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How To Bypass Factory Explorer amp

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Charlie

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How To Bypass Factory Amp On Ford Explorer
Charlie Larrabee

Read and understand all directions before attempting. Always take all safety precautions.:D

There are many people out there wanting to bypass their factory amp for many reasons. Whether your factory amp blew, or you are installing an aftermarket receiver with a built in amp, the amp must be bypassed. The factory amp is located on the passenger side, in the wheel well area.


They make amp bypass plugs, where you simply just remove the plugs from the factory amp and connect them together with the bypass plug. But, this requires that you can get to the factory amp, and requires ripping the car apart, plus you have to purchase the plug. This tutorial is for those who do not have the skill to do that, or are simply unwilling to spend the time and effort. This tutorial can be done by virtually anybody.

First off, what you need:
Wire cutters
Wire strippers
Electrical Tape, shrink tubing, solder, ect. to connect wires
A little patience (this can be done fairly quickly if you are experienced and confident with stripping wires, ect.)

Theory behind this tutorial: Bypass factory amp in the same manner as using a bypass plug, but not having to disconnect the amp or removing it, or even getting to it.

Procedure:
First, for safety reasons, you should disconnect your battery. (It shouldn’t be a problem if you don’t but safety is the number one goal)

Second, go to the rear passenger speaker. Remove this speaker. You will be accessing the wires through the hole of the speaker. The speaker can be removed by taking the grill off and removing the 4 screws.

Third, find your wire looms. In the hole where your beautiful Ford speaker was, take a flashlight and look up. You will see two wire looms (wire packs, ect) attached to the top of there. These are attached by plastic pins. These come out with a slight pull. Remove as many of these plastic plugs, so you can have as much wire to work with as possible. Now, remove the electrical tape/loom coatings on these, so you are down to the bare insulated wires. Be sure to keep these looms separate, though, because you only need to use one of them. However, you need to look at the wires in each to tell what one you need to use.

Four: Inside the looms, in one pack, you will see 7 wires. A Brown, Green, Org/Blu, Blk/Pink, and 3 black wires. DO NOT CUT THESE WIRES. These are for your rear taillights. Re-secure these wires up above. Inside the other loom, there will be 2 more sets loomed together. These are the wires you want. Once you have these 2 separate looms separated so you can see the wires, you should see 20 wires:
Grn/Org
Brn
Wht/Red
Wht/Grn
Gry/Blu
Yel
Blu/Blk
Tan/Yel
Lt Blu
Org/Red
Brn/Pink
Pur/Wht
Wht/Org
Blu/Lt Blu
Grn
Orn/Grn
A larger Grn/Pur
A larger Blk/Grn
Solid Blue
One will be un-insulated and bare

Five: Brace yourself and cut all of the wires in this loom EXCEPT the bare un-insulated one, the larger Grn/Pur, larger Blk/Grn and the solid blue wire. (those larger ones are for the amp power, negative, and remote signal)

Six: Strip the ends of the cut wires, on the side of the loom that heads toward the front of the car. The end that heads toward the rear of the car is unneeded.

Seven: Find these wire pairs and connect them together. You may wish to not secure them permanently until you have everything hooked up, and test all of the balances. Just twist them together with electrical tape/wire nut until you can verify everything is correct.
Pairs to secure together:
Grn/Org to Brn
Wht/Red to Wht/Grn
Gry/Blu to Yel
Blu/Blk to Tan/Yel
Lt Blu toOrg/Red
Brn/Pink to Pur/Wht
Wht/Org to Blu/Lt Blu
Grn to Orn/Grn

Eight: Now that you have these wires connected, (should be 8 pairs total) test your stereo and make sure everything is coming through fine. Test all the balances and make sure all of the connections are connected properly. Then, once you are satisfied everything is correct, connect the wires together permanently, via soldering, ect.

Nine: Enjoy your stereo with the bypassed amp!

If you have any quesitons, please let me know or email me at Webmastercharlie@gmail.com:usa:
 



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Very nice post...Pictures would make it much better if you have them. :)
 






I have pictures of what it looks like afterwards and such, and will upload them, but could somebody take some pics for me of how the looms look before being opened, and some that show how they are mounted?

Thanks
 






That's sounds a lot harder then just removing the rear panel with simple hand tools & 30 minutes.(10 or less if you do it a few times) You don't even have to remove the whole panel just enought to get the bypass harness in there.
Not to mention your hacking the wires up.
If it works for you, fine I guess.
Also the 2 door version is different the the 4 door The harness isn't behind the speaker in a 4 door.
 






Thanks for letting me know about the 4 door being different, and actually this only takes 5-10 minuites. I chose to cut the wires instead of removing the rear panel, because I had no need to ever use the amp again, because the amp blew.
 






That's sounds a lot harder then just removing the rear panel with simple hand tools & 30 minutes.(10 or less if you do it a few times) You don't even have to remove the whole panel just enought to get the bypass harness in there.
Not to mention your hacking the wires up.
If it works for you, fine I guess.
Also the 2 door version is different the the 4 door The harness isn't behind the speaker in a 4 door.
If you remove the rear panel, how do you route wires from there to the stereo in the dash? It seems like that will take much longer than 10 minutes.
 






In addition to cutting and slicing wires inside the door panel to bypass the factory amp, wouldn't you also have to cut off the rectangular plug that connects to the factory head unit and splice on a plug that fits the new replacement head unit? Also, the wires on the rectangular factory plug are smaller gauge than the wires that connect to the various speakers. Can these small wires handle the output from a new head unit with an integrated amp?
 






You connect the amp bypass harness when you remove the rear panel, no cutting.

The stock wires are fine for standard HU's.
 






hello!!

first off let me state that i am a new member and i found this site doing a google search on "bypassing factory amplifier".

I own a 97 mercury mountaineer and i recently bought a new head unit, i would like to purchase a bypass harness but i am having a difficult time finding one anywhere. I wanna use the amp and power in the new headunit to power the door speakers as im sure that it will be a cleaner signal than the factory amplifier.

I started off with a SCOSCHE fd021 harness which on the back listed it worked for a 96-97 mountaineer, after purchase i found out int he instructions that i needed to swap it for a fdk10 harness. But i couldn't find a fdk10, although i did find a fdk106, and luckily it worked the same. Now that the headunit is ready to install i tried to create my own sort of "bypass" line with some yellow and blue crimp two prong connectors, one on each end of a short wire, to shove into each the harness's once i finally, omg and i mean finally figured out the cryptic color codes of the wires on each harness. Wished i would have found this thread about 8 hours earlier than i did.

ok so anyhow, that being said i have a factory amp in the right rear quarter but it doesnt come with the subwoofer like the JBL premium ones i have read about. I suspect though that amp will use the same harness as the one with the subwoofer, but i could be wrong.

I would, and i still might, provide pictures, but alas my computer is also broken atm, a bad power supply and motherboard, i found 2 burnt cables on the connector for the CPU power on both the mobo and PSU connector. i am using my parents comp atm to post this and its a old win98 machine. i will try to use my work machine and my digi cam to get some pics up.

so again to recap, im looking for a factory amp bypass harness for a 97 mercury mountaineer. thanks to anyone who can assist me.

Shawn Mullins
 






www.crutchfield.com sells the correct harness. Call them. Also most stereo install shops have them.
 






where is the harness in a four door? if i just cut it do i have to run the speaker wires to my new amp, or what. right now i ran the blue amp wire to the HU to just run my subs but it didnt work. please help.
 






blown factory amp question

Hi -
Have a 94 Explorer 2DR - the driver side speaker was crackling bad, replaced the front speakers with some other Ford speakers - not the JBL's that came with it originally... didn't help. Went back to place that installed stereo and they said it was a bad factory intergrated amp and would cost 70 bucks to bypass it. If we bypass it, what will happen to the factory subwoofer in the back? Can I install an aftermarket amp? Don't want to compromise sound quality, so I'm worried about not having subwoofer. And don't want to give up cargo space for a box.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Cameron
 






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