How to get great radio reception with aftermarket headunit!!! - Toyota Nation Forum : Toyota Car and Truck Forums

adsaue2 · 06-27-2007, 11:05 PM

So I installed an aftermarket radio about a week ago and never could get the radio recpetion to be anywhere close to stock, frankly it sucked. Now I know someone is going to tell me this was obvious but it wasn't for me so I am sure atleast one other person will have this problem. I installed an aftermarket apline receiver which had a power antenna wire, typically this wire is used for antennas that go up when the radio is turned on and down when the radio is turned off, so I left it alone and didn't connect it to anything. NOT WITH THE 2007 CAMRY!!!! The antenna in the 07 camry has a signal amplifier which must be powered on to work.

[IMG]file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/Andrew/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot.jpg[/IMG][IMG]file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/Andrew/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot-1.jpg[/IMG]

After realizing the recpetion was worse than it should be I looked through the repair manual and realized that the power amplifier for the antenna must be turned on in order to work.

Now the people who design aftermarket car stereos are great since theny make all of the wires which are supposed to be connected to each other than same color.

props to them!! All I had to do is connect the dark blue wire from the receiver (this is that power antenna wire) to the dark blue wire on the wiring harness which connects to the factory harness and this feeds into the wire shown above and turns on the antenna amplifier and thats it, excellent radio reception.

Again, most people probably just connected all of the wires anyways and didn't have this issue but for anyone who has installed an aftermarket receiver and is getting bad radio reception make sure that the power antenna wire is connected properly.

carlo$ · 06-28-2007, 08:28 AM

excellent job. btw where is F6 located?

adsaue2 · 06-28-2007, 08:37 AM

F6 is just the connector for the stock radio which has the power, ground, and front speaker wires, along with the power antenna wire. If you remove the stock radio it is one of the two connectors which hook up to the back of the radio, the other connector is for the rear speakers.

sunnyice · 06-28-2007, 01:43 PM

Nice!!! i was having this issue as well! il try to do it when im free. thanks!

edmellnik · 07-12-2007, 08:08 PM

My 2004 has the same problem. I connected the power to the antenna power lead.
This restored AM and maybe helped FM but still lots of multipath static on stations
that are power house stations in my city.
So something else must also be amiss. Unless that antenna preamp is working but not working well????

2004 MAtrix XR

Aftermarket SOny 310 and several Pioneer radios - all have the same problem so its not the radios... its something in the car.

ed

Tomato · 07-12-2007, 08:53 PM

I am satisfied with the performance of the stock audio, but I cannot figure out why the stock head unit don't have the RDS enabled ... I need to manually tune the frequency from time to time if I want to have better reception.

ic04969 · 02-20-2012, 09:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adsaue2

So I installed an aftermarket radio about a week ago and never could get the radio recpetion to be anywhere close to stock, frankly it sucked. Now I know someone is going to tell me this was obvious but it wasn't for me so I am sure atleast one other person will have this problem. I installed an aftermarket apline receiver which had a power antenna wire, typically this wire is used for antennas that go up when the radio is turned on and down when the radio is turned off, so I left it alone and didn't connect it to anything. NOT WITH THE 2007 CAMRY!!!! The antenna in the 07 camry has a signal amplifier which must be powered on to work.

[IMG]file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/Andrew/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot.jpg[/IMG][IMG]file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/Andrew/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot-1.jpg[/IMG]

------------ etc ----------

I am sorry this is VERY late response, but I am having same problem and couldn't find pics anywhere else, do you still have these pictures somewhere you can repost please?

Thanks in advance.

phitat · 03-05-2012, 07:52 PM

I have the same problem D:<

***bandit*** · 03-05-2012, 10:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ic04969

I am sorry this is VERY late response, but I am having same problem and couldn't find pics anywhere else, do you still have these pictures somewhere you can repost please?

Thanks in advance.

Quote:

Originally Posted by phitat

I have the same problem D:<

This thread is 5 years old and the reason why you can't see it is because OP didn't link image properly. You can not link images from your computer.

muckdawg24 · 03-06-2012, 11:36 AM

IIRC, I had to chop off the lead from the antenna amp and splice it into the power antenna lead from the aftermarket radio wiring. The antenna amp lead is the only thing left after you hookup everything.

ic04969 · 03-08-2012, 01:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by muckdawg24

IIRC, I had to chop off the lead from the antenna amp and splice it into the power antenna lead from the aftermarket radio wiring. The antenna amp lead is the only thing left after you hookup everything.

ok, for the longest time, I didn't know what that meant (read it on multiple posts)... but I finally figured it out. the blue wire from the new Erisin unit is an antenna amp wire.

there is an orange/brown wire in the Camry connected and taped to the antenna wire. this has a white clip that can be disconnected as needed. I was able to splice one of those wires and connect my blue wire to those. I now have VERY good signal... not as great as stock, but I get all the stations that I used to get before without any static any more.

Thanks for the replies.

qng001 · 03-08-2012, 10:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ic04969

ok, for the longest time, I didn't know what that meant (read it on multiple posts)... but I finally figured it out. the blue wire from the new Erisin unit is an antenna amp wire.

there is an orange/brown wire in the Camry connected and taped to the antenna wire. this has a white clip that can be disconnected as needed. I was able to splice one of those wires and connect my blue wire to those. I now have VERY good signal... not as great as stock, but I get all the stations that I used to get before without any static any more.

Thanks for the replies.

Are you talking about the blue wire that is part of the special port #3 shown below?

ic04969 · 03-09-2012, 10:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by qng001

Are you talking about the blue wire that is part of the special port #3 shown below?

My unit is an ES856C but for some reason the picture that Erisin has for the back of it doesn't match what I received from them.

below is the image (link) from the manual they sent with the unit. it's the "ANT +" wire (blue wire) that I used.

I hope this helps.

qng001 · 03-09-2012, 01:03 PM

So when you said, "there is an orange/brown wire in the Camry connected and taped to the antenna wire", do you mean theres two wires (orange and brown) bundled/taped connected to a banana-style antenna plug?

Below pic has the other antenna with the white plastic housing clip. Is that what you are referring to?

Example:

pic is from post Factory Antenna to Aftermarket Radio

ic04969 · 03-09-2012, 02:30 PM

from the same post you got that picture, the picture below it (I edited and reposted here) there is an orange wire with a white connector, connected to a brown wire, attached to the white antenna... that's what you have to tie the ANT+ blue wire from the HU to. instead of splicing into either wire, I was able to take apart the white connector and soldered the blue wire into one of the harnesses and reconnected it. works great and no cutting any wires.