JBL wiring question | Ford Explorer Forums - Serious Explorations

  • Register Today It's free!

JBL wiring question

Joe Dirt

Explorer Addict
Joined
October 4, 2007
Messages
13,325
Reaction score
28
Year, Model & Trim Level
07 Camry
I picked up a JBL Sub/amp/brain unit and the JBL door speakers at the boneyard today for next to nothing. I also pulled the harness portion that runs from the kick panel by the passenger door to the amps, etc. Does anyone know before I start pulling some stuff apart tomorrow, if the harness will plug into the Premium harness that runs from the head unit to the kick panel?

I would assume that the door speakers would be plug and play- the junker next to me had premium sound and they plugged right in.

This is what I have:

Premium head unit F87F-18C815-CA (P100 harness- one long vertical plug to the head unit, one small square plug to the head unit)
Premium harness (if it's different) from the head unit to the pass. front kick panel
JBL Harness from the kick panel to the JBL sub/amps unit in the rear
JBL sub/amps unit for the rear
JBL door speakers

Can I put all of this together to work, or must I have the harness from the deck to the kick panel, too? If so, I can run back to the yard tomorrow and grab that too, I think. Time was short, and I had to grab some other things for some other folks, so I didn't dive into that part...

Thanx!
 



Join the Elite Explorers for $20 each year.
Elite Explorer members see no advertisements, no banner ads, no double underlined links,.
Add an avatar, upload photo attachments, and more!
.





since its an aftermarket head unit, it has a different connector (each company has a different connector for each line of headunits) this can be found in the car your ripped it out of, it should be crimped on or soldered or (hopefully not) just twisted and taped to the original harnes wires. then you need power for your amp and remote on wire and rca cable and you should be good. to start setting it up. and yes the speakers are plug and play, you just have to add the spade connector to the end of the wires of the truck, because they are soldered on to the pins on the stock speakers, but after that your good. some people think replacing wire is a must, i havnt and its been fine for me, i dont think its that hard to do either.
 






since its an aftermarket head unit, it has a different connector (each company has a different connector for each line of headunits) this can be found in the car your ripped it out of, it should be crimped on or soldered or (hopefully not) just twisted and taped to the original harnes wires. then you need power for your amp and remote on wire and rca cable and you should be good. to start setting it up. and yes the speakers are plug and play, you just have to add the spade connector to the end of the wires of the truck, because they are soldered on to the pins on the stock speakers, but after that your good. some people think replacing wire is a must, i havnt and its been fine for me, i dont think its that hard to do either.

To me it sounds like there is no aftermarket involved here, sounds like everything taken from the yard was ford factory equipment.

That being said, in theory it all sounds like it should work. The only thing I'm not sure on is if the harness from the radio actually does stop in the kick panel, or if it goes all the way back to the amp location. I have never gone that in depth with tracing he wires. It may be different depending on what the current setup is vs. a full premium system with sub.
 






Ok, yep, it's all Ford stuff... I think I'll dig in and grab the harness today at the junkyard. I'll report back for everyone if it works, and probably be doing a Premium to JBL swap write-up if it works. (fingers crossed)
 






Well, I tried to pull apart the harness at the yard today, and the assembly line did me in. I need to pull the entire dash harness out to get the radio harness out. Maybe not pull it out, but they're all run together. I'll have to go back and try to cut the tape out and just grab the radio harness. While the connectors are the same in the kick panel, there are extra wires in the JBL harness. (duh) Need the other 1/2 of the harness to plug and play- it there isn't anything more I'm missing on top of that. Dumb try, but worth a try none the less.

Back to the drawing board! I may put the sub rack in my truck, mount an aftermarket sub on there since I'd rather have it mounted there instead of a box, and wire in a line-level output for the sub to the Premium sound RCU and do it that way.

Who's got the wiring info to do that so I can spend 5 minutes installing it? :D

I'll start searching...
 






its all factory, i thought he grabed a JBL (company brand name) HU and speakers? does it stand for somthing else
 






your right it is jbl brand name. many explorers and other fords were installed with jbl systems from the factory. its like the bose products you see in old gm cars. they take factory equipment and slap a brand name on it for sales
 






Actually, it was quite a bit more involved than just "take factory equipment and slap a brand name on it for sales".

The Ford sound systems that were branded Ford JBL were developed with audio engineers from both Ford and JBL, working together, designing to performance specifications recommended by JBL. In the early iterations in Lincolns, all of the speaker drivers and amplifiers were supplied by JBL. Later versions, such as the Explorer used, featuerd JBL speakers with amplifiers made by Ford to JBL specs.

There was a lot of work and testing done to develop those systems, we didn't just slap a name on the speaker grilles to make more money.

regards,

cobrajeff
 






cobrajeff- if I manage to separate and grab just the harness from the deck to the kickpanel, will everything work? That would give me:

-JBL rear unit w/sub and both amps/RCU
-JBL harness from rear unti to kickpanel
-JBL harness from deck to kickpanel
-Premium harness for power (long flat harness connector)
-Premium CD harness
-JBL door speakers
-Premium wiring TO door speakers

or, is there a third harness that plugs to the rear of the deck- there were only 2 in the junked EB w/JBL at the junkyard... I plugged the two flat harnesses at the kickpanel together, but there were obviously more wires in the JBL harnesses than in my Premium harness... Does the JBL harness run only from the deck to the kickpanel, can I separate it from the dash harness (bound together) or is there mor that I can't see? If I can't just grab this harness, I'll re-amp the sub with a line-level convertor off the Premium speaker wiring back there.

What JBL radio would I need to run my 6CD changer in the armrest, and have a green display? Do I need the plug convertor to change from the olt to teh new stule radio plugs?

thanx!
 






Joe -

The conversion you are trying to do is pretty complicated, especially since most of the factory wiring is intertwined with the main vehicle wiring harnesses.

I gather from your notes that you are trying to install a single-CD P100 radio into your '95 Explorer that came without JBL? For that conversion, you would NOT use the JBL RCU out of a '95-'97 Explorer - the RCU works ONLY with the distributed architecture "LUX" radio systems. What you would want would be the JBL amp & SW amp from a '93 or '94 Explorer - they should work with the F87F-18C815-CA radio. There was never a factory setup using this combo, so you would need ALL of the wiring with the '93-'94 system, PLUS a P100 adapter plug.

If you use a different Ford head unit, with an integral amp, the wiring would be much more straight-forward (you would only need to add the SW amp & wiring).

Sorry I have not been much help. I don't have access to the wiring diagrams anymore, and I'm very far behind on several other projects I'm working on.

regards,

Jeff
 






need replacement REAR (sub) speaker- 96 w/JBL

Need replacement REAR (sub) speaker- 96 Eddie Bauer w/JBL sound. Mine is crackling.....VERY irritating....haven't taken it apart yet, is the amp built onto it, like others????
Jim in Dayton, OH
 






Joe...I'm not sure if I read this in the thread or not, but a very common misconception about the 95 JBL system is the head (dash) unit is the radio and the amp is back by the sub amp and subwoofer. THAT IS NOT TRUE! On a 95 JBL, the radio is what is commonly referred to as an amp. It's back next to the sub amp. The head (dash) unit and the rear console controller only control the radio. The antenna lead does not go to the head (dash) unit...it goes to the rear radio next to the sub amp. And there is a console CD changer specific to that system. I actually have one that doesn't work that well. So to put the factory 95 JBL system in your car, you would need all the factory wiring that includes the antenna lead and the JBL head (dash) unit. I'm not sure if you need the JBL rear controller or if that is non specific. This will be quite a job. I'm not sure it's worth the expense and effort is it? You can buy a harness that brings all the speaker and antenna leads back to the dash for about $30. It runs from the radio (subwoofer area) back to the dash. You can add rca's or wires for the subwoofer to that harness. You can now use an aftermarket head unit that will utilze the factory subwoofer. Don't let anyone tell you it can't be done...I'm driving one exactly that way that works perfectly.
 






1997 eddie AWD JBL system. It used to rock. I can not get the sub in the rear
to work. Changed the 15 AMP fuse in the fuse box under the hood. Blew it again.
Stero works just no amp and sub. where do i look or wat do you reccommend?
also copy me at kharrison21@sc.rr.com thanks.
 












Answer to JBL wiring question

I read through some of this thread, like the post about raising dead threads, but just fyi I own one of these JBL premium onboard sound systems and it was quite the pain to figure out. That being said, every single explorer I have ran into has had different wiring then my wiring (that being said on different XLT similar year, different color wiring, and same harnesses, theres two one is a grey flat pinned one, and the other looks like a black square box with pins in it...)

that being said, my wiring did not match the wiring of this other explorer I ran into which would have to had been a 91-94 since that was the only year for the body style. It had same factory radio, and "jbl" premium sound system... The wiring was totally different... not sure about the harnesses, I am just talking behind the dash...

I burnt up RCA outputs on 2 cd players after purchasing an "aftermarket" harness which was suppose to integrate my new cd players with the "onboard radio amplifiers".... that being said, after connection, stumped me to turn on and watch smoke out the front of my cd player... although cd player functioned properly... burned my RCA's out...

If you are trying to hook up another amplifier, and buy aftermarket harness just be careful, as my new pioneer cd player I decided to hook 1 speaker at a time up, and found that the sounds were echo from front left speaker to rear right speaker (sound was much louder, that is balance front and to the left for front left speaker) was getting sound out of right rear, so knew something was up...

Got the multimeter out did some checking, and sure enough harness / jbl stereo was incorrect and I had to re do the entire harness (say front left + and rear left + were both purple and front right + and front right rear + were grey one had black stripe)... that being said I had to basically 180 my wiring...

but with my new head unit, when the wires were exposed, the fact that my RCA ground touched one of my speaker wires in the process (wiring it up, had soldiered the connectors to it, and noted that when ground from my rca output on cd player touched the wire when the car was off, that the speaker made a static hissing sound.....)

that being said, I did this with every single wire from the connector that goes to the little black square box with the 8 pins in it...

did this and determined which wires at this point went to which speaker due to the fact that i heard "static" through them by touching the outside RCA casing from the rca cable hooked into my cd player to the individual speaker wires themselves, then found out what was what from that.. know it sounds weird, but this is exactly how I wired mine.

My 1800D amp stoped working suddenly (ground issue possibly?) and I have not been able to fix it yet, but the amp works in the house.. so just FYI the premium JBL amp works and I have it hooked to a kenwood 12" sounds good, but no 1800D.....

take it easy.
 






JBL subwoofer connections

I replaced my failing JBL Premium system (96 Explorer) with a Crutchfield CD/receiver. It by-passed the "amp" (kudos to Cobraguy - http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/member.php?u=79623
- or maybe four0sport - I was wondering why the antenna came to the amp
box). This provided front & rear speakers but not the subwoofer. I would
like to use the original subwoofer amp driven by the subwoofer preouts.

I think I have id'd the connectors
2 speaker outputs
4 inputs (yellow, red, black, white)
2 power (red, yellow)

I can determine the inputs by trial, but I am concerned about the
power polarity.

Also, I saw this:
"One problem might be that the remote is only a 5V. At least it was in my 96."
in www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2631420

Any advice will be appreciated.

Please also copy skipcoombe@gmail.com

Thanks,

Skip
 






Joe...I'm not sure if I read this in the thread or not, but a very common misconception about the 95 JBL system is the head (dash) unit is the radio and the amp is back by the sub amp and subwoofer. THAT IS NOT TRUE! On a 95 JBL, the radio is what is commonly referred to as an amp. It's back next to the sub amp. The head (dash) unit and the rear console controller only control the radio. The antenna lead does not go to the head (dash) unit...it goes to the rear radio next to the sub amp. And there is a console CD changer specific to that system. I actually have one that doesn't work that well. So to put the factory 95 JBL system in your car, you would need all the factory wiring that includes the antenna lead and the JBL head (dash) unit. I'm not sure if you need the JBL rear controller or if that is non specific. This will be quite a job. I'm not sure it's worth the expense and effort is it? You can buy a harness that brings all the speaker and antenna leads back to the dash for about $30. It runs from the radio (subwoofer area) back to the dash. You can add rca's or wires for the subwoofer to that harness. You can now use an aftermarket head unit that will utilze the factory subwoofer. Don't let anyone tell you it can't be done...I'm driving one exactly that way that works perfectly.

Cobraguy, I've finally come to realize the complexity of the situation i'm in with my 1995 Continental with JBL remote tuner. After searching around, you seem to be the only sane person that has dealt with these types of stereo systems.

Can you recall or lookup which harness you used to run to the front of the car to be able to install an aftermarket head unit?

I specifically want to map the 4 door speakers to the new head unit (these speakers currently powered by the remote tuner) and keep the sub powered by the factory amp as you have mentioned in your setup using RCA's.

The harnesses I've seen online haven't indicated that they include pins for the subwoofer RCA hook ups.

Thanks for the help!

-Ben
 






Ben, I can't speak to the JBL set up in the Continental...but let's assume it's the same as the Explorer. The aftermarket harness you purchase will run the antenna lead and speaker leads back to the front of the vehicle. I honestly can't recall if there is a power lead or not in that harness...but I doubt it since you would have one at the dash for the tuner. You would connect your speaker leads either to your head unit or an aftermarket amp (if you use one). Now, for the subwoofer...the harness does not address that. You need to. If your head unit has a "subwoofer out" line, you purchase and run an rca cable from the head unit to the subwoofer amp in the back of the car. You will also need to run an "enable" wire (amp turn on) from the head unit to the sub amp. You can buy an adapter at radio shack that goes from rca to wire leads. You will wire those to the factory plug in the amp. There should be power to the amp already. You just need to wire in your enable lead from your head unit. and you are good to go. Please keep in mind that the enable lead from the factory is normally 5 volts. This will be 12 volts. It could cause a bad pop when you turn it on. Regardless, I would utilize one of the many solutions available to reduce your voltage to 5 volts and call it good. After your subwoofer is wired, all you need to do is set your head unit for a separate subwoofer and you are good to go. The four speaker leads will be powered by the internal amp in the head unit and the subwoofer will utilize a low voltage output from the head unit that is amplified by the factory sub amp.
 






Back
Top