Do all head units have the same connectors on the back of them? Here's the situation: I've got a Kenwood head unit in my old car, and my Toyota has some cheapo unit that was in it when I bought it. Is changing them out going to be as easy as unplugging the cheapo and plugging in the Kenwood, or am I going to have to buy a new wiring harness for the Kenwood and spend some time wiring it up?

Thanks a lot,

Isaac

 

Nope. You will need to buy a wiring harness to solder onto the Kenwood unit that then plugs into the factory wiring harness.

Good luck!

 

Crutchfield is hands-down the best place for 1. equipment 2. installation stuff 3. customer service.... in my experience. They have an adapter that plugs into the wiring on your car, brings it to the fundamental connections: B+, gnd, antenna, ignition, speakers. Then you connect these to their counterparts on your new stereo pigtail. Works great. I was at WalMart, and they also had a Toyota stereo connector/pigtail assembly. its much better than hacking into your factory wiring, provided its still un-corrupted. :-)

 

hopefully, your kenwood still has the kenwood supplied pigtail, one end will plug into radio, other end will be color-coded wires.... then you take a toyota specific adapter ($7-20, wal-mart, autozone, bestbuy, or you may be able to reuse the one that was used when the cheapo was installed)... this toyota specifc adapter will have a plug that matches your factory toyota wiring system, and will have the same, color-coded wires that will match up to the one that came with the kenwood, solder them together and you will be good...

unless the cheapo unit was spliced directly into your toyota, by cutting the toyota plug off.. diff story then

edit: crutchfield is also hands-down the best for service and getting the right stuff for your car without the consumer having to figure it out, this is especially good in newer cars with difficult to bypass integrated radios (cough gm).... IMO everything they have is quality... but a little overpriced, but that customer service is what you are buying, I bought a HU there about 5 years ago, and they've shipped me wires and dash kits to install into 3 diff cars since then

 

I knew about the wiring harnesses you can buy specific for Toyota - my question is will the cheapo pigtail and the Kenwood pigtail have the same connectors on them, so I can just swap decks and not touch the wiring at all. Get me? This is kind of hard to describe

I just realized, though, that the cheapo has a Toyota-speicifc wiring harness so I can just hack that off the cheapo pigtail and swap the decks that way. Thanks for the help!

 

yeah, the cheapo and kenwood will most likely not have the same pigtail, they are usually brand/company specific... you should be able to figure it out pretty quick when its all opened up.. or by searching google some, will be able to find millions of explanations and pictures