3rd Generation Camry Radio Problems

[blownfuse]

I recently bought a new radio unit for my 1996 Camry and I'm having a few problems.

I had to wire in the adapter harness to the stock wiring configuration for the stock radio to get it to plug into the radio. I did a test run before I cut the connector for the stock radio unit and when I did this the radio worked just fine so I know the radio I bought is good and it works 100%.

Once I did that, I went one wire at a time and cut them from the stock harness and wired it into the adapter as to not mix up which one went where, once I had done that I turned on the car and neither the radio nor the clock on the dash came on so I immediately suspected a fuse, and I was right, I had blown the "dome" fuse. So I replaced that fuse, turned on the car and the lights all worked now, but the clock and radio still did not come on. So I ran through the fuses again and found that the fuse to the radio had blown some how. So I replaced that one as well. After I did that I tried turning on the car again, still nothing worked...

I have checked, double checked and triple checked my wiring job so I'm pretty certain that they are all wired to the adapter properly (I used a wiring diagram I found on this site as reference). I'm at an absolute lose as to what happened between connecting to the stock harness to test and wiring the adapter in pertinently.

If anyone has a suggestion or comment please help me! I'm convinced there must be a hidden fuse somewhere or something.

O, and another interesting note, I'm not sure if this is related or not, but I noticed that there was no fuse in the spot for "RADIO" but yet the stock radio still worked just fine, so I'm assuming it's not necessary to have one in or something otherwise I would think it wouldn't have worked before, which it did work just fine before (minus the broken volume knob). Even when I go to put a fuse in there though, it doesn't seem to fit as snuggly as the others, I don't know if that's because it's just a different fuse or if there is a something in the way, but it doesn't even really plug in, it just kinda sits there.

[GutterClown]

So you went from say, pin 1 on the stock to pin 1 on the new adapter? or did you follow the new placement of wires? I know different brands have the speaker pairs in different locations, so pins 1&2 might be left-front for say clarion, but kenwood might be pins 1&6, and so on.
if you've just cut the first wire, and soldered it to the first wire of the new connector, and so on for 2, 3, 4, etc. then you've rightly buggered the show up.

[unkit]

Are your lights on auto? If so, put them to off. Then replace all the fuses. if everything works, u've used the "light" connection in the original stereo as the earth wire.... (i have an australian camry, so mine might be a little different, but thats the mistake I made until i used a multi meter)

[blownfuse]

Ok, well I took it up to my buddy's audio shop today and he said that just by glancing at it he wasn't able to figure out what was wrong with it. He confirmed that I had all the wires hooked up right (and rubbed in the fact that I could have bought an adapter instead of wiring it up by hand) and he confirmed that I had nothing obviously broken and no fuses blown so that's a good thing I guess. The crappy thing is that in order to really figure out what's wrong he said he'd have to charge me labor because he was going to have to pull my dash apart a bit to see if anything under the dash got fried or something (maybe a relay or a melted wire, i'm really not sure).

However, in the mean time, I told him I was going to do a little more investigation on my own so I'm going to check it against my multimeter to see what I can figure out from that and if anything turns up I'll come back. Otherwise I think I'll just hold out until Friday when I'm meeting with another friend of mine who's a mechanic for Lexus and see if he can't figure out what's wrong with some of the test equipment at his shop...hopefully I don't have to wait till then, it's maddening trying to drive without a radio in rush hour traffic coming home from work...

[BlueFusion6851]

^eh, just use an older battery powered boombox. One of my classmates did that with a shower radio... needless to say, I got a good laugh out of it.

[GutterClown]

I've seen a guy wire a cd player from his COMPUTER into a car, he pushed this 5&3/4 inch player into the 7 inch DIN, packed it with foam and used a phone recharger from the lighter socket to get the 5v line the player needed

So there have been worse soundsystems than a battery powered boombox.

[eddie926]

Not trying to rub it in, but it is unfortunate that you didn't get an adapter harness from Crutchfield or elsewhere. The HU install in a gen 3 Camry is incredibly easy if you use an adapter harness. Once you have the adapter harness wired to your HU, it's just plug & play from there.

[blownfuse]

Yea i wish i had known about that when i started i think i'm just going to have my buddy crimp the original harness back in and then an adapter like i should have done in the first place.

[blownfuse]

Ok, well I ended up just taking it to my buddies shop (audiotrix << plug) and props to them. They just hardwired it in for me and found out that there was a blown fuse under the dash that I hadn't seen which was keeping it from working. $50 lesson learned, but man I wish I had seen that myself :p

Props to the guys at the shop, good eyes.