Diagnosing No Power to Stereo

2003 Tundra AC

Last night my stereo kicked out and came back on and worked until I got home, smelled some electrical burning (thought it was coolant and the grim reaper coming for my head gasket).

Today no power to stereo.

I had wired in an ATOTO dash unit and kept the factory amplifier. Using a Metra 70-8113 harness.

Everything worked great except after winter set in I found the backup camera intermittent but I assumed that was likely a wire that had come loose and would deal with it on a warmer day.

Now I have no power.
- Fuse on the ATOTO unit is good
- Interior fuses are all good
- Exterior fuses are all good

How likely is it that the factory amp blew?

I'm getting 4v off a grey wire on the factory amplifier harness but I also couldn't start the truck up and had to put it on a trickle charger.

Is there other places I should look for issues?

 

Man, you need to pull that shit apart and check for burnt wiring before anything else.

To where? HU or entire electrical system?

I'm sure @shifty` will be along shortly. He knows the ins and outs of these really well.

 

Can't visually see any burnt wiring anywhere, no further burnt smell anymore when it's running which leads me to believe that the amplifier is what went. Since there's no other fuses blown power would still be running.

Just the HU, everything else is running normal without issues. Which again brings me to the amplifier.

Being that all power systems are normal, no further burning smell when powered, the HU fuse is still intact, the failure point would be the amp. (Just my logic thus far)

 

If the amp was what created the burnt smell, it would still reek up close.

 

I have an extremely poor sense of smell, I can still pick up some of it from it, I can barely smell it in general. For context I thought the electrical smell was coolant burning.

All I can think of outside of it was there was whining noises a couple days prior in the background. After the shut off and came back it was gone.

 

I’m on the fence about installing an ATOTO unit in my 05. How did this pan out?

 

So the result was the factory amplifier fried. Switched my harness to direct and had no issues. My backup camera did have a ground issue due to me being sloppy on initial install and they sent me a new one without question. No complaints!

 

ok cool thanks. For the price it’s tough not to try one out.

so when you say you switched harness to direct, do you mean you cut and soldered the wires instead of using a harness? I’ve never messed with stereo stuff so I’m pretty clueless. Would you recommend not using the factory amp?

 

There's two wiring options, one that uses the factory amp, and one that doesn't. I would say bypass the factory amplifier. It's slightly more wiring but I found there was a bit of background static with the amp wired in.

I used shrink wrap connector and twisted the wires together. I bought marine grade for doing wiring on my boat and I'd recommend just getting a box on Amazon.

If you're in Canada they'll have the harness at Canadian Tire but presumably you can find a working harness.

Stereos are dead simple to wire because all the colours match 1 to 1.

It's also easier to wire in the backup camera when you're connecting everything else because you'll have a shared power line.

I think the one thing you'll have to accept is that the stereo isn't going to fit perfectly into the space. I have gaps on either side but because it's dark you can't tell. I used about 5 washers and bolts I had on hand to bring the stereo forward to meet the edge of the bezel.

For like $150 I couldn't be happier. Makes parallel parking in the city significantly easier with a backup camera and android auto works really well.

I think my only personal beef is that the volume control is up and down buttons and I prefer a dial, but I think ATOTO has a secondary connector for the steering wheel.

Any other questions feel free to ask!

 

Ok right on, thanks very much for the info! I’ve done some wiring over the years but not with stereo equipment. Was hoping to not cut the factory wires up for a couple reasons but mainly to keep it simple. Might get a custom adapter from crutchfield first and see how it sounds before doing any cutting. I agree, a volume knob would be ideal. There’s another Chinese Amazon company with a nice head unit called PLZ but they won’t ship to Canada for some reason. Tariffs maybe? Haha. But definitely looking forward to the backup camera.

 

You won't need to do any factory cutting. All the harnesses will plug direct into the factory plugs and they'll have capped ends that you'll connect to the ATOTO head.

 

Ok good stuff. I’m sure I’ll grasp it better when I get in there and have an adapter harness.