Headunit replacement

[Elephant_Berls]

ok ive decided to replace my stock 99 explorer headunit. I bought a wire harness kit and a Mounting kit. Is this all i need? they had some antenna adaptores there also. Will i need one of those too? Also how the hell do i get the ford stereo out. ITs got 4 holes. Do i need to take out the dash?

 

[Heath]

There is a special tool to remove them... I believe that Walmart sells them....

 

[Elephant_Berls]

i have a problem. I got the dash out and the damn stereo wont come off. But i cant fix that. Only problem is there are 2 wire harneses on the back of the stereo. Does this mean this thing has a factory amp?

 

[Elephant_Berls]

help im stuck. Will i have to rewire all the damn speakers to my new headunit? How can i tell for sure if i have a factory amp. Its a 1999 xlt explorer.

 

[Elephant_Berls]

looks like its defeated me. Im giving up. I did not know it would be this much trouble.

 

[97Sportrac]

I believe one of the harnesses has orange, blue, red, black, etc colors and is for power, ground etc... while the other harness should be grey, white, purple and green and that should be for speaker outputs...

I'm not sure if you have an amp or not but let me tell you I did my amp bypass today and it took me 6hrs because I did an extremely precise job and had to make the wrong harness fit. Anyhow it was a real ****en ***** to do it but in the end I think it was worth it. For ideas on how to do that check my thread in here it's pretty comprehensive.

The good news might be that you may not have a hidden amp because i believe from 98 onwards you they had the amps built into the decks.

 

[Elephant_Berls]

i thought the wiring harness was suposd to make all the wires fit everything from speakers to the ground and such. Jesus i hope i didnt return this stuff to find out it dosnt have an amp to begin with. $#$@%#@#$

ok did i have to splice the speaker wire to the my after market head unit. DOH i bet that second harness was for the speaker wire. It looked like to many wires tho. I was expecting to Splice the aftermarket harness to my new headunit and just plug it in.

let me know whats up and if i messed up returning the stuff. Also if anyone knows if the 1999 xlt explorer sport has a amp please let me know.

 

[Gimp]

Like 97Sportrac said, in a '99 factory radio, the amplifier for the speakers is built into the head unit and you will only have an external (remote) amplifier for the factory subwoofer (and you will only have it if you have the factory subwoofer). The amp was integrated into the head unit beginning with the 1998 Exploder. 97Sportrac is also correct in that of the two harnesses that plug into the factory receiver, one is for the speaker wires (one + and one - for each of the four channels) and one is for the power - constant 12V+, switched 12V+, ground, remote turn-on (or elec. antenna).

 

[Elephant_Berls]

Originally posted by Gimp
Like 97Sportrac said, in a '99 factory radio, the amplifier for the speakers is built into the head unit and you will only have an external (remote) amplifier for the factory subwoofer (and you will only have it if you have the factory subwoofer). The amp was integrated into the head unit beginning with the 1998 Exploder. 97Sportrac is also correct in that of the two harnesses that plug into the factory receiver, one is for the speaker wires (one + and one - for each of the four channels) and one is for the power - constant 12V+, switched 12V+, ground, remote turn-on (or elec. antenna).

i wish i would have read this 2 hours ago. I just got gack from returning my stuff. damn.

 

[97Sportrac]

Well... I can't tell you for certain... you'd have to confirm it with some other 99 owners if you have an amp or not. It also depends on the type of package you got in your X... i believe you got an audiophile pack if you have a sub and therefore i'd assume you'd have an external amp.

When you disconeected your deck you should have had three things plugged into it... the antenna plug, a speaker connections plug with 8 wires on it, and plug with power ground etc...

All you need to do is connect the appropriate harness to each plug and then just match up the colors on the wires coming out of the deck.

If you have the built in amp you can run the deck but you need to have the remote turn-on wire also connected found on the harness (that is the bright blue wire typically)... the problem with that is that the deck is high powered (anywhere from 40-50W per channel) while the stock Ford amp is 30W per channel... so therefore the "Preamp" signal from the deck is stronger than what the actual amp puts out... this leads to very high clipping if you turn your deck up and the higher powered signal from the deck may fry your amp which can't take that high of a signal.... but don't worry about that until you find out if you have the separate amp or not.

 

[Elephant_Berls]

ok im going to forget wiring the deck. But i do have a 250 watt amp and a 10 inch sub i want to hook up. IS there any where i can go to get wiring codes for the 99 x? Im going to splice into the 2 back speaker wires to hook up a loc. Then run that to my amp. Only problems is they have a ass load of wires (door locks/windows/ etc. So i need to know which wires are the +/- so i can splice the right ones.

 

[97Sportrac]

I'd suggest you go and grab that wiring harnss again and wire up the aftermarket HU and use the RCA outs... less confusion that way and you will get a better sound.