After I popped the surround back in I even found that the rectangular plastic surround off of the front of my stereo just managed to clip back on, (one clip on the left end didn't quit reach but the others all snapped into place).

So, job well done! Of course, I have a hole over my head unit that doesn't look so good... this could be covered with a plate of black plastic cut to fit, or, as I intend to, you could make or buy a din pocket to fit in there such as this one... http://www.easycatalog.net/admin/run.cgi?p...1b6aeb3006c7559

I just hope that this tutorial will be helpful to anyone who finds that their Estima has a similar configuration to mine, and even if the wiring / connectors are different, you could probably adapt the ideas and instructions here to fit your particular model ;o)

Enjoy your mobile discothèque!!!

--

´¨¨)) -:¦:-

¸.•´ .•´¨¨)).• ´¨¨)) -:¦:- •´

((¸¸. •´ .. •´ steve-MARTIN -:¦:-

-:¦:- ((¸¸.•´* -:¦:- ´* -:¦:- ´*

.•´* -:¦:- .

[Dave Cullen]

fLaMePrOoF,

Outstanding help. This worked a treat on my Estima.

A pozidriv bit held in a small adjustable spanner did the trick for the amplifier screws, which luckily weren't in too tight.

Many thanks indeed,

[fLaMePr0oF]

fLaMePrOoF,

Outstanding help. This worked a treat on my Estima.

A pozidriv bit held in a small adjustable spanner did the trick for the amplifier screws, which luckily weren't in too tight.

Many thanks indeed,

You're most welcome, glad to hear it worked for you as well! =OP

You probably figured this out for your self but I forgot to mention above that in my car, just one of the wires changed colour between the dash and under the seat; the original ground wire from the 14 pin connector was brown in the dash and grey under the seat.

Now I'm just waiting for my din pocket to arrive from nip-parts so it can all look the business! ;oP

--

´¨¨)) -:¦:-

¸.•´ .•´¨¨)).• ´¨¨)) -:¦:- •´

((¸¸. •´ .. •´ steve-MARTIN -:¦:-

-:¦:- ((¸¸.•´* -:¦:- ´* -:¦:- ´*

.•´* -:¦:- .