Thread: 2001 tacoma install

yeah, it does suck. I don't know that I'm that worried about it happening again, the chances of that seem remote. That said, I'll be buying the best alarm I can afford and I'll probably go with a lower profile flip out screen, because I really don't want to go through this again.

But, I took her into the shop today to get all fixed up. So, I guess I'll be ready to start again in about a week or so.

Anyway, couple of carnage pics here -- I forgot to take pics of the carpet and the busted window latch and now it's in the shop. so just a couple of the missing bezel/screen:

well, i finally got my truck back today. Yep, that's right, it was in the shop for 5 weeks. When the losers stole my screen, they took the whole radio bezel as seen in the pictures above. Well, in the 2001 - 2004 Tacomas, the passenger airbag switch is located in the radio bezel and they cut the wire than ran to that switch .

Because of some law or regulation or something, the shop couldn't just fix the wire by solder or splice or whatever, they had to replace the thing. Well, as it turns out, every wire behind the dash comes from 1 wiring harness, and so they had to basically order a new wiring harness ($2400) and rewire the whole kit and caboodle. That took them over a week alone. then the carpet being replaced, replacing my little wind wing etc... etc... and boom --5 weeks and almost $7k in parts and labor. On the bright side, the interior parts are nice and new, so that's cool.

But, I'm just really excited to have my truck back and to et started on he new carpc. This time, I'm going to get a nice alarm to go with it.

OH, one thing every one on this board should do. Get special equipment coverage on your car pc. You will have a hell of a time getting your insurance company to understand that they should cover this, and then when they do the standard coverage won't be close to what this cost you to put together.

Sorry to hear about the whole break in. I can say with much experience in this area, that nothing is worse then to come out to your car in the morning expecting to find everything where you left it, but to find it torn apart by the hands of some punk looking to make a few bucks.

I have gone through this experience a few times now myself and can say this for sure. IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN!!!

I have a 1998 4Runner that I keep clean as the day I got it, and baby it better then I would my own son (if I had one). To date, it has been broken into 3 times. The first time I lost a Sony CD player I had installed along with 100 CD's or so, and a CB radio. Not much, but still a pain. The second time I was working as a Satellite installer and had about 7 systems in there with all my tools. They cleaned me out along with my new Pioneer CD player, and 25 CD's or so. Cost about $4000 in Satellites and stereo parts. Some of it was covered under my insurance, but most of it was not just because it was not ment to be in the car. Luckily my dad had his home owners insurance cover the rest.

Now the last one was the worst. They broke in through the back side window, and when they opened the door the $700 alarm I had installed went off. Punk #2 was at the hood of the car and cut the battery cable so the alarm turned off. Now they had all the time they needed. They came in and found my Pioneer AVH 6500DVD player attached to the frame of the dash. After the first two break ins I used locking bolts to secure my radio into the dash. Works pretty good, unless the Theif has a hack saw with him. THey ended up cutting out the whole dash. They took the AC controls, the stereo, the air bag, the Speed cluster, and my change drawer. It was ugly at best. They also stole my after market Alarm system and Toyota Alarm. They cut up both from seats with a knife, and keyed the entire drivers side of the car. The car wouldn't even start after that because of all the damage to the wire harness. I had the car towed to the "Recommended Body shop" by my Insurance company. After 3 months of having my car, and nearly $11,000 in body work, paint, upulstry, and a new dash, they gave me a check for $200 to cover my $2000 Pioneer Head unit and Navi system. The insurance company said it was "above what most stereo systems should cost"

So long story short, I was ****ed. My poor baby will never be the same. Everyday I get in and see some of the remaining scratches that would not come out, and think to myself... What would I do if I ever found those guys who tore apart my car.

So to all of you who think that "This will never happen to me again" YOUR WRONG. It will. I still have a kick *** system in my truck, I can't live with out my XM radio and everything else that comes with having a nice sound system. But I make sure I know who is around my car at all times, and I sleep with one eye open every night.

So I hope you can come up with a good system for watching your ride at night when those Car Thief's are out! Good Luck

(SORRY FOR THE LONG POST) *** its my first one

wow, I thought my gig sucked, your truck's been broken into 3 times???? Man, I'd totally hook up like some James Bond electrocution thing if I were you


I'm looking at these alarms that page you when someone's messing with your car, but I think the best way is probably to make it look like you don't have anything worth stealing, so I'm thinking of ways to stealth my next install.

Yeah I have one of those fancy alarm systems installed, thats what they stole from me. It had a paging system that sends a signal to your keys when the alarm is going off. The only problem was when the alarm started going off, they cut the battery and the alarm stopped going off, thus the pager stoped beeping as well, and I just kept on sleeping.

Its a good idea, I think on my next car I will mount the alarm in a place where no one would be able to find it, and have a dedicated battery for it. That way no matter what happens inside the car, I still hear the alarm going off.

I had an audiovox system, not sure the model, but it worked pretty good. It had a remote start feture, but it didn't work on my ride (its a manual).

I'm trying to work on something like you mentioned. Making a dummy face plate to go over the screen so it looks like a stock radio. I'm just not sure what to use. Maybe some old stereo that I hack up or something. Still thinking about it.

went to microcenter on friday, and picked up this little guy for $349. Pretty nice specs IMO for that price (it's refurb). So, I'm on my way to the rebuild, I'll keep posting as I get more of the components (I'm going to go with a single din headunit and a single din flip out until the new double din HU/VGA LCD/USB DVD player is out)

Originally Posted by My4Runner

Yeah I have one of those fancy alarm systems installed, thats what they stole from me. It had a paging system that sends a signal to your keys when the alarm is going off. The only problem was when the alarm started going off, they cut the battery and the alarm stopped going off, thus the pager stoped beeping as well, and I just kept on sleeping.

Its a good idea, I think on my next car I will mount the alarm in a place where no one would be able to find it, and have a dedicated battery for it. That way no matter what happens inside the car, I still hear the alarm going off.

I had an audiovox system, not sure the model, but it worked pretty good. It had a remote start feture, but it didn't work on my ride (its a manual).

I'm trying to work on something like you mentioned. Making a dummy face plate to go over the screen so it looks like a stock radio. I'm just not sure what to use. Maybe some old stereo that I hack up or something. Still thinking about it.

Yeah, I'm thinking about using an older single din headunit my dad has lying around his shop. hopefully, that along with a single din flip out - with nothing to see when it's closed - might just achieve the effect I'm looking for (nothing to steal here, move along), but we'll have to see. Though I want security, I don't want to make that security so inconvenient that I won't use it.

Got the single din head unit in, it's a panasonic df88. It's pretty nice for a 7 year old radio, and had left and right aux inputs on the back which is cool.

But, of course, you take one step forward and 2 steps back. As of last night, my dimmer (dash lights) no longer work. Since they worked fine for the week that I had it back from the shop before I put the radio in, I'm going to go ahead and assume it was something I did while installing the head unit.

Also, I managed to get my hands on a flip up VGA non-motorized screen, but it's missing the VGA cable. The trouble is that even though it's VGA, it has this weird 8 pin connector coming out of the back of the screen that turns into VGA on the other end like the cable in the middle of the picture below



Anyway, does anyone know where I can find this cable?? I haven't been able to find the cable by itself online, in fact the only cable I've found with 8 pins is a mac printer cable (which I bought in the hopes of splicing it with a regular vga, but I'd really, really just rather buy one if that's possible)

yeah, so my dimmer problem was a fuse of course. I had only checked the fuses under the dash and forgot to check the ones under the hood. Sure enough, my 10amp tail light fuse was burned out. Couple of bucks later and my dimmer (and apparently my tail lights) are back in business.

Still haven't been able to find that cable without buying a whole screen. Tried to make one by mating an 8pin mac pinter cable to a standard 15 pin vga cable. I got the screen to light up an say "no cable connected", so I know something woke it up, but I haven't been able to get any kind of picture to display.

I did briefly see an "out of range" message, but I have no idea what made it say that -- or if it was just a fluke. I found some totally helpful vga pin-outs here and elsewhere; but the trouble really is finding the pin-out of the female 8 pin on the screen and which (if any) of the vga wires need to be combined (ie horizontal sync combined with vertical sync) where they meet the 8 pin cable.

First pics of new install. Let me say that though this screen looks lame, it's much more fundctional and visible than the integrated install i did before. It's easy to reach the buttons, the better viewing angle means the screen is more vivid and clearer, it's just better in every department except looks. Perhaps I'll build an enclosure around it to make it look more OEM, but that would entail moving the AC controls and I don't really think I'll ever do that. But, you never know. Anyway, pics:







I'll post more pics and stuff after I get my car cleaned, probably around the time of the SoCal meet.