Installing CD Player

[AtlXplorer]

The other day i went to a circuit city to have a Pioneer cd player installed in my 93' explorer sport, after waiting about 3 hours i went into the install area to see what was taking so long, the guy who had been working on it said that in order to have the cd player installed correctly they would have to bypass the factory amp and pretty much rewire all of the speakers to the new head unit because the previous owner of the explorer had ghetto rigged another ford am/fm cassette player into the vehicle before putting it up for sell. He said that in all the price for the extra work would be around $100, i wanted to find out if i should just go ahead and pay the extra money and have it done "right" or if i could get some advice on if i would be able/and how difficult it would be for me to do it myself

 

[Alec]

Welcome!

Yes, it should be done right; the amp bypassed and new wire run if it is indeed messed up. $100 isn't bad for that PITA job. You can do it yourself, but it would take the better part of a day, if not 2.

 

[sean4385]

its really not too hard. Just run a speaker wire from each of the speakers to the headunit. make sure you connect them to the corresponding wires in the back of the headunit. there should be four colors, one for each speaker, with a positive and negative(negative has a stripe) pink, green, white, and grey i believe. there should be a diagram that came with the headunit thatll tell you which is for which speaker.
the most difficult, well more like tedious, part is hiding the wires under the carpet or behind the panels.
All you need are basic electrician tools: wire cutter, stripper, electrical tape, about 20ft of speaker wire(the double wire type), and a screwdriver or whatever you need to reamove the speakers and door panels.

I would definatly do this job myself and save the hundred bucks, but if you dont have the time or are worried about runing into problems, then its best to have circuit city do it.

hope this helps,
Sean

 

[AtlXplorer]

yea ive done some basic car audio work on my freind's integra and just mving the amp around and stuff, but never any head unit work, i might just go ahead and pay the extra cash so i dont have to worry about something going wrong later on down the road, might as well get it done the right way

 

[KPT]

Go ahead and try it yourself. Its really not hard. The hardest/most time consuming part will be taking off the door panels to get at the speakers.

Other than the speaker wire you only need three wires to the HU: ground, constant and ignition. Some highend models also have an illumination wire so your HU will dim when you turn your lights on.

 

[Bronco_bill]

I installed a Kenwood with a 10 disc using the factory amps. I don't understand why you would have to bypass. I also cut out the sub box to fit an 8" sub. When I get a chance i am going to see if i can fit a 10" and upgrade the amp to get a little more bass.

 

[Bronco_bill]

Forgot one thing If you decide to bypass the amp there is a conector below the pilar between the two passenger doors that you can unplug and wire to there so you can use your factory door wiring. It will save a ton of time.