I am hoping to wire up the original speakers in my 1st gen 4runner to an aftermarket CD player. The rear speakers have a built-in amp. There are 5 wires from these speakers. Two are normal speaker wires, the third is hot and the fourth ground. The fifth is a white wire which returns to the stock radio. Anyone out there know what this 5th wire is for and where I should send it?

 

Not to hijack your thread, but if you get/have a diagram of the front and rear speaker wires, let me know. I'm trying to rewire mine, too. Thanks!

 

i'm not fully sure what your trying to do? what im guessing is that you want to use a new head unit with your stock speakers/and built in amp...

when wiring mine, all i did was hook up the respective wires from the wiring harness to the deck, then plugged em both in. (as shown in the manual) all, you have to do to get the stock amp to work is hook up the remote wire (blue one) to the new deck. (if you forgot, it just wont work.)

here's a scanned diagram from my premier 'install guide'...

 

That's not helping. I got the Blue/Yellow to power, the White/Black to ground. It's the white that i'm lost on. It went to to the old deck, but for what purpose?

 

Yes, I am trying to hook up an aftermarket CD player to the existing stock speakers which have a built-in amp on the rear speakers. The original wire harness from the speaker/amp runs up to the dash. There is a white wire in this harness which runs from the speaker/amp to the old radio connector. That is the one in question.

 

the white wire should be the positive for the front left speaker. as shown in the diagram i posted. and you did get a harness from a car store right? so your basically wiring 2 harnesses together, one that plugs into the stock toyota harness (wired to your truck), then the other end plugs into the back of your deck?

 

Maybe the power wire for the built-in amp?

 

The front speakers are easy, standard 2 wire hook-up. I am trying to hook up the rear speakers. Each rear speaker has 5 wires, 2 for the speaker and 3 for the built-in amp. Of the latter, there is a positive, a ground, and the mystery 3rd white wire. It originally went into the stock deck, along with the usual positive, ground and 2-pair speaker sets.

 

guessing you didn't pick up a wiring harness? cause this would eliminate alot of your confusion. translates all those mystery wires into the standard ones in the diagram.. (forgot about that), and i never even looked at the colours of the wires before that connector.. i mean, its a $5 investment to save yourself a bunch of headaches.

 

Take out all the old crap and replace it with what you need, not working around what you got. In my 85 I've found lots of nicked, damaged and bad wire. Don't want to burn your rig down for a stereo.

 

Sounds like you might have 2 positives. Are you getting any voltage on that white wire? I'm checking my Hayne's manual. It's not very helpful. What year is your 1st gen and is it an SR5 or a DLX?

 

You are talking about an adapter from old to new. Well, that might have worked, but after I swapped in a different main wiring harness to go with the body swap, I lost all the front radio wires, including front speakers, and power and ground to the deck. Anyway, I chopped off the connector for the rear speaker harness, so now I am just down to putting this one damn wire to bed. Besides, I like headaches...

 

It's the "turn on" wire for the built in amps.
And that won't work. If you run speaker-level feeds into those amps, all you get out of the speakers is popping and buzzing. They are shot after all these years anyway, just toss em and put some decent speakers back there and run em off deck power. It will sound great that way. I tried what you are trying, it didnt' work. The feed from the factory deck to those amps is very low power, probably not even one watt.

 

if it's the turn on wire, then can't you just hook it up to the blue remote wire on the deck?

 

IF YOU DIDNT ALREADY DESTROY YOUR STOCK WIRING HARNESS GO BUY AN ADAPTOR NOW!

i built a complete wiring harness for a car that NEVER had a radio and trust me...IT IS NOT FUN.


the old runners stereos basicly blew major ass. rip out those speakers and put in some new component speakers amped if you please.

i would suggest putting some new fronts in as well. I just dropped in 4" Rockford fosgates in my fronts and dynomatted around them since theres no speaker box...the speakers themselves even being rockfords (yea i should have gotten better but my work place benefits had me choose these) ..when i put some dynomat in to make some sort of a speaker box..wow! what a diffrence..the speakers are much louder now

 

the 5th wire coming from the back speakers connects to the blue wire (power antenna)on your deck.

 

i've got a question...

reviving this old gave a lot of info, but sorta not what I need....

I have the amplified speakers in the back of my 87 4runner, and they worked great. recently, the one on the right has blown, the one on the left still works perfectly.

I grabbed another speaker to put in, out of the 5 wires, I just use the two speaker wires and kept the others clear of anything.

sound works, but its super quiet, and starts getting distortion near the middle of the volume knob and up (30-65).
the left still works great at all levels.

would it fix the problem if I went ahead and replaced the left one also with a modern speaker?

this is all run off of a modern head unit with built in amplifier. nothing fancy, just enough to play me some music (the jbl tundra 6 cd/radio)