Help with installing aftermarket head unit

[Mudawg12345]

Hey everyone.. I have a 99 explorer sport with what I was told has the premium sound package. My stock cd player display screen stopped working and this gave me and excuse to buy an aftermarket head unit. I recently bought a Alpine CDA-9884 and got the wiring harness and Ford model mounting kit. I was planning on installing it myself with my father and when we took out the stock stereo we ran into a few questions... When we followed the set of wires coming from the factory harness we could not trace it back far enough because it goes behind the 4x4 wiring and box and were confused on how to approach this. My father insists we are getting ahead of ourselves trying to do this but finding the appropriate wiring is the only problem were seeing, the connections we could do no problem. Only other question was.. if we actually do have the premium sound system, how do we know? I read somewhere that we need to find the 'premium sound' amplifier and somehow bypass it because my new headunit has more power to it so that the amplifer is useless. We know it is behind one of the panels but we don't know which? We cant seem to find any screws holding the panels together and are confused about that too. This is all IF we have the premium sound package, all i know is we dont have a CD changer or a Subwoofer enclosed in the back.
Please get back to me as soon as possible I would really like to put this Head unit together =)

 

[Cobraguy]

Go to this site and look at the wiring harnesses and other valuable information available. It will help you decide what you need to do. There are other great sites out there dedicated to aftermarket stereo installations.

By the way, your father sounds like a wise man...

www.installer.com

 

[Mudawg12345]

so your saying it is a lot more work because of the factory amp? How/where would i go about running the harness though from the amp? I really want to put this head unit in soon, and we really don't have the money to pay $80 to bestbuy to install it. And personally, I'd like to learn for the future.