Replacing factory Stereo on 91 XL

[iamtherealseven]

I bought a JVC CD deck this weekend and am looking to install later this week. Does anyone have some tips that would be useful during the install. Also how hard and what is involved in opening up the dash to install the deck. Does anyone have or know where I can get a copy of the factory deck's wiring diagram?

Many thanks
Scott

 

[Ronin8002]

Make sure you have bought a wiring harness....that will make things easier. According to the Haynes manual, p 12-49....these are where the wire pairs coming out of the factory harness go. (The colors work like this, I believe: orange/light green means orange with light green stripes, and so on)

orange/light green: these go
light blue/white: to the left front speaker

white/light green: these go to the
dark green/orange: right front speaker

orange/red: these go to the
brown/pink: right rear speaker

grey/light blue: these go to the
tan/yellow: left rear speaker

Having a multimeter handy is also very helpful. Taking off the dash is not that difficult....you need to remove the ashtray, unplug it, and remove the bolts that you see on the right and left of the bracket that hold it in the dash. There might be a few other bolts, check under the parking brake release and hood release. Much of the upper dash just snaps on and off, if I remember correctly. Hope this helps.

-James

 

[brokenman]

You don't need to take the whole dash off for the deck.
You'll need something to place in the holes right around the factory deck, like allen wrenches or toothpicks i think worked, to release the deck. Ford sells a radio removal tool but it's not that hard to do without it.

 

[lonestar]

get wiring harness so you don't have to cut up the factory wiring. You might need a special one if you got the factory amp, it's like $25, maybe. One harness will be rectangular with about 16 pins and the other one will be square for the amp, they should come together. TRy circuit city, bust buy, even walmart carries some of them, or your local audio shop.

 

[iamtherealseven]

Good call on the wiring harness. I am gonna get one. My last install and just wired it in directly. Thanks all. This will help me in my battle.

 

[bigdanmcintosh]

I just did my 93 last weekend... I used coathangers to get the stock tape deck out..

just gotta wiggle it around some!!

 

[iamtherealseven]

How about sub woofers. I see a lot of Explorers with the subs facing backwards towards the back bumper. Does this produce better bass then facing forward? Reason I ask, I have a box with subs already in and I have it set up with connecters on each side so that it can be removed easily for hauling stuff. If I know prior which why is better for the subs, I then don’t have to try and run the wires on the opposite side of the vehicle.

Thanks again.

 

[Ronin8002]

I have 2 12" subs in a sealed box in the back of my X. For a while I had them pointing toward the rear like you describe. Basically, this gives a "boomier" sounding bass...but not as sloppy sounding as if you had a bandpass box. If you turn the subs so they are firing into the back seat, it will quiet the bass down some, as well as make it sound "tighter" and less boomy. You could also try firing them straight up, or diagonally (that is, upward AND facing the back). Those positions will sound a bit different also. What I did as far as wiring was give myself enough slack so I could turn my box around any way I wanted. I would just tuck the extra behind/under the back seat.

I don't know how big your subs are or how many watts you're going to be running, but you may want to dynomat that back tailgate to help deaden vibration. I was too cheap to use dynomat and I filled part of the back tailgate with minimal expansion aerosol foam and that worked really well too.

 

[iamtherealseven]

Does anyone know the biggest size of speakers one can put in the doors of a 91 XL without having to do any mods? I am thinking of replacing these speakers as well.

Thanks