Nokia Car Kit In A 2003 Camry

[DubCam03]

Can you help? Any assistance with wiring a Nokia Car Kit (suitable for 6310i) into my new Camry gratefully accepted. I recovered the kit from my last car but would like to wire it into new car without doing violence to the interior finish!

[bpsmicro]

Are you asking about the actual wiring, or the mounting of the handset?

For the former I can't offer specific advice since I prefer to locate appropriate wires and tap into them but cutting & soldering (I hate those blue clippy thingies). I always say if you're not comfortable messing with the internal wiring, hire a professional.

For the handset, Panavise makes brackets for many makes & models. Quite a few cell phone installers use them now, and may sell you just the bracket. They're designed to share one of the radio bolts and poke out through the dash moulding in a manner that almost makes them look factory provided. You'd have to see one to appreciate them. See their web site for details.

[DubCam03]

Since posting the original I have solved the first problem - how to remove some of the interior panels to hide the wiring. I'm am never sure just how much pressure to apply to get the things off!

The unit is now fully fitted but I have not yet decided on the power connection but I will go searching with a meter this evening. My main concern was that if I connected to a 12v supply, would I overload the circuit - I have no wiring diagram for the car so I'm not sure what's the best candidate power cable to tap.

[bpsmicro]

I tapped into the power wires feeding the radio. They're usually good at handling the current requirements of the car kit. But it took a bit of trial and error to figure out which ones to use from the seemingly hundreds of wires coming out.

What many professional installers use is these tiny metal clips that go right into the fuse holder in the main fusebox. I'm personally a bit leary of having metal bits sticking out of my fusebox, but supposedly they're okay for most purposes. Certainly easier to install.

Yeah, when I installed my car kit in my '98 one of the clips holding in the radio faceplate had gotten bent out of shape during the initial install, and I ended up cracking the faceplate. You would not have wanted to be standing within earshot that evening. :ffs:

Luckily, the crack was in a non-visible location.

Oh, and since you've had the Nokia kit for a while I suppose you already know that the Ignition Sense stuff doesn't work. I'm still a little steamed with Nokia about that little flub.

[DubCam03]

Can't get at the radio wiring as I cannot see how the radio face plate comes off in the 03 model. Have found a power wire which seems to be of a suitable guage and I plan to go through the fuse board to see what the rating is before I wire it up. I would prefer to use the radio power as getting at that wiring would possibly allow me to wire in the radio mute wire.

Any ideas on how to get at the back of the radio? Not reachable from below so I suspect the only method is by removing the faceplate.

[SioCommunications]

Normally Toyota radios are secured with 4 hidden 10mm headed bolts, quite a lot of the time you have to remove trim above and below the stereo to get access to these.

Regarding power, most toyotas have a huge rubber grommet on the bulkhead that the main wiring loom goes through that allows to to feed you power and earth cables through there direct to the Battery.

It is not advised to use scotch loks on the radio wiring, these show up hot under a thermal imaging camera, if you can get the radio out, it is perfectly OK to take your power feeds from there provided you fit inline fuses and solder all connections.

Regarding the ignition sense feature, this works on some car kits but not all phones support this feature, normal practice is to join the red and blue nokia wires together and supply both with a constant 12 volt feed from the Battery.

Hope this helps, haven't managed to get my hands on a new Camry yet.

regards

Terry