Factory amp 99 SLE V6??

[Luc]

Read it again, cupcake. There are only 2 styles of Toyota stereos in the past 10-13 years. One of them uses the standard 2 plug Toyota harness everyone's used to seeing, the others use a factory amp with a single plug in (from the amp).

What I said was, IF the stereo you're installing has 2 plugs in it, where you only see one coming from the amp (as in the pictures), you GET THE PLUGS FROM THE AMP. When you trace down the factory amp, there will be an input and an output. The input you unplug (it's that standard 2 plug harness) and plug into your deck. Meaning you bypass the amp.

If your deck doesn't have 2 pre-outs, you have two options. Either get a deck with two preouts so you can fade, or use RCA Y-adaptors and get rid of the fading alltogether.

And I've been installing a solid 10 years now. I have yet to hear a turn-on thump in a Toyota (Ford, yes, Toyota, no). Avalon, Tundra, Camry, Solara, etc. No thumps. I use the Metra harnesses though.

YOU read it again cupcake to see what HE is replacing it with (obviously you didn't). He's NOT using an aftermarket headunit, but another OEM, in-dash 6-disc 3-in-1, which is a DIFFERENT single preamp plug compared to the two types you are referring to. My '89 Camry used the standard 2-plug, and before that, the Gen1 used a two-plug harness also. Thus, there are a total of 4 different types up to date.

That metra harness is great to interface the OEM amp with an aftermarket headunit, but it doesn't provide any type of signal matching, thus, it's always blasting sound at you. Most new headunits have 4V preouts, so you are feeding that 4V into a 1.5V maximum input (measured with a DMM) of the OEM amp. Yeah, that just sounds wonderful.

[Mudd]

*sigh*

For the uninitiated (and the apparently illiterate).

Toyota has only used a total of 2 (two) different harness plugs for their factory stereos. One of them is the familiar two-plug design. The other uses a factory amp with a single plug input into the deck.

Now luc, this is for you. Read carefully. I'll try to keep it simple. There are a total of 3 (three) plugs that plug into the factory amp. One of them is the output to the stereo (hense the single din plug that plugs into his current stereo). The other 2 are the OLD STYLE PLUGS, that plug WILL plug into his older style radio with the dual plug input. So, like I've now said three times, you unplug those inputs from that factory amp, and plug them DIRECTLY into the new (older) deck. What you have just done was completely bypassed the factory amp. No inputs or outputs are plugged into the amp. Is this difficult to comprehend? There is no re-wiring necessary. There is no soldering necessary (unless it's to extend the wires on that plug, which may be necessary depending on the location of said factory amp). Just ungplug the two inputs from that amp, and plug them into the to inputs on the new (older style) radio.

And very few new radios have a 4 volt preamp output. And where do you get the maximum input ratiings on the factory amp, do tell? I know all about digital multimeters, that can't tell you the max input on a factory amp. And even so, the amp is going to be using an unbalanced power supply (unless Toyota went all out and added all kinds of cool useless features to their factory amp - not very likely), so it's not going to matter HOW much voltage you run into it (well, to a reasonable point) - the output's going to be linear. I've done Eclipse decks (5 volt low impedance outputs) into factory Toyota amps with absolutely no ill results, noise, feedback, or phantom "thump" you speak of.

I hate it when people who obviously know no better start calling me wrong when they have no idea what they're talking about.