Celica Forums Install Guides and Technical Articles Electrical, Audio, and Security Guides Stereo Install, GTS - How To

Hey what's up guys. I put in my head unit today...as my other thread today indicated (damn cheap plastic housing). I took a bunch of pics during the install so that I could post em up here for anyone who wants to install your own head unit...and here we go.

Your going to need these:
head unit
16 gauge speaker wire
butt-end connectors (crimp style)
crimpers (pliers work)
wire stripper (crimpers with wire-stripper is clutch)
wire cutters
Phillips head screw driver
socket wrench with 10mm socket
electrical tape (optional)
some sort of housing is your new deck is single din

Now onto what to do:
Firstly I recommend you figure out the wire code for the new head unit, most likely you will have the following:

red - 12volt switched
yellow - 12volt constant (if there isn't an inline fuse on it, consider installing one)
black - ground

typical speaker code:
white (left front)
grey (right front)
purple (right rear)
green (left rear)

you will also have striped versions of the colors above, those are the negative wires whereas the solid colors are...you guessed it. Positive.

Depending on your head unit you may also have:
orange
blue
blue with a white stripe
pink

Keep in mind that some stereo's may be different, so check the book or top of the unit and go by that. It may not be a bad idea label where each wire is going with some tape that way when you get out there you know what's going on. The wires that are connected at the stock harness are as follows:

grey with silver dots - 12volt switched (connects to red)
blue with yellow stripe - 12 volts constant (connects to yellow)
white with green - illumination (connects to orange if available)

That's enough about the wires. Now for the install. First off disconnect the negative battery terminal. Next you will have to remove your center section of dashboard. To do this just pull up on it from the section by the ebrake. Pull that up and unplug the cig. lighter plug in the back, place this piece out of your way. Next pull out the knobs from the climate control and the slider. You will need a Phillips head screw driver to remove the four screws, two behind the temp and location of air knobs, two underneath the piece of dash.



the fourth bolt is blocked by the shifter sorry. Once those screws are out you can just pull on the top portion and it will come out too. However, you will have to unplug the clock from the wire harness it is attached to. Put all of this aside. Now you can see the combat tank...err stereo that you have to remove.



You need to use your 10mm socket to remove the nuts holding it in. If you have DRL and want to disable it now would be a good time to do so. You're going to need to cut the yellow wire with a green stripe (#17 I believe) The harness is on the bottom right in this photo

(after cutting your gas gauge may go blank but it should reappear when you put gas in the car)
Next you're going to need to remove the glove compartment to get at the factory amplifier. First open the glove compartment. There are three Phillips head screws along the top that you will have to remove.


The glove compartment is also held into place with two bolts underneath at either corner.

These bolts are also 10mm. Now just reopen the glove compartment and tug slightly. There are two cables attached to the compartment. One is on the left side and controls the light in the compartment. The other is on the right and is fastened to the compartment itself (it's yellow). Pull gently to release the entire thing from the compartment.

Put the compartment aside look on the right side and vwala!

there's the bastard right there. As you can see there are two harnesses plugged into the amp. The larger of the two is what we will be dealing with.

In order to allow your front tweeters to work properly you are going to have to connect them in series with the door speakers. (WHEN CUTTING WIRES FROM A HARNESS MAKE SURE YOU PULL THE WIRE CLEAR AWAY FROM THE HARNESS AND OTHER WIRES SO YOU DON'T ACCIDENTALLY CUT SOMETHING ELSE

my friend has done it, it's not fun) In order to hook up the speakers in series you will need to cut the red/black wire and the pink wire. Strip the wires and crimp them together with butt-end connectors, ALWAYS CHECK TO ENSURE A TIGHT CRIMP. You will also have to cut and crimp together the blue/white and the LIGHT-green(tealish) wire, once again, check the crimp.
Now, get your head units wire harness. The first step is to ground it so that you don't short out anything. Toyota has a ground nearby. It is underneath the left passenger side kick panel. You can see it here, i have pulled the kick panel back to take the picture.

Loosen the bolt (also 10mm i believe) and put in your ground wire, then re-tighten the bolt.
Now that you have a stable ground (good enough for Toyota is good enough for me!...with the exception of head units...and speakers...and some engine parts...oh well) you can start to hook up the power supply to the head unit harness. Grab the old stock harness and cut the grey wire with silver dots (Pull it to get clearance!!). Strip it and connect it to the red head-unit wire with butt-end connectors, once again check the crimp. Now do the same with the blue/yellow wire and the yellow head unit wire (if there is no inline fuse consider installing one at this point, not necessary though, but a good precaution). And finally connect the stock white/green wire to the orange head unit wire.
At this point reconnect the negative battery terminal and plug in the new harness into the new head unit. Start the car and try to power up the head unit. If there is no power going to it, recheck all your crimps from beginning to end, if you have installed an inline fuse, make sure it is not blown, etc. Hopefully up to now you have done everything right, congrats, you are halfway there. Shut the car and disconnect the negative battery terminal again. Now all that is left is to wire the speakers. I bought professional 16GA speaker wire, i suggest you get quality wire as well. Section off and cut 4 4ft-6ft lengths of it. Speaker wire has two wires in it stuck together with insulation as I'm sure you can see. One is for the positive side the other is for the negative. It doesn't matter which you use as long as you keep it the same from one end of the wire to the other. What i did to make it easier was attached a piece of tape to the wire (after splitting) that I wanted to be negative. Do this for all four pieces of wire. Pull up the carpet on the passenger side so you can tuck all the speaker wire someplace. All that's left now is to strip the speaker wire and run it from the harness area to the amp area and splice the correct wires. The speaker wire serves as an extension cord of sorts from the amp harness to the new head unit. Cut strip and crimp the following wires together.

The first wire color is from the amp the second is on the new harness

Blue (-) to speaker wire to gray/black (-)
DARK-green(+) to speaker wire to gray (+)
Those are the passenger side front. You have already connected the tweeters in series to make them work.

violet (-) to speaker wire to white/black (-)
red blue (+) to speaker wire to white (+)
Those are the drivers side front. You have already connected the tweeters in series to make them work.

yellow(-) to speaker wire to green/black (-)
black (+) to speaker wire to green (+)
Those are the drivers side rear. They are wired normally without additional splicing.

white (-) to speaker wire to purple/black (-)
red (+) to speaker wire to purple (+)
Those are the passengers side rear. They are wired normally without additional splicing.

It is important to remember when using speaker wire which one is negative and which is positive as stated above, that is why I put the signs in with the colors to keep the consistency. At this point it may not be a bad idea to recheck all your crimps and splices again, and to bunch of the wires with some twist or zip ties. Plug the amp harness back into the amp so it's not hanging down and tuck in all lose wires. Now attach the new harness to the new head unit. Reconnect the negative battery terminal and start the car. Try to power up and run the stereo. Put your ear up to each speaker/tweeter to make sure the sound is coming out. If you don't hear anything from the tweeters some decks have a tweeter option, make sure that is turned ON and selected to door tweeters. If you still hear nothing try changing the song and checking again and lastly rechecking or redoing the first crimp splices you did. All that's left to do now is reinstall the glove compartment, reattach the dash and put in the plastic housing you should have been supplied with. Congratulations on the install! You saved cash too! PM with with any questions.


[EDIT: Fixed the images]

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Thanx for the help with the sub i'll be sure to ask you if i have any questions, thanx alot. i'm gonna go try it right now..

is there an esier way to do this?
i mean without bypass...r there rca jack on the head unit?

nope. If you want to wire up a amp to the stock headunit, go through the factory amp, it's a pain in the ass and it's just bad karma to be cutting into the car harness, but in the end it's worth it.

Man your pics didnt work, though i read through your directions and seemed silly, unless your hooking up the stock headunit, which is just a waste of money, cause once you cut the stock stero harness your locked in, i got an adapeter for my harness and all i had to do was splice the adapter wtih the aftermarket harness crimp and re-install, about 20 minutes for the compleate install. and i had no experience the hardest part was unscrewing the screws from the stock brackets(i didnt want to buy a new din, so i used the stock brackets, and cut my own cover out of plexi glass

fixed the pics to point to ecelica's servers - since anglefire's were blocking the links...

Bypassing the amp is a bich. I spent a whole day trying to figure stuff out, it was a mess. So i took it best buy!

You don't have to cut anything if you have GT, only GTS or GT w/ premium sound. Thanks for fixing the pix SIR Isaac!

this is old...
but where can i get the harness to bypass the factory amp?

more for wut it is called so i can find one in Ebay...

the guy is asking for CND$100 for the thing...i hope i can get one cheaper.

nice review, a little hard to follow but I managed...

so i'm guessing we just tuck the old headunits harness somewhere.Plus i need to buy one of those long fuses the 7.5 ones by the passenger side. Anyone know where i can buy someof those at???

oh yeah and since i disconnected the harness from old headunit my lights dont turn on for the AC. How do i fix that.

did you un hook ur battery b4 you did all this??
if your AC don't turn on you betta check all the fuse to see if none of it is burn out..if it is..u betta find chung's thread about the AC light being not show up and use that to fix the problem...yeah about ur stock harness just tuck it under the other wires, remember you HAVE to cut ALL the wires from the big harness that goes into the amp if u're trying to bypass it..Good Luck.

Hey guys just so you know on any GTS that does not use the JBL system, once you disconnect the hareness that is connected to the amp under, behind the glove box you can actually use a isuzu rodeo stereo harness from any best buy or circuit city, wire that to your new stereo harness with about 18-24 inches of wire between and that will connect, just run that from that factory amp up to where the stereo sits and the orig. harness that plugged into the stereo should sit there. thats what i did on my 2000 gts, and with a little modification it also worked on my 2004...sorry i dont have pics, but it will save you money and it will be a cleaner non hacked up install. please guys dont cut wires eeeessshhh

well now you tell us. i already(like many others) cuts the wires up.. ..how do you know if you have JBL system or not?? because i know i have an amp in there but don't know what system it is..my is a used 00GTS too. 6speakers total..actually 4 speakers and 2 tweeters.

do i connect my tweeters to the same wires my front doors are connected to.

after you cut them, yes you do need to connect them together with the front door, or else they won't work.. so Positive wire from left door speaker connect with positive wire from left door tweeter..etc.etc.etc..

thanx

yeeeeuuuuuuuupppp..no prob.

arent gts have 8 speakers?

yes, there are actaully two speakers on each side and 1 tweeter. The speakers are like one on top of the other. Superd celica, yes you do, it's all in the install .

nice write up. I'm a newb so i asking how i would hook an amp and sub to this set up

if you want to install an amp you're going to need to run an appropriate gauge power wire from your battery to your amp with an inline fuse set-up. Hook this to the power area with an appropriate crimp (the kind that allows for the screw to tighten, looks kinda like a two pronged fork on one side with a spot for the wire on the other). Then run the remote wire from your amp to the stereo's remote wire that should be coming off the harness. Use your decks RCA outputs and some RCA cables to connect your deck to your amp. Then attach your sub to the channels of the amp with the same style of crimp used on the power wire. That's it. I know it's kind of general, I'd be more specific but am in the middle of studying for a final.

Nice write up Floyd!

i dont know i wired the shit up and i cant get any power to my headunit the only thing that isnt connected yet are the speakers but i would imagine that as long as the power cables are connected it would at least give me some power?

damn nice writeup

How can I tell if I can use the Rodeo harness? Would that be better than using the one made for the GTS?

And the 7.5 Fuse can only be purchased over at a Toyota Dealership. Part Number 90982-09016

what was wrong with your stock headunit?? If it's still in perfect shape I'd like to pick it up from you!! My headunit is busted right now, the CD player doesn't work, and I'm not interested in installing an aftermarket one right now. I even have a nice single din adapter with a compartemnet in it that I'd throw in with some cash. interested??

Can someone explain or show a pic of what it looks like after you splice the front doors and tweeters together? Cause Im not fully understanding his directions

for the hu power make sure it's grounded.. I thought I did it wrong and then I was like oh duhhh.. and I grounded it to the bolt on the bar twards the driverside. I spliced into the power dimmer and switched acc in the wire harness at the HU and then ran the speaker wires to where the amp is.. I connected the positive to the tweeters and mids to the negative of the sub in the door speakers and then connected the negative of the tweeters and the positive of the sub in the door to the front speaker outs on the headunit that works to wire them in series..

I would like to add it's a good idea to install a 8 ufarad electrolytic capacitor to your tweeter to create a hi-pass filter that you removed when you bypassed the amplifier. This will block the frequencies below 5000 hertz. Make sure when your installing the capacitor that it is polarized. Install it on the positive output with the negative sign pointing towards the speaker.