So, while I was pretty excited about the upgraded stereo, it didn’t go as planned. I know it had been a decade, or sadly two, since I installed an aftermarket stereo, but I figured, “How hard could it be?”.
So began my weekend adventure of installing the car stereo, only to be met with nothing. Absolutely nothing. I went as far as going to four different stores looking for a new wiring harness as I figured the cheap one I got off Amazon was labeled incorrectly. I even searched for the pinouts from the stereo and rewired everything manually according to that, and still nothing.
Finally, as a last-ditch effort, I bypassed the ignition wire and got the power directly running the stereo (Which, while it worked, meant that the stereo was on 24/7 even when the truck was off).
Trying to find out why this was the only way it would work, I scoured the internet and finally posted in a few subs on Reddit. Someone on Reddit was kind enough to let me know that the issue was that vehicles after 2003 needed a special harness as it was not simply a power signal but a data signal that turned on the stereo.
I looked into the additional harness to get this all going, and it was going to be another $100 for my model, which sadly broke the budget I allocated for this project. I still think it is odd that aftermarket stereos do not just have this module built in like the factory stereo does.
I packaged everything up and returned it; sadly, I was back to square one with a faulty aux input on my stereo, which I would not be able to live with. I found a couple of videos on YouTube that explained how the aux connection often breaks looks, and the soldered connections go bad. With a few examples, I was able to take apart the front of the factory stereo and resolder the aux connection back into place, and even added some extra glue around the plastic inside to make sure it wouldn’t be happening again.
After putting it all back together and reinstalling it in my truck, I once again had a working aux connection. While it sucks that I was not able to get a nice touchscreen upgrade with Carplay, I was able to save a couple hundred and still be able to carry out listening to podcasts and audiobooks on my drives, so it’s not a total loss after all.