Auto antennae for 80 series

[fester2au]

Guys I have checked this out a bit before and searched with no real result.
My 80 has the auto + up/down button. I cannot work out how to wire it with the aftermarket head unit to get the antennae to trigger. I'm pretty sure my issue is the triggering as I know the antennae works with direct application of current and I replaced the ECU as mine was a bit suss. However I can't seem to work out which wire the headunit trigger goes to and I'm wondering now if there is more than 1 wire involved in the system that has the auto button. I would really like to get this working correctly as keeping the antennae up is giving it a flogging on low garages etc.

[oldmate]

there are four wires running to the ecu (looking at the wiring diagram)

they are

red/green tracer
red/blue
red/black
black/red

It says they all comef rom the radio if you don't have the cd player or amplifier (stacker on sahara models is my guess)

can't tell what voltage is sent to which and when though. If you have the original radio and it works with the antenna you could probably figure it out. Or just throw 12 volt at the wires untill it works properly.

[Simmo88]

I have spend some time playing around with the wires aswell to no avail. I couldn't choose which wire to power the antenna ECU off and just decided against it in fear of blowing it up. So i just bypassed a the ECU so I can use the Up/Down buttons. It would be great to get it to auto go up and down with the radio, and even the CDL if I get adventurous. Lucky for me, the previous owner hacked away my loom to install the CD player as apose to buying a plug, so I dont have much to work with under the dash :(

[fester2au]

there are four wires running to the ecu (looking at the wiring diagram)

they are

red/green tracer
red/blue
red/black
black/red

It says they all comef rom the radio if you don't have the cd player or amplifier (stacker on sahara models is my guess)

can't tell what voltage is sent to which and when though. If you have the original radio and it works with the antenna you could probably figure it out. Or just throw 12 volt at the wires untill it works properly.

Yeah I've seen that part of the wiring loom but nothing I've found indicates how the power supply triggers. I would have thought it was all in the ECU as long as you apply the correct power but doesn't seem so. I've tried combinations of throwing power at all those wires to no avail. At least not from the headunit trigger. I tried applying power to the up down wires which are blue/green and blue/yellow but all that achived was melting those wires and maybe frying a bit in the ECU. Not sure if that fried the bit orr if it was already toasted before I got to it. Have a new ECU now and repaired the wires but applying power to only those wires you list does nothing. I do know my antennae works as I can apply power to teh actual plug and it worrks fine.

[fester2au]

I have spend some time playing around with the wires aswell to no avail. I couldn't choose which wire to power the antenna ECU off and just decided against it in fear of blowing it up. So i just bypassed a the ECU so I can use the Up/Down buttons. It would be great to get it to auto go up and down with the radio, and even the CDL if I get adventurous. Lucky for me, the previous owner hacked away my loom to install the CD player as apose to buying a plug, so I dont have much to work with under the dash :(

Simmo you will see my comments above re blowing up the circuit so yeah caution is required. I have part of the original loom but none of it is in service for the aftermarket headunit so I haven't even tried to source an adaptor loom for it. Not sure if there is a suitable adaptor for an 80 Sahara anyway. I used one for our Echo but it was simple it only had one antennae wire and the headunit onyl has one antennae wire.

How did you do the wiring to get the up/down buttons to work that would at least be better than what I have now which is nothing. I was tempted to buy an aftermarket electric antennae so that I at least had the auto up down function trigger by the headunit but the option of half mast is also handy. Alternatively I know some headunits liek Pioneer can run a CD from a powered off state and therefore for CD listening at least the antennae stays down. Offroad I'm most likely to listen to the Ipod but I don't know if my headunit will power the antannae down if the source is the ipod. The other benefit if this would work is I would have another dash blank to add an auxillary switch.

If I could even find someone with a loom adaptor to see how the connection is made would help and I thought of the Americans but I don't know if the Lexus got that button. I'm pretty sure only GXL's to about 93 had the auto function with later models only having an up/down button.

There is one 2 wire switch in the loom with some of the above colours (can't remember) so it is clearly part of that circuit and I even tried jumping them together before adding the headunit trigger but nothing either.

[oldmate]

Looking at the diagram I have which is the first toyota one they printed for the original 1990 model 80 series, the up and down buttons works independantly of the ecu. So if they are not working i would suspect a faulty antenna, buttons, or wiring in between.

Of course later models may have changed but i'd think that's unlikely.

[Simmo88]

I ended up having to buy a second repair manual cause mine showed the wires in a certain colour, but didn't match what was there. The Gregories one is the one I used, and yes the wiring changes, I think in 1993 and 1995 with the updates. Basically what I did was use the diagram to trace the wires from the dash to the ECU plug in the LH kick panel, then traced the out going wires to the antenna, and simply made a pair of jumpers so that the power goes through the switch, and instead of the input to the ECU, just outputs to the antenna. I also recall my Up/Down switch was internally wired wrong. I did some continuity testing on it, and yeah something was a miss, but i fixed it. No idea why it was wrong. I think from memory the wiring changes colour at least once, which was not reflected in my initial service manual, but the Gregorys showed it how it was, and had the extra info on the 1995 update. After hours of frustration and countless dismantling of the dash, I decided to leave it at that, there was no way I was going to risk the ECU and have to chase down another one. As for the aftermarket plugs, I just meant it would have been handy to know which wires are part of the plugs, and I do seem to recall the antenna being on its own plug, and wouldn't be carried over. But I thought it might be possible to jump the antenna output from the radio across. I was even tempted to spend the 20 bucks and get an old standard toyota radio or cd player of ebay, but this was before I realised I had nothing to plug it into. I think we really need somebody with a working system to test it for us. Good luck.