How to: - install a Aftermarket Stereo if you have a JBL Factory System. Intructions | Ford Explorer Forums - Serious Explorations

  • Register Today It's free!

How to: install a Aftermarket Stereo if you have a JBL Factory System. Intructions

Prefix for threads which are instructional.

williams.cory

Well-Known Member
Joined
October 10, 2008
Messages
510
Reaction score
0
City, State
Rust Filled, Michigan
Year, Model & Trim Level
'97 5.0
I have a 1997 Explorer Eddie Bauer that has the upgraded JBL sound system. THESE INTRUCTIONS ARE ONLY FOR THOSE WHO HAVE A JBL SYSTEM AND WISH TO PUT IN A AFTERMARKET HEAD UNIT!! I have recently ordered a aftermarket head unit for my Explorer and out I went to install it. I had no clue that having a JBL System was a completely different installing process and it Really was a pain to do! 2 days now my dash has been torn apart and wires hanging everywhere ( what a mess!!! ). But anyways, here are some intructions I found on the internet.




Determine if your Explorer has the JBL audio system or if it not upgraded. If you have JBL, you will have more work to do, but the end product will sound better.
Go to your local car audio shop ( or good ol Wal-Mart ) and ask for the installation kit for your year of Explorer. You will need a mounting piece, wiring harness, and if you want the tuner to work properly, an aftermarket antenna. When installing a new headunit, you will not be able to get the antenna to go up when it should, so you either need to buy one and mount it or just skip it. For me, my antenna was stuck in the up position, so I could use it.
Take out the 2 8mm screws that are located in the stock headunit in your car. They are located under the radio controls, but above the A/C conrols.

Open the headunit box and open the wiring harness package. Keep all packaging because it has necessary information on it.

The harness' package should have a list of colors and corresponding functions. There should be a similar list on the headunit. Ex. Black-Ground, Red-12v (+), etc.

If, in Step 3, you determined that you DO NOT have the JBL audio system, pull both harnesses out of the package. Using the key in Step 7, connect the wires. You can use solder or you can twist them together. Make sure you use electrical tape to cover the connections. If you don't, wires can SHORT.

If you DO have the JBL audio system, look at the wiring harness's you bought. Find the one that is long and skinny. That is the important one. Hook it in the same way. On the key, you will see things like "Left Rear (+)" and "Right Front (-)." Ignore these for now.

ONLY IF YOU HAVE JBL Take out the passenger side kick panel. You should see a bunch of wiring harness's. The one that is closest to the seat and door is the one that you want. Take a 9v battery and connect two wires to it.

Then touch the wires to the wiring harness in the kick panel. If you hear a click from a speaker, you got the right harness.

Then, you want to determine which speaker is which. Label the wires. If you care a lot, you can determine the polarity of each wire by taking off the door panel and touching the 9v to the wires again and look at the speaker. If the speaker goes out, then which ever wire the (+) end of the 9v is touching is + and the - is -. If it goes in, then the + is - and the - is +.

JBL ONLY (warning: I hold no responsibility if something goes wrong here. You could mess yourself and/or your car up here. Be careful.)

Now that you know which wire is which, cut the 4 pairs of wires. Cut them about 2 inches above the wiring harness. Now, you have 4 pairs of wires sticking out of the wring harness. Ignore these. Take the other side, the ones not connected to the harness and hook a 3ft length of 16 gauge wire to each wire. Label these "Right Front (+)" etc.

Now, go to the h/u in your car and pull the trim around it. It all should come out. Once you have it out a little bit, look in the back. On the side with the Rear Wiper controls, you will have to screw two Philip's screws in the back and take off the rear wiper control knob. On the side with the cigarette lighter and the 4 wheel drive knob, you will have to take out one screw. Then you need to unplug the 4 Wheel drive harness. After that, pull the two wires off the back of the lighter. Then, the whole thing should slide out.

Unplug the 2 wiring harnesses for the factory h/u.

Get the h/u out of the trim by finding the tabs and pressing them and sliding it out.

Now, using the mounting piece and it's directions, mount the new h/u in the trim.

Run the 8 wires from the kick up to the hole that is currently in your dash. Make sure they are labeled on each end.

Connect the long harness to the other piece that you unplugged from the factory h/u. Then using the key on the new h/u, connect the 8 wires from the kick to the wires on the new h/u.

Now that all the wires for the h/u are in, reconnect the lighter, 4 Wheel drive, and wiper controls and screw the screws back in.
Slide the trim and all back in to place.
Put the 8mm screws back in.
Put the passenger kick panel back in.


Apparantly the JBL systems are really different. The main radio up front is not the actual radio, it just controls the radio which is in the back cargo area on the passenger side next to the subwoofer and sub amp. This has been a real headache for me ! I thought id post this info i found and hopefully it will help someone else out there doing the same thing i was.
 



Join the Elite Explorers for $20 each year.
Elite Explorer members see no advertisements, no banner ads, no double underlined links,.
Add an avatar, upload photo attachments, and more!
.





1. Look at your original thread, there are other ways then this which are easier and less work, I believe I gave you three.

2. The radio is the radio, the piece in the back is the amp, not the radio.

3. You don't want to just go into harnesses and put a 9 volt battery to wires, if it's not the right wire you can fry something, pop fuses, etc. You might know they are the wires(because you looked, checked randomly with a 9 volt[which is bad], etc.) but you always want to check before you try anything. Other people might have had someone in there doing a remote start, getting something fixed or replaced, etc. and the installer didn't put the harness back in the right location, making someone who doesn't know what they are doing reading this randomly through 9 volts down a data wire, abs wire, airbag wire, ground wire, ground trigger, etc and blow something up, fry something, or pop fuses like said earlier.

3. If you hook on to the power antenna wire it will move up and down. And the antenna plug is in the back where the amp is then two regular wires go up to the front to plug into the radio. I believe there is an antenna wire somewhere up front in the dash or kick panel that is a regular antenna cable, might just need an extension then.
 






I was just researching around on the internet and this is what i found. Thanks for correcting me if im wrong. Theres a lot of posts that im reading and they all dont say the same thing. Its hard to know what to do and its very confusing. Why is it some people say the radio is in the back? I'm just wondering, as this doesnt make sense to me either.
 






I was just researching around on the internet and this is what i found. Thanks for correcting me if im wrong. Theres a lot of posts that im reading and they all dont say the same thing. Its hard to know what to do and its very confusing. Why is it some people say the radio is in the back? I'm just wondering, as this doesnt make sense to me either.

Most people just don't know what they are talking about and say things not thinking. The radio itself is in the front, that's what interprets the signals from am/fm, cd, cassette, whatever you have and sends it to the speakers, in your case, amp. The amp only amplifies the signal either cleaning it up, giving it more power, etc.
 






oh ok. Thank you for having the patience and time to educate me on this Oplitic! I really appreciate it. I'm 16 and this is my first time intalling a HU. I understand how it works and all, but having to go through this JBL setup thing is confusing! I have wrote down the wire colors you gave as sated in the other thread. It should go good tomarrow and hopefully ill have it working.
 






Oh and also, is there any way to delete this thread? Because I didnt really know who all this fits together and at the time hooking the (v battery up and that intructions i wrote out seemed good at the time.....
 






Just kinda embarrased at my not knowing of this..... thats why i wanted to delete it.

Thank You for your help
 






The radio is the radio, the piece in the back is the amp, not the radio.

I'm sorry, but that's wrong. The radio is indeed in the rear of the car next to the subwoofer on a JBL system. The head unit is nothing more than a controller. You cannot take a JBL head unit and make it work as a radio in any other application. It doesn't even receive the antenna signal. That goes to the rear radio.

I have found some inconsistencies here that can all be addressed with some searching. I've done a few of these JBL installs. They aren't that difficult. There is a Metra harness that makes it all very easy. It plugs into the harness back in the rear at the radio and brings all those wires (and the antenna lead!) back up to your head unit. You will need to run separate harness for the subwoofer. It's actually quite easy to do. Here is the correct harness for the JBL system:

http://www.installer.com/item/display_item.php?it=70-5601

Your rear radio will now be totally disconnected from your system and the controls on the back of the console will no longer work. Those may be able to be brought back into play with a PAC module.

Most aftermarket head units have a lead for the power antenna. Just follow the instructions on the harnesses and it will work just fine.
 






I have a Ford explorer with the JBL and had best buy install a new radio in it.
The guy really *****ed about the JBL system

He did not have the correct ford wiring hardness but he said it did not matter as I would loose the sub anyway.

He had a hard time getting the power antenna to work. I don't know if he messed up or it was the only way to hook it up. Now the antenna will not go down unless I power the car off. It use to go down when I turned the radio off.
If I listen to the new radio with the car off the antenna will go down when the radio is turned off. Why do I care? In a car wash I turn the radio off to put the antenna down. now I can't do it unless I turn the motor off.
Is there a way to make it work like it did with the JBL radio?

Also my new pioneer radio has 2 low voltage outputs. Why could he not hook these up to the subwoofer?

It does not sound as good with just 4 speakers and no sub. He told me to buy and new sub and amp. Thats a bunch of cash, the old sub was not great but good enough.

Any help is appreciated.
 






Sounds like you had a "lazy, just wanna get this done and working asap" kinda installer. He could have just found the power wire for the antenna, which was on the rear tuner, and brought it up front to the POWER ANTENNA REMOTE wire, which does like the stock system did, only UP when your listening to the radio, and he could have gotten the stock sub to work too, but its not like a regular sub/amp combo where you just use the RCA outputs, you would have had to splice into the sub stock amp with a speaker wire connection, it would be more worth it to get a nice little 10 and a 300watt amp installed
 






I'll be even more direct. Your installer was a hack. I will probably catch hell for this, but I have yet to find one single installer at Best Buy who knew his ass from a hole in the ground. Not a single one. I wouldn't let them vacuum my car, let alone work on it. Don't they train anyone??? I have received the same kind of answers from them in the past as you just got.

First, let's assume he at least hooked up the correct power antenna wire. My God...how hard can that be?? It's labeled for crying out loud! If he has, you should be able to go into your menu and switch the power antenna from "power" to "radio". Those may not be the exact terms, but you'll see when you get into it. (you don't say what radio...so I'm just guessing it has a menu. Mine does) Right now, it appears the antenna is going on when the unit powers on. You just want it to go when it's on AM or FM. The menu does that. However, if the idiot used the remote amp turn on lead, then you are going to have to pull the radio and rewire it correctly. You need that amp turn on anyway.

Next, I would kick this guy's ass for telling you that you can't have a factory subwoofer. It just takes a little work is all. First, did he use the correct harness kit? Metra 70-5601 It's a large kit that includes a long antenna lead to bring everything from the back of the car (where the JBL radio is installed) to the front where your new head unit is. When he was running that harness, he should have run an RCA for your subwoofer too. I can't remember if the Metra harness has the enable wire for the amp or not, but if not, you run a wire with the RCA and harness for that. (I think that's what I did) Power for the amp is already there at the amp. You use a simple adapter from RCA to two wires and hook it up to the amp plug in the correct spot. You now have the factory subwoofer. Be advised you may have to resist or regulate the enable voltage to the factory sub amp. It uses 5V from the factory and your new radio is probably 12V. You can get a pop on turn on. The fix is easy.

All this just takes some time. It sure isn't hard. Next time, do some research locally...find guys with great systems installed and find out where they went. Usually, the smaller local shops do a great job because they can't afford any reputation problems. They won't be around long. So you may pay more...but as you can see, it's well worth it.
 






Thanks Cobra!

I am not sure I understand the 5v vs 12 v issues.

I was wondering if the inputs to the factory sub amp are spearker level inputs or low line inputs. It seems it would make a differece as If I use the RCA jacks they are low level and a amp expecting a large input would basically not be able to amplify the signal enough to get output. On the other hand if the amp expects low level input and I put in speaker level input via a splice then it might just blow something up.

Could you clarify?

Bob..
 






"Right now, it appears the antenna is going on when the unit powers on."

The antenna goes up when I turn the car on and only goes down with the car off.

With the car off the radio can control the antenna. (I use the key ignition position to run the radio with engine off)

So it seems the car being on over rides the radios input. Once the engine is running the radio can't control the antenna as it being in the up or down position.
 






harness

i have a 97 mountaineer...it has the jbl system...i'm tryin to switch to aftermarket stereo because it doesn't have the cd changer magazine...i went to walmart to get dash kit and harness...i got the scosche fd021 harness because it is said to fit 86-97 ford, lincoln, mercury vehicles non premium/jbl sound...it has 2 seperate sets of wires...both have one long and skinny plug and one square one...one set is for power etc the other is for the speakers...but i can only plug in the long skinny to the power...it says i need an interface...but i still cant hook up the harness to use the wires...does anyone have pics of jbl sound aftermarket hookup...please and thanks p.s. i'm new to mountaineers always rode chevy...but love the truck
 






Ramirez,
I think you need the metra 70-5601 harness that Cobraguy was talking about.
The way he explains it is that you simply replace the plug that you pull from
your old radio with the plug from the new radio/head unit and into the Metra 70-5601
harness. Read his post above he 's done a couple of these before and knows what he is
talking about. You don't have the "Premium" system in your truck, You have the
"JBL Luxury System". Ford only used this system from 1995-1997.
Cheers!
 






Ramirez,
I think you need the metra 70-5601 harness that Cobraguy was talking about.
The way he explains it is that you simply replace the plug that you pull from
your old radio with the plug from the new radio/head unit and into the Metra 70-5601
harness. Read his post above he 's done a couple of these before and knows what he is
talking about. You don't have the "Premium" system in your truck, You have the
"JBL Luxury System". Ford only used this system from 1995-1997.
Cheers!

I must disagree about the part about the jbl sound system only being in explorers from 1995 to 97' i have a 92 explorer eddie bauer edition that has a jbl system in it, well the sub in the back right was a jbl before i replaced it, either that or the guy that sold it to me wasnt actually sure about the year. which is entirely all to possible
 






There were different "styles" though, some of the JBL systems just had premium front speakers, with an amp and sub in back, others had 2 amps in back for the doors, and sub, and the headunit was just a remote basically, no amp or anything inside it.
 






Good info. Hoping to have everything I need by next weekend so I can tackle it out.
 






I came across this thread while searching for a Stock Replacement CD Deck for my 92 Explorer XLT, that I just bought and wanted to post a comment.

I do appreciate all the information on this thread that I actually took time to read, and while some is legit, some off, and some just random, I just wanted to clarify something.

1. If you buy an aftermarket adapter to use the factory wiring (ie scosche), you will have all the wiring and connectors to utilize the same exact connectors that the factore/oem unit used. And they are less than $20 at Walmart.

2. You can utilize the factory amplifier on aftermarket stereos, but is not recommended. If you buy a cheap 25x4 built in amp stereo, you would wanna utilize the factory amplifier to increase the sound output.

3. If you don't want to use the built in amplifier that Ford so generously thought was awesome, and you have a high output or your own amp, you can buy an Amp Bypass adapter (also less than $20 at Walmart) and bypass the current amp installed.

4. And this is a really important one.... Enought of arguing over what wire to install your power antenna on.... Even a novice that just bought his first stereo and is trying to install it himself knows, that.... And here is the super important stuff.......

ALL STEREOS HAVE A SIGNAL OUTPUT WIRE, THIS IS USED FOR AMPS, POWER ANTENNAS, AND ANYTHING YOU WANT TURNED ON WHEN THE STEREO COMES ON, LIKE STROBES!!!!!!!

There is no Amp wire, there is no Antenna Power wire, there is just an accessory out, that sends a small amperage of 12volts to a remote device that then detects this power, and draws power through another channel, such as a relay or battery power. Thus if you have an amp and a power antenna you..... Guess what, really important.....

AMPS, CD CHANGERS, POWER ANTENNAS, ANYTHING REQUIRING A 12VOLT SWITCH ON POWER, CAN BE ALL PLUGGED INTO THE SAME WIRE.... SO GO NUTS AND SPLICE BOTH YOUR AMP AND POWER ANTENNA INTO THE SAME WIRE!!!!!!!!

Seriously, it isn't gonna hurt anything, as long as it has a seperate power source, like an amp has a seperate connector for a main 12volt power cable. You can plug both into the same exact (99% of vehicles) light blue wire.
 



Join the Elite Explorers for $20 each year.
Elite Explorer members see no advertisements, no banner ads, no double underlined links,.
Add an avatar, upload photo attachments, and more!
.





I can't think of anything more dangerous than your post. To make a blanket statement like that is so fool hardy it should be removed. Overload that circuit and see what happens. You could be safe...and you could be so off base it isn't funny.

You shouldn't turn on a Ford amp with a 12V source. Ford doesn't do it...and neither should you. Thus the infamous "pop".

The use of that circuit to control a relay(s) is a much more desirable statement...and much safer and professional.

Welcome to the Forum...but please be careful about making blanket statements without clarification. Since you don't know what everyone could possible be adding to a circuit, you could be contributing to a huge hazard situation. We just don't know what each circuit will draw...even if it has a separate power source.
 






Back
Top