haha sorry everyone. talk about running out of juice!
Turns out my neighbor is a master mechanic at a toyota dealership and did the entire job for $600 (he is one that originally quoted me 800). I couldn't bring myself to spend my time for that amount and so I pawned it off. Sorry!
To confirm, I believe I've read everything in this thread and no one has made the JBL amplifier work with any of the Scion units, correct (without bypassing the amp).
I'm about to embark on the nightmare of the evaporator core. I received my parts from rockauto earlier today and looking forward to starting. Not sure I'll ever finish.
I wanted to gather some of the data that I've found and hopefully help other people trying to do the same repair. It has been...
I just spent 30 minutes trying to find a way to post. My account was never activated so I got an error. I searched and searched and absolutely couldn't find a way to contact a moderator or ANYONE. Hard to do anyhting without posting ability!
FYI - the password reset emails came through fine...