Help...i am halfway through a stereo install and am stuck

[AlkalineTrio]

I installed a double din clarion stereo into my 97 explore xlt and i can't get any sound. i came here to find that there is an amp that is somewhere in the right rear of my truck. from there i have no idea what to do. i didn't use a harness so i was hoping someone could tell me how to bypass the old amp. or what wires should be soldered to what. there are 2 adapters i cut off. one with 8 speaker wires and a black one which i have no idea what that is. i was wondering if that is an amp power up or something weird. please help. and also please fill me in on exactly where that amp is. and how to get to it. thanks.

 

[JTang]

Aya! Well, the 8 wire adapter, I'm sure you'vve guessed are to the 4 channels positive and negative leads. The other adapter is for the power, ground, and probably the remote lead, and a wire that would allow the original head unit to dim if your headlights were on. Does your even headunit turn on? If it does, cause you've correctly connected to power, than it's similar to the problem someone else had a little while ago. You'll have to ID the correct wire that acts as the amplifier remote lead. Just connnect that one to the remote turn-on connection to the back of your head unit. The problem is that (assuming the head unit power is on) that the radio is sending a signal to the amp which isn't turning on, because the remote lead hasn't sent a signal to turn it on. So, the amp is not playing the speakers.

Some people will prefer to use the amp bypass and use the pwer from the headunit alone. I just put my aftermarket speaker level outs right into the stock amps inputs, and have had no problem, but the choice is up to each person.

Good luck!

 

[Bird283]

I just installed a Sony CD player in my '95 and I bypassed the factory amp. Though you can use the stock amp with an aftermarket deck you don't really want to. The factory unit sends a very low power signal to the amp and the amp powers the speakers. However, an aftermarket unit is designed to power the speakers directly. So you are basically pumping power into the amp and this is not something you should do. Even if you can get it to work, the amp sends less power to the speakers than connecting them to the head unit, so you can get better sound by bypassing it anyways.

Now, if you want to bypass it I would recommend a harness, however it can be done by cutting off the plug, but you will need to find out the ID's of the wire colors. The larger of the two plugs out of the head unit is used for power (continuous + switched), ground, ant., dimmer. The other plug is the speaker output. The larger of the two out of the amp is output wires to the speakers, negative and positive to each of the speakers. The other is the amp power and power-on leads.

There are two ways to bypass the amp. The one I chose and the one I would recommend is to simply bypass the amp by running wires from the head unit's speaker output to the location of the amp and connecting them to the plug or wires that go to the speakers. This makes the smaller of the two plugs on both the amp and the head unit useless. the other bypass allows you to simply plug a electrial device between to two plugs in the amp and I am not sure what you connect on the head unit. This type of harness is expensive though. If you need any help on the actual bypass procees, email me at birdsite117@hotmail.com

 

[JTang]

Bird:
What is the RMS power output of the stock amp vs. your RMS power of your Sony head unit?

 

[Bird283]

I don't know the exact RMS of my stock amp. However, I know a few guys who work in car audio installation and they told me the same thing that Crutcfield and several other companies told me. The RMS of most any aftermarket is higher than that of the stock amp. Also you almost have to bypass the amp because otherwise you would be pumping full power into the amp, and eventually that will screw something up. This is what I was told and after the install, the system sounds much cleaner and plays much louder so I guess they were right.