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Ford Explorer Community - Maintenance - Modifications - Performance Upgrades - Problem Solving - Off-Road - Street
Explorer Forum Covers the Explorer ST, Explorer Sport, Explorer Sport Trac, Lincoln Aviator, Mercury Mountaineer, Mazda Navajo, Ford Ranger, Mazda Pickups, and the Ford Aerostar
I am hooking up a factory sub amp to a X that is not wired for it. This amp has a separate power connector with red and yellow wires. Anyone know the configuration on these wires. Also the input is a 4 wire red,white, black yellow wires. Do these connect to the low level before the 4 channel amp or high level speaker outs. Thanks,
I know that red is a constant Battery+ and Yellow is a switched Battery+. There also should be a ground, usually a black wire. What car did the factory amp come from? not sure if the inputs are high or low. Most likely high since it is a factory amp.
The amp came out of a '97. I am putting it in a 96. Mine does not have JBL but it does have separate amp in back. The problem is there is no power in the area except for what runs the radio amp. I am assuming that the power to the radio amp is insufficient to run the sub amp. I also am trying to figure where to splice into the radio amp wiring to get a signal for the sub amp. There is not a black wire in what I got, I figured ground would be acheived through grounding the case.
If I were you i would try to hook it up to a 12v power supply (not your X). Then run low inputs through it to see whether or not the inputs are low or high. Then I would write down what each wire does so that when you install it there will be no question.
A good 12v power source would be a battery charger. But you may experience noise when hooking an amp to it. It should be sufficient.
Does anyone know how the sub amp is grounded. There is a yellow and red input wire but I cannot find how to ground the unit. I took it apart and the case is isolated from the circuit board. This is off a 97 JBL system.
ground will be black no matter what....red will be positive no matter what....the hitch is that blue is the switch wire that turns the unit on and off....then the speaker wires i have no idea....the yellow is only on head units and that varies even.
oh and dont worry about power needs....do you think ford is going to run an entirely different wire for a wimpy factory amp....the way they get the base out of that set up is through having a high ohm speaker system 16 i believe so it needs less power to make the speaker move cause there is more resistance in the coil to push against the magnet. the thing is the movement isnt as accurate cause there isnt as much power to switch its direction quickly enough. ...but good luck with it man....just wondering...where did you get the sub unit...i know those things are pricey.
Well I just figured it out. The yellow is power and the RED is ground. The sub has an auto switch to turn on when it receives a signal through the audio inputs. this was verified with an amp meter. No movement of the amp meter when power is applied. Reading 0. When a signal is applied the amp comes on and pulls 2 to 4 amps depending on volume.
I got the wire colors from another post but they are backwards. The speaker level outputs from the amp are on the connector with the power. The low level inputs are on the square input plug. I am feeding a full range signal to the amp and there are high notes trying to be played by the sub. I am going to put in a bass boost equalizer with a low frequency band pass.
There are a lot of posts on wiring colors out on the net. Most of them are wrong. Be careful.
