2008 Toyota Tundra Rimoody Amazon Head unit Install

Dad's truck stereo was starting to show it's age and the truck though it works great this was kind of an eye sore every time I stepped into it. The stereo was starting to have some problems with raising and lowering the volume. Dad was always having to use bluetooth head units in his truck that were mostly trash or ended up being dead when he wanted to use them because he has a bad habit of not charging anything. This 2008 SR5 model was so basic that it didn't have a backup camera which anyone that drives a vehicle of this size today will tell you it should almost be a requirement to sell a vehicle this big with a backup camera. I was on the hunt for a good quality head unit that came with a backup camera. There were quite a few offerings on eBay and Amazon. This head unit eventually stood out to me due to its bolt in nature and its good reviews.

The head unit itself is basically just a tablet inside of a plastic housing that connects to your vehicle using factory wiring and also offers blue tooth which is of a great help when backing up. I was initally concerned with the quality of the tablet. However my fears were unfounded as the performance of the radio has been very good. Even on the coldest of days my dad has told me that the radio has worked flawlessly. The picture below is the truck I installed the head unit into. Bright red 2008 Tundra with 150k miles and paw paw gold interior.

I'm not going to do a how to step by step as there are plenty of videos online on the process. It was all a very straight forward install. I think the hardest part of the whole process was wiring the camera as I didn't understand that there were settings hidden in the background of the menus that actually activated the camera. And also I had to eventually figure out that the pink wire had to get a signal from the reverse wire on the truck. The backup camera part of the process actually made this a 2 weekend process as I had to hunt down the solution with the help of a neighbor. Of course had I referenced the instruction manual the first time I probably would have figured this out but buried deep inside the instruction booklet there's a video that you have to scan the code for and it gives you a more detailed install explanation. Unfortunately the illustrations and the english instructions were very much written by someone using google translate. But it all eventually bolted in and worked.

Finishing this post off with a before and after. Unfortuantely I was so excited to get started that I had to get a stock photo from a gold interior tundra for the beginning. But as you can see fit and finish was perfect and the truck now has GPS/ Handsfree bluetooth/ rear backup cam and my dad figured out how to use it after a couple of days. I would install this head unit every time. It's low price point and overall quality It worked great and has little to no compromises especially for the under $200 price point. In some aspects I like it even better than the pioneer head unit that my truck came installed with.

Before

After