Kicker hideaway- final upgrade to the $250(+) 3rd gen premium upgrade (+Kicker Key 180.4 amp)

I’ve read most of the thread. I guess I’ll do some more reading tonight after supper. Thanks.

 

It turns on with the blue wire so that’s good. You want to go ahead and extend that to go behind the radio. I personally would just extend the speaker wires to behind the radio as well so you know you are grabbing the correct wires. There are so many connectors down in the kick panel and there’s always a chance of getting them mixed up.

also, before you do any of that, make sure the bass knob and gain are both up from zero. I’ve struggled and struggled with amps only to find the bass knob was at zero the whole time

 

I went and did some searching of my PM’s. I had an issue with the Hideaway when I first wired it up. @destin_meeks and I went back and forth for a while before I realized my error.

Check to make sure that the blue wire is the RIGHT blue wire. This is why I prefer to make a harness on the bench and not solder stuff from the front seat or floor of the vehicle. Check your Hideaway wiring diagram. Check the Metra wiring diagram. IIRC one of the Metra harnesses has the remote turn on wire tied to the powered (retractable) radio antenna wire. At some point I cut this and grabbed the wrong side of the blue wire which went to a pin but the wrong pin.

I apologize for not remembering the exact circumstances. CHECK YOUR WIRING. I mean literally check each pathway. As you are doing this have a meter and “ring out” or check continuity from each pin to the other pin at the other end of that pathway (wire). Don’t rely solely on the colour (yes that is the correct Canadian spelling) of the wires. It isn’t impossible that the harness pin outs were installed incorrectly or like myself you made an error in soldering the wrong wires.

 

I disconnected the amp harness from the amp itself. I then put my meter on the harness for the amp and have 12.58v on each leg of the red wire. The ground is good. I sanded the paint off to bare metal. I had the turn on power source from the front speaker but it will not turn on the amp. I used a spare speaker from in my shop and hooked it up the the speaker wire extension from the front speaker and I can hear music clearly. So it seems that I have power to turn on the amp from there but it will not turn on the amp.
I just hate to pull apart my dash to get to the radio wiring. I don’t even see any screws. Hopefully there is a thread on TW on how to do this.
Six hours and nothing. Never in my life have I struggled so much with simple audio wiring.

 

Only need a 10mm socket

pull trim off (orange plastic in my truck) and remove four 10mm bolts

 

And like I said earlier, the auto-turn-on has been more miss than hit lately. Not sure why, but it is what it is I guess. So don’t feel bad about it. I know how frustrating it can be to do everything right and it still not work.

 

Thanks man. Your the king. I’ll jump on that tomorrow morning.
From your picture, it looks like the trim just pops off with a good tug, right?

 

Yep. Super easy

 

Yes. REALLY easy. Look up MESO’s how to video for the start ring if you have any issues Craig.

 

Thanks, I’m just aggravated that I spent half the day and still can’t get it to work. I’ll let you know if I’m still stuck. My wife just found the water heater leaking. So I guess I’ll have to work on. that first. Crazy, crazy day.

 

Today, I was excited to wire up my final upgrade...the Hideaway. I followed the simple instructions with some photos of where everything needed to go. End result is no sound coming from the hideaway. It powers up and turns off but no signal. I have factory head unit, kicker key, kicker cs, subie tweets. Destin help me build my harness back in the day so it was easy to understand where to splice everything in. I test metered my t tapped speaker wire from the back of the head unit and I am getting signal to my speaker wires. I do hear a thump in the subwoofer when in insert and remove the bass boost knob ac jack from the knob side and the sub side. Which makes me feel like it works but I am doing something wrong. Any ideas?

 

Don’t feel so bad, I started at 5:30am and quit at 6pm. Still no sound from the hideaway.

 

I’m starting to think Toyota has an issue with the newer model trucks and their audio. Hopefully at some point today I will get back to mine and I’ll post here with the results/findings. Good luck.

 

Damn... maybe I’ll just buy a low end (RCA) input adapter. Planned to use high end inputs (self done harness) back to a 5 channel, but this is making me rethink things.

 

This will all be determined by the amp you choose. Don’t let anything you read discourage you. Pick an amp and let us know.

also, the issue people are having is the hideaway’s auto-turn-on not wanting to play nice.
When hooking up a 5channel, you will be running speed wire to/from the radio. This will have the blue remote turn-on wire inside it which will turn your amp on and off.
Some amps need LOC’s, some don’t.

 

I’m going with the

$400 Rockford Fosgate R600X5 Prime 5-Channel Amplifier

Rockford Fosgate R600X5 (Prime series). It takes both high and low inputs and 2/4/5 channel input. My understanding is the high level will do auto turn on and possibly better sound value? I’ve gone back and forth with front and rear input but I’ll likely just do front and use the amps gains and bass remote to control any fading I want/need. Additionally, since the factory HU doesn’t have low level outputs, it would be easy to buy a LOC harness and convert that to high level by cutting off the low level female connectors. Since they are almost the same cost as getting both Metra harness’ it might be easier?

@destin_meeks thoughts?

 

@destin_meeks when adding Loc for running RCA's to mono amp for subs do you set gains all the way up or down? This is from the factory deck. I can't remember off hand. Or do you treat it as the same for setting door speakers?

 

You typically turn the LOC gain all the way up (if it has one) but the amp gains need to be determined based on music choices, desired radio volume level, and sub’s rated power handling

 

Ok. Thanks. I had never to this point used Loc before, always had aftermarket decks that had designated sub outputs.

 

The passive ones are very simple devices. They’re just lowering the voltage. No crazy witchcraft lol