wiring aftermarket head unit to factory woofer

i have read posts about doing this but the problem is i dont have the same color wires. it calls for a red/black (woofer -) a brown/orange (woofer +) green/purple (mute) a black/green (ground) and lt green/purple power.

i have a 97 xlt and i do not have a red/black and brown/orange wire, but i do have a plug that has a red, black, and white wire could this be the ones im looking for? Im looking for a way to use the stock woofer with the new head unit, but cant figure it out.
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white = amp turn on
red = speaker +
black = speaker -

we've cut one end off of RCA's and hooked both + to red and both - to black then plugged it into the deck. gives it a low level input. kinda ghetto but it works and sounds surprisingly not bad

what are the wire colors at the headunit plug?? The pics you have are of the plug at the amp end.

heres the 2 plugs that went into the stock unit, the rectangle one fits one of the aftermarket harnesses and the wires go into the head unit

ok, yeah. you've got the old style JBL sound system. you've got to run some wires it looks like.

just looked on mitchell and these wires are you sub amp outputs:
black/litegreen = sub +
black/white = sub -


the plug at the top is your input side and that's where we need to tap into but I cant see the wires man...strip back some of that loom and take another picture.



DONT post another picture like you did...you had me confused as hell for a while since you didnt get the colors right...took me a while to realize that all those blue ones were different color wires before I could find them on the diagram I have....

I looked at the wiring and your sub amp is apparently hot at all times so you dont have to worry about splicing in the power/ground wires...you just gotta get an input signal. I'd say just splice into the bypass harness you have and get a passive crossover for the sub signal so you dont have to run a wire all the way up front.

anyway, the wires are the same colors into the amp:
brown/orange stripe = input +
red/black = input -

That's what the wiring diagram says the wires should be, but that's not what they are. I've got a '97 EB, and my sub amp is the same as the one pictured, with the same connector on top. 3 wires, one black, one red, and the other is white.

I've ran a wire back from my Kenwood's sub outs, hooked the + to the red, and the - to the black, but I'm not getting any output from the sub. The white wire is supposedly mute (if Kelly2 is correct), should that be connected or not? Guess I'll try disconnecting it, and if that doesn't work, I'll verify that there's power getting to the sub amp (though it's supposedly hot at all times, and not switched).

Magicland said:

That's what the wiring diagram says the wires should be, but that's not what they are. I've got a '97 EB, and my sub amp is the same as the one pictured, with the same connector on top. 3 wires, one black, one red, and the other is white.

I've ran a wire back from my Kenwood's sub outs, hooked the + to the red, and the - to the black, but I'm not getting any output from the sub. The white wire is supposedly mute (if Kelly2 is correct), should that be connected or not? Guess I'll try disconnecting it, and if that doesn't work, I'll verify that there's power getting to the sub amp (though it's supposedly hot at all times, and not switched).

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i would assume white is remote turn on, not mute.

kelly2 said:

white = amp turn on
red = speaker +
black = speaker -

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white needs to be connected to the amp turn on of your deck. it's not a mute wire

kelly2 said:

white needs to be connected to the amp turn on of your deck. it's not a mute wire

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Thanks for clearing that up. The wiring diagram I have (Mitchell) lists it as "Mute". Of course, it has the sub amp input wire colors wrong too. Guess I've got to run another wire back from the front to hook that to the HU. Explains why the sub wasn't working.

My Kenwood HU has a left and right sub output. Should these just be wired together and connected to the sub input (as there's only the one sub)? Also, anyone know what freq's I should cut off the front and rear speakers at, and send to the sub? Should there be some overlap?

Talkin' to myself...

Well, I wired the 2 sub-outs together. I had a lovely blue/white wire running from the front to the back which whoever butchered the original setup ran, dunno what he had it hooked to, but I cut it and hooked it to the white wire on the sub amp input, and the other end to the amp on lead from my Kenwood HU, and voila, SUB! No pop when I turn everything on either. I posted the '97 wiring diagram in the wiring diagram thread, if anyone's interested.

i have a 1997 explorer XLT and i just had to buy a new factory amp replacement because the driver side speaker would go in and out. when i replaced the factory speakers with new ones and put in a new amp its still cutting in and out, but when you turn the volume up it comes back on like its supposed to, so i decided it was the harness. i also decided to cut the factory harness and by pass the amp all together unless i can isolate my problem to fix i will leave it like that. i would like to be able to use the amp though because i lost a lot of volume by by passing the amp. what i need is someone who can help me figure this out or provided a wiring diagram for the wires going to and from the amp. to ensure i have positive and negative speaker wires hoked up correctly

so i made a trip to the junk yard today and i picked up a stock sub enclosure along with the stock amp from a 93 limited and also from a 97 limited...and i got it all for only $30...SCORE!!!...anyway i am thinking of buying an aftermarket sub to fit the enclosure and run the two amps in tandom to double the power...does anybody know how many watts these amps put out

I'm not sure how much power the stock sub amp puts out, but it does a decent job powering my 10" JL Audio stealthbox. Of course, I'm not trying to shake the paint off the car with it, but one should be more than sufficient for the stock sub (two might blow it).

The original stock sub in my '97 blew with just the stock amp, because the foam ring on the speaker had dryrotted. I'm assuming a sub from the junkyard might suffer the same fate. The stealthbox ($40, craigslist) has taken all the stock amp can send it without any problem.

well im deffinately going aftermarket on that sub...i already have a punch p3 in the back so im going to get the rca signal from the amps rca output made for a second amp...then just run the power and ground from the amp as well...this is going to save me alot of wiring time...i figured i may as well use both amps since i got em...i also want to figure out what they put out because if they put out more than my head unit ill get 2 more and use them for the front and back jbl's...btw i got the jbl's from the two limited explorers as well so now i got the jbl two ways in the fromt and back...they sound great...especially for stock speakers...this is gonna be the greatest stock setup ever...on the cheap...anyway if you happen to figure out the wattage on these id love to know

well from a little bit of research it this is the infor i got...from 2 different people one said they put out 70w and the other said they put out 90w rms...so maybe its 70w with an rms rating of 90w...also they both said they are 4ohm amps...this is from one of the sites

The AE170DB Subwoofer is a 70 Watt mono-bass
amplifier which features distortion limiting capability.
Designed to attain 38dB of gain, the rated power
output is supplied to a single 4 Ohm load, with a
signal output of 0.21V RMS. The crossover is
designed to attenuate signal output 3dB at 600Hz.
Total Harmonic Distortion (T.H.D.) figures of less than
0.1% are typical across the bandwidth of the amplifier.
Max watts are 130 but that is at full failure

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kelly2 said:

white needs to be connected to the amp turn on of your deck. it's not a mute wire

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Hi!

I had a question. I connected the black and red wires to the subwoofer wires as you described. I connected the white wire to the power on the back of the in-dash unit. Is that correct?

I got no sound, but wanted to make sure it was wired right first.

Thanks for your help.

kcampbe said:

Hi!

I had a question. I connected the black and red wires to the subwoofer wires as you described. I connected the white wire to the power on the back of the in-dash unit. Is that correct?

I got no sound, but wanted to make sure it was wired right first.

Thanks for your help.

Click to expand...

Black -
Red+
White Remote On which should be a blue cable on the back on your HU harness


Just did this today, works like a charm!

pookapa said:

heres the 2 plugs that went into the stock unit, the rectangle one fits one of the aftermarket harnesses and the wires go into the head unit

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can anyone tell me which speakers these wires go to? this is the exact config my factory harness is wired

so what about splicing everything off of the radio...i know all speaker signal goes there first so why not just splice off of that to the amps...this my be the way it is stock but i wouldnt know because i have a standard xlt with a stock box i pulled from a eddie bauer...someone enlighten me plz

6 in sub?

Thanks. So the sub is a 6 in sub did not know they made them that small. Wanted to replace it but not for sure where to look for one. I am in the process of replacing all speakers and head unit in my 01 sport.