2006CamrySE

i have a stupid question

the SWI-PS has bare individual wires that are supposed to connect to a wiring harness that used to connect to the factory radio for the steering wheel controls. my question is, how do i physically connect those individual wires to the correct pins in the harness without cutting any wires?

glad there was some progress made. my situation went almost exactly like yours (except the RCA interference came immediately b/c mine's not a hybrid).

the custom shop said our RCA's are unshielded so they are apt to interference. once my extra ground was made it sounded 10x better but I could hear interference. so in my case i was dealing with a ground loop and interference. while the car and radio was on i just spent some time moving the RCA's around until I found a spot behind the dash where the interference went away and permanently mounted them there. if you're not lucky enough to find a spot where there's no interference then is there a way that you could shield those RCA's to resolve the problem? I've heard several layers of aluminum foil tape might do the trick but that might be a stretch. You're close to getting it working but if you do decide to say f**k it and just bypass the amp be sure not to cut anything to void your warranty! That means you'll have to run new speaker wires though...

it's working great now and with no ground loop isolators or amp bypass needed! i took it to the local custom stereo shop and they said it was 2 problems:

1) The RCA's are unshielded and needed a ground, so they ran a ground wire from the back of the head unit to the chassis of the car. since the RCA's needed an extra ground of their own and since they didn't have one it created a ground loop, this extra ground took care of it for the most part - but there was a 2nd problem too

2) The 2nd problem was electrical interference, once the extra ground was added it sounded MUCH better but was still subject to some electrical interference just like when I tried the ground loop isolators. this is because the RCA's are unshielded (I'm assuming they're talking about either just the metra's RCA's or both - the metra and the pioneer). So I basically had to just wave the RCA's around until I found a little spot where there was no interference they I placed them permanently there.

so i after i got it back from them i took the head unit back out to see what they did and take pics for you to see. it only cost me $30 because i brought the car to them with the head unit already installed and the dash already out. so they charged me a $25 initial troubleshooting fee then like an extra $5 for tax and the ground wire. perhaps if you take the pics to a competent local car audio shop near you they can pull it off for you too. granted the pic of where they grounded it won't help since you're in a Highlander and not a Camry but the concepts should still be the same since we have the same type of equipment and problem

they ran an extra ground wire from the back of the head unit (because the RCA's themselves needed an extra ground)

they grounded the other end to the chassis of the car (notice the black and yellow in the picture)

picture of the finished install!

still no luck so far, a co-worker is letting me borrow a known-good pioneer head unit that i'm going to try - see if it gets the same buzzing sound or not

if i still get the buzzing sound then i already made an appointment for Saturday morning to take the car into a custom car stereo shop for troubleshooting and see what they see

i'll keep you guys advised on what goes down

i just noticed that 70-8116 bypass harness only goes up to 2003/2004 and doesn't list the Highlander at all. will that harness work with our cars?

i'm almost to that extent myself, bypassing the amp altogether but that's really alot more than i bargained for. i'm sure you feel the same way.

there's a guy i work with who used to be a custom installer and says he has a couple ideas like trying to put a diode in between the rca's and ground to stop the negative feedback - IF that's what it is. if we're not able to get this issue resolved this week them i'm going wave the white flag and take it into a stereo install shop and let them fight with it.

i'll keep you tuned in if we find anything out this week. he's bringing an entry level pioneer cd player with preouts tomorrow and we're going to try that and see what happens also just to make sure it's not a bad avic-d3 which is unlikely but we'd at least like to rule that out as a possibility.

from what I could find it looks like the TYTO-01 is for the 2008 Highlander and the 2007 uses the metra 70-8113 harness (same as mine, also it looks like the 70-8113 is the same as the bha-8113?)

can you try this harness and see if that solves your problem? You can always return at bestbuy or cc if it doesnt work..

 

http://www.metraonline.com/products.aspx?s=TYTO01

I actually did try that one over the weekend along with the Scosche TA07SR harness, both were made for the 2007+ Camry and when I tried it I got no buzz, but also no sound at all. Those are the harnesses made to work with the newer JBL amps with the digital interface

2006

 

Metra wants to know about the black/white wires on the BHA8113 and not on pioneer harness..

For the 2006 Camry w/ JBL I'm actually using the metra 70-8113 harness. the black ground wire on the 70-8113 was grounded to the vehicles chassis along with the black ground wire from the pioneer's harness. since then i've connected the black ground from the 70-8113 and the black ground from the pioneer together so that it would just ground to wherever the factory radio originally did in hopes that would take care of it. and i actually don't have a white wire but there is a white rca and a black rca on the metra harness which I've connected to the rca's from the pioneer's rca/amp harness

1) Does the noise go away when you unplug all four rca's?

Yes

2) Where do you have the black/white wires going?

The black/white and white/black speaker wires from the Pioneer harness? They're capped off and not going anywhere. I'm using the RCA's from the Pioneer's RCA/amp harness and not using any of the actual speaker wires from the Pioneer harness. The only way to use the actual speaker wires would be to get 2 x line out converters and convert the Pioneer's speaker wires to RCA instead of using the provided RCA's on the Pioneer RCA/amp harness.

ive noticed this with a lot of toyotas and lexus where we use the 20 dollar analog toyota amp harness. engine noise like crazy. the d3 only has like 2 to 2.5 volt preouts...pretty low actually. most high end head units have at least 4 volt preouts to increase signal strength and also cut down on noise. i did this once on an 06 tundra with the jbl......i used the integrator and instead of using the rcas out of the headunit, i used a premium amp interface that connected the speaker leads from the head unit and converted them to rcas. basically a 4 channel line out converter. on it, there were 4 adjustment screws that increased or decreased the preout voltage....i just adjusted it until the sound went away.

so you're saying get 2 line out converters (to cover all 4 channels) and use the speaker wires from the pioneer's harness to convert to RCA going to the metra wire harness i bought? By doing that aren't you adding the pioneer's built-in 50x4 watt amp in addition to still going through the factory amp? Is that a good thing?

one of my friends recommended a new idea, he said the voltage being greater from the head unit going to the lower voltage factory amp might be causing an issue. and that made me think about how some factory amps operate at 2 ohms. could either one of those play a part in the problem?

if so, should i try a voltage reducer or something of that nature?

just grabbing for ideas at this point...

ok so i've verified i do indeed have a factory amp, i found a picture of a toyota jbl amp online from a toyota avalon, mine looks EXACTLY like this

 

http://drri.home.comcast.net/~drri/avalon/amp.jpg

 

 

I have to wait till Tue to call Metra to make sure my harness works with JBL premium system. In meantime have you gone to Best Buy or Circuit City to get it checked? Let me know what happens...I will do the same tuesday....frustrated with this crap..

now keep in mind Toyota changed over to a digital JBL amp (different model Toyota vehicles did it in different years) I know in the Camry the digital JBL amp started in 2007, so my 2006 Camry is using the analogue amp I believe. The wire harness for the digital amp interface is closer to the $100 price range whereas the Toyotas with the analogue JBL amp are closer to a $20 price range. The $100 ones come with a little brain, or box, that is the digital interface but that's only if your Toyota has the digital JBL amp

2006CamrySE , also where are u based?

I've gone to Best Buy, Circuit City, and Sound Sensations. Every place I've gone I've gotten a different answer and different harness, so far i've tried them all and no luck. I'm starting to think maybe it has less to do with the ground and more to do with some conflict between the head unit and the factory amp?

i'm in Atlanta, GA

ok so i've verified i do indeed have a factory amp, i found a picture of a toyota jbl amp online from a toyota avalon, mine looks EXACTLY like this

http://drri.home.comcast.net/~drri/avalon/amp.jpg

yeah this is absolutely killing me, i've spent so much time on this and everywhere i go i am told something different. so i've tried everything everyone's recommended and still no luck!

when i hook it up with the harness alone i get music and buzzing, the buzzing stays at the same audible level regardless of the music's volume.

when i add ground loop isolators and hold all the rca's outside of the dash (away from the existing electrical wires behind the dash) i get music with no buzz, but when i start the engine the power dies (not good) and i have to disconnect/reconnect the negative terminal on the battery. this only happens intermitantly with the isolators (never happens without them) and seems to be dependent upon where the isolators are physically placed. anytime they're behind the dash it causes the whole car to die when you want to start the engine.

when i add the ground loop isolators and put everything behind the dash i get tons of buzz due to electrical interference, no matter where i put the isolators and rca's they are a few inches away from some type of existing factory wires and i get the interference

i looked behind the globe box to try to find the amp (even though i was sold the car as having the JBL system and the single cd head unit says JBL on it, i wanted to see the amp for myself in case my car doesn't have JBL - it's a long shot but hey i've tried everything else) and behind the glove box i saw a black box that has some white text stamped on it, which i googled hoping to see that it was listed as a factory amp but i got no results back. here's what was on the black box:

4430m

87010-06430

AA44315-180

ok so i went to a local store and got some ground loop isolators and it fixes it if i hold them outside of the dash. soon as i put them back in the dash to prepare to mount the head unit they buzz really loud, but this time it's from electrical interference. everytime it gets within inches of the factory wiring (not for the radio, but for other components) it starts buzzing loud again.

the problem is that there's nowhere i can ziptie it that would be out of the way of electrical wiring, there's bundles of wires everywhere that i could possibly tie these rca's to. so that only leaves me with one option, if it even exists, maybe to cover the metal shields of the rca's, etc, with some type of tape or something that can shield them from the electrical interference. i called home depot and they said they have aluminum foil tape that MIGHT take care of it with a few layers of the tape. what do you guys think??

so i crimped the pioneer's ground to the ground on the metra wiring harness to let it go through the factory harness to whatever ground it uses to see if there would be any difference. there was no difference in doing that but i did notice 2 things:

1) when i touch the shields on the rca's (basically grounding myself to them) the buzz almost goes away entirely

2) i disconnected the rca's so there would be no volume, then turned it on and turned the volume up al the way (to see how high it would go to see if there was a voltage issue maybe between the head unit and the factory amp), well when i maxed the volume out at 40 i could (barely) hear the fm radio. how is that possible with no rca's connected?

ok so i went to a local car stereo shop and tried that harness the guy off toyotanation.com recommended, it's for the 2007+ camry so i do have the right harness.

i seperated and capped off the speaker wires and tried again, still buzzing. so i started the car up and revved the engine, once it got to about 4000 rpm's you could hear an audible engine whistle through the speakers. sounded kind of like a quiet supercharger, it was pretty quiet but noticeable if you listen for it. so then i used a spare wire and touched one of the bare metal ends to the ground and the other to an rca shield. the speakers popped once when i did it and then the buzzing became very quiet. it still buzzed more than it should but it got considerably quieter. that says it is a grounding problem?

the place i'm grounding it to is really the only option because no other metal spot on the car can be reached (that i can see) with the ground wire. should i try a ground loop isolator? do those really work for an issue like mine?

i'll give that a shot. but to answer your question the speaker wires were capped off after the 2nd time i regrounded everything so they weren't touching at first and the buzzing was still there. i'll cap them off seperately, they're not being used because the RCA's are being used for the speakers. i did end up putting the factory head unit back in to use in the meantime and it works perfectly, so whatever's happening didn't mess anything up.

i posted on toyotanation.com also and got a respond saying it's the harness, do you think this might be the case?:

wow, ok whoever told you that harness would work should be fired. That harness was stopped being used by around the turn of the century. for the 06s that have an amp, the amp is digital. So you'll need the $100 converter harness that is something like this (

i just got an AVIC-D3 and after reading so many posts on here i was certain i could do the simple install on my own without paying $200+ to an install shop (can't really afford that at the moment anyway)

i have a 2006 Camry SE with the single cd JBL factory amplified system. I was sold the metra 70-8113 wire harness w/ factory amp bypass. i dont have anything to solder with so i crimped the wires together and verified everything is tight, pulled somewhat hard on them and they wouldn't budge.

the problem is after i installed the avic-d3 and turned it on, there was a loud buzzing from all the speakers.

i immediately thought it was an issue with the ground, since i had originally spliced everything into the pioneer's ground (the metra's ground and the ebrake/mute wire for the d3 bypass) and grounded the pioneer to the only nearby spot i thought maybe i should ground them all seperately to the same spot (pretty much the only spot that some of the shorter cables i need to ground can reach such as the metra's ground and the mute). so i cut them and crimped ring terminals to fit in the bolt i used to ground them to the Camry. Still - same problem. So then i sanded the metal down and it looked nice and smooth/clean, so i re-grounded the metra's ground and the pioneer's ground (left the ebrake/mute ungrounded since they were not needed for troubleshooting purposes) but still the SAME buzzing sound from the speakers when the unit is turned on (even with volume down).

i thought this would be easy, am i a complete ass? here are some pics so you can see what i did

below: picture of the metra and pioneer grounded

below: another picture of them grounded

below: picture of what i'm grounding them to

below: picture of the metra connected to the pioneer's rca harness (the rca's for the speakers are connected and the blue/white amp turn on wire connected and the metra's ground)

below: picture of the metra connected to the pioneer's harness (all unused wires are capped off, ignition wires are connected, battery wires are connected, and pioneer's ground is shown)

the only thing not shown in the pics above are the ebrake and mute wires, they look just like the grounds though - they have a ring terminal so they are easily grounded.

am i missing something or just don't have any clue how to ground something properly?