1993 Premium sound stereo into 87-92 Mustang : Install thread

[Mustang5L5]

No real questions here, just a thread to document what i've learned in this little project of mine. There is very little info on the net regarding this, i mostly had to peice info together that now seems very straightforward now from sources on the internet.

Edit: I later made a video on this subject as well

View: https://youtu.be/dL-4RLtiALE






I chose to install a 1993 OEM CD Player for several reasons. #1, the 87-92 radios are just fugly. It might be somewhat unique if you have the version with the EQ..but the base radio (and even the 6-speaker premium) just blows. #2, i really like the OEM look of a factory tape deck, and not an aftermarket "screwed into the console" deck, and #3...i never listen to the radio really, so sound quality wasn't really important to me.



So, here's what MOST areo fox cars come with. Not very pretty mind you. However, going rate for these online in decent shape has been steadily climbing. So if you have one and replace it...don't chuck it in the trash just yet.

These radios came NON-Premium and Premium during the 87-92 years. Difference being the addition of the amplifier and door speakers on the premium cars (and optional EQ)

Non-premium cars use DASH speakers and REAR speakers only. No door speakers, and no amp. The AMP is located behind the radio mounted to the u-shaped bracket bolted to the trans tunnel. No amp, and no door speakers, you have a 4-speaker non-premium radio. If you have the football amp, and door speakers. You have the premium radio.

Now, the wiring. All 87-93 Mustangs contain the following connectors, BUT, the premium radio cars have an EXTRA harness that is wired in series from the main body plugs pictured below. On the 87-89 cars, the wiring to the door speakers is in the amplifier harness. In the 90-93 cars, it's existing on the dash harness

If you want to bypass your "football" amp, dig around behind the amp and follow the harness. You'll find the extra set of plugs in the back. Disconnect and you've now bypassed the amp and can remove it if you want. Pull the body plugs to the front and now you can connect the plugs to whatever aftermarket receiver you have with the correct plug kit.

1993 AMP and wiring is the same idea. Body plugs are the same (with a minor difference) as below, but the two plugs that connect to the RADIO are DIFFERENT.

 

[Mustang5L5]

Here is the 1993 Amplifier and amplifier wiring. The amp is located under the pass seat, so there is a bit of protection for the wiring in the harness.

Here is the basic wiring. It's a simple 2-in, 2-out. The difference in the 1993 setup is one plug (the blue one) is unique. The grey power plug will work in the 87-92 Mustangs, but the blue line-out 8-pin plug is unique to Ford's 1993+ Premium sound system.

The two plugs on the right will connect to the standard body harness I talked about above. Do not plug it into the harness after the 87-92 amplifier. You must remove the 87-92 football amp and the ampl harness, and pull down the body harness from behind the amp. That will connect here. Speakers are 100% matched, although the colors are different. Power plug will require a slight mod

 

[Mustang5L5]

Here is the basic routing of the amp harness laid over the carpet. You will need to pull the console out and lift the carpet. The small plastic sleeve will slip over the two studs on the trans tunnel and you'll have to cut two small holes in the carpet to poke the wiring through. None of the plastic loom clips line up to anything, so just lay the harness in place and the carpet will hold it down fine

With carpet and console back in place. NOTE: I do not have the amp bracket mounted here. My camera's battery died before i could snap that pic. The amp is basically lying where it should be and the bracket will bolt to the seat support right between the two front seat bolts. The holes are not preexisting, so you will need to drill two small pilot holes and use some self tapping bolts. If you have the amp and bracket in hand, you should be able to see how it should mount in relation to this pic

 

[Mustang5L5]

Here are the wiring mods you need to make:


Below is the main power connection. plug on the left is the AMP Harness plug that comes off the 1993 amp harness you just installed. Plug on the right is the body harness in your car. Got it? Good..now notice the differences in wiring.

Looking on the body harness side, we have the following wires

green/yellow - constant 12V
yellow/black - accessory 12v
blue/red - dimmer
orange/black - illumination ( i beleive for the bulb in the display of the 87-92 radio)
RED - GROUND

The orange/black wire is not needed anymore with the 1993+ radios as it's an LCD display those years, so don't worry about it. But notice that on the amp harness side, there is one wire not connected to anything. The white one?

That's the AMP Power wire...kinda important. As you can see, it's not connected to anything. According, to the 1993 Mustang EVTM, it's constant 12V and has it's own dedicated 20A fuse (Fuse #17). In the 87-23 cars, this fuse location was not used. The amp was powered by the same accessory 12V wire that powered the radio on the 87-92 cars. This wire was fused with a 15A fuse.

I chose to jump the amp power wire over to the yellow/black acc power wire and run a 15A fuse just to be safe. It's never popped. If you are really wanting to be factory correct, run an appropriate size wire to the fuse box and install it in fuse location 17 and run a 20A (or a 15A to be a bit safer) fuse.

And that's it...one jumper wire and you are good to go.

The speaker colors are all mixed up, but don't worry. I spent an hour tracing them out with a 9V battery to be sure...they match up fine. HOWEVER, if your 87-92 Mustang is a non-premium car, you might lose the door speakers. They are wired in parallel with the dash speakers. In that case, you will need to run wires from the doors and tap into the dash speakers. More on this in the SPEAKERS post


Edit: here are the 1993 premium sound wiring diagrams

 

[Mustang5L5]

SPEAKERS: This is largely incomplete as i need to gather more information. But basically, the speakers used between the Premium sound systems and the non-premium sound are different.

DASH SPEAKERS: Dash speakers on non-premium sound are full-range, while premium dash speakers use a bass-blocking capacitor to filter out lower frequencies. As a result, the power needed for the dash speakers is minimal since higher frequencies use very little power vs low. On the premium sound setups, these speakers are wired in parallel with the doors, but it doesn't reduce the impedance much due to the bass-blocker.

non-premium p/n E6DF-18808-BC (possibly 3.2 ohm)
premium p/n E6DF-18808-CC (possibly 6 ohm)


DOOR SPEAKERS: Need more info, but all are premium speakers since they only came on premium systems

REAR SPEAKERS: Need more info, but looks like there are two different speakers depending on premium or non-premium.


Specifications on the net suggest that NON-Premium speakers are 3.2Ohms, while Premium speakers are 6 Ohm. This is important, as running 4 ohm speakers on a 6ohm system may overpower the amp and cause damage.

If anyone has any info to add to this, please PM me...but i might possibly be looking for some help in figuring out P/N's and impedance values to fill in the above info.


WIRING:

With non-premium 87-92 setups, you will have no door speakers. The wiring is present in the doors, but you will find the harness end just hanging inside the door jambs. The 87-89 cars incorporated the door wiring into the amp harness. The 90-93 cars wired the doors in the dash harness. So for those cars it might just be a matter of hooking up the plugs. For 87-89 cars, you’ll need to physically connect the door speakers to the dash harness wiring.

Here’s an 87-89 amp harness. You can see the two long plugs that run to the door jambs for the door speakers
View attachment 695875

Here is the door speaker pigtail located just inside the door jambs.

If you are looking for a compatible male plug, a 97-03 F150 window motor plug is the same.

 

[Mustang5L5]

Here are the difference between the 1993+ Premium and non-premium radios that came in the Mustang and other Fords.


PREMIUM SOUND

This style radio was manufactured in partnership with JBL and is known as the JBL P100 Premier radio. These do not have any sort of internal amplification so they rely on external amps.

This is the back of the premium sound head unit. Note that one plug looks familar to the basic 87-92 wiring, but the other 3 plugs are different.

Plug on top is for the CD-change or SLAVE CD hookup. It's a 6-pin plug Yes, the 1993+ familr of radios will support a slave cd player (like 94-00 Mach 460) or the Sony 10-disk CD changer used in the 1993-1994 Lincolns.

Middle plug is the AMP Line-out plug. it's an 8 pin plug, and basically thr blue wire from the 1993 amp harness connects here.

Bottom plug is barely visible, but is the steering wheel controls plug that came in some Taurus's and Explorers. WOuld be cool to get this operating, but dont see how.

IMPORTANT! Notice the black shorting plug on the top of the unit? This NEEDS to plug into the 6-pin connector on top if you are NOT running a Slave CD player or CD changer. If you do not use the shorting plug, you may have volume issues or no sound at all. SO make sure you have this!

Part number for this shorting plug/jumper is F2DF-14A464-AA

NON-Premium

These are known as M100 radios. They have an internal amplifier

This is your standard wiring hookup of most fords in the late 80's and early 90's. Ford changed the head unit design around 1993, but carried over the 87-92 style of wiring. SO, that means that if you have an 87-92 Mustang (with or without amp) and want the newer style head units, but do not want to switch over to the 1993 style amp and amp harness, you need to seek out a NON-premium head unit from various 1992-2000 Ford's. I would double check the wiring as some of the 93+ non-premium units carry two grounds in the wiring harness. The 2nd ground is for the illumination and you will need to add it if you want the radio to light up at night. I've only briefly explorered this, so i willl leave it up to you to discover. However...it's an option

 

[Mustang5L5]

There are all different versions of compatible head units, unfortunately, the 1993 head units are unique in the sense that they feature a SQUARE unit face, and a mount on the bottom of the unit to hold the cubby hole.

None of the later Ford radios feature these features except the 93-95 F-150 which has a square face, but no cubby mount


Beware many ebay ads selling these radios claiming they are Mustang radios. These CD players were installed up to 2000 in other vehicles, such as the SN95 Mustang (very rare), countour/mystique, bronco, windstar (rare) and others. But note...rounded corners and no cubby. They will work, but you will have a hard time fabbing up something to go down below.

Here are some ford vehicles that had the single DIN cd player available

Sable 93-95, Taurus 93-95, Windstar 95-98
Ident: F48F18C815AE
Ident: F48FAE
Ident: F78F18C815BA
Ident: F78FBA

Countour 98-00, Mystique 98-00
Ident: 98BB18C815AA
Ident: 98BBAA

Contour 95-97, Mystique 95-97
Ident: 95BP18C815AC

Sable 93-95, Taurus 93-95, 95-00 Windstar, 95-00 Mustang
Part #: F78F-18C815-BA
Part #: F48F-18C815-AE



NOTE: After preset #5, is a CLOCK button. Not all radios feature this. On vehicles with a standalone clock (ie 94-97 Mustang) there will be a #6 preset instead. SO if having a CLOCK is important to you, make sure you grab a CLOCK radio. Same goes for TAPE players as well


The single din CD player is PREMIUM only. There is no non-premium wiring style of this deck. You need the 1993 wiring setup

 

[Mustang5L5]

Here are the two basic amplifiers used in 87-93 Mustangs.

The AMP on the left is the typical "football" amp located behind the center console on 87-92 Mustangs equipped with premium sound. The unit bolts to the U-shaped support brace. You should easily be able to see it. If you remove your radio and see carpet straight to the firewall, you have a NON-Premium sound 87-92 Mustang.

AMp on right is a 1993 Mustang AMP, p/n F3ZF-18T806-BB. It's unique to the 1993 Mustang only. 1994+ Mustangs with premium sound have a similar amp, but the data plug connection is slightly different..as pictured below. This AMP is bolted to a bracket under the passenger seat. Simply push the seat as far back as it will go and you should see the bracket bolted to the floor and the amp. It's rated @ 80 Watts

EDIT: Just a heads up, but a compatible amp MIGHT be the 1993-1994 Mark 8 amp, p/n F3LF-18C807-CC. In pictures, i see that it looks IDENTICAL to the 93 Mustang amp above, with the same data connector. I do NOT know if it works, so buy at your own risk. If anyone finds out...let me know and i'll post the confirmation here

 

[Mustang5L5]

There are three main tape decks to choose from in terms of style.


Crappy compilation, but beats finding radio pics online that may not be there in a few days

Top radio features manual REV/FFW, but electronic EJECT. But, this is not a mustang radio. Keep in mind what i said about a square face, and the mount for the cubby. This radio came in a Premium and a NON-premium version. SO be aware of that. 87-92 guys might be able to run the non-premium with their stock amp setup

Middle radio is similar to top, but features MANUAL eject. So far, i've only seen this radio in NON-Premium version. Unsure if there is a PREMIUM version, so if there is...let me know.

Bottom radio, the caddy of Ford single din cassette decks. It's the typical Mach 460 head unit featuring electronic Eject/FFW/REV. This radio is PREMIUM only. You can find these WITH or WITHOUT the slave CD, but remember the shorting plug for the slave CD plug if you run this solo.


As with all 3 radios, they come in CLOCK and no clock versions, with the no clock getting a 6th preset. Also, illumination can either be GREEN or BLUE. SO pay attention!

If you are going to run one of these...get the Mach 460 unit. Then you can either run the slave cd, or run a CD changer.

 

[Mustang5L5]

It would be interesting to run the slave CD setup, as it would fill in the console better and give a unique look, but it requires some decent mods. carpet will need to be trimmed, center radio bracket removed, trim the studs and possibly hit the trans tunnel down slightly. If you think this is worth it, give it a try, but until then, all i have are these mock up pics.

ANother option is to run the 1993 Lincoln Sony 10-disk CD changer. Rumor has it either of the premium decks will run it. Be interesting to see an OEM cd changer mounted in the hatch.

The slave CD setup features two plugs. One is a power plug, and the other is a 6-pin patch cord to the head unit. You can source these plugs from the junkyard from a 94-00 Mustang, or a 93-95 taurus. The taurus patch cable is slightly shorter.

Or, you can order from here
http://www.kigmaradioshop.com/servlet/the-388/Ford-Wiring-Harness-for/Detail

As for the power plug wiring, havent gone into detail too much yet...but here's a wiring diagram if you wish to try. It's got the typical power, ground, remote turn on wires..plus a couple others i have not identified yet

 

[Mustang5L5]

Side by side comparison of the 1993 CD and Tape player than came on Mustangs equipped with premium sound

 

[Mustang5L5]

Semi-finished product.

I used a 1999 Contour CD player. Was anticipating using the slave CD setup with it as well, but found out it wouldn't fit without mods. So i'll have to go back to the drawing board and see if i can find a NOS square face for sale and mount the cubby underneath.

 

[Mustang5L5]

And that's it for now. Not expecting anyone to run out and toss their aftermarket radios in the trash, but in the future if anyone is looking to do a restoration, the info is all here in one thread. I'm sure as these cars get older, more people are looking to restore.

BTW, if you look in the above photo, i sucessfull filled, sanded and painted the small side strips where my aftermarket head unit was screwed in. Now it looks smooth again!

Comments?? Mods, can you stick this into the giant tech sticky thread please?

 

[Saleen0679]

Shop manual shows:

DESCRIPTION

All vehicles are equipped with standard or premium sound speakers. All standard speakers have "3.2 ohms" printed on the magnet. Premium sound speakers are printed with either "6 ohms" or "8 ohms" (coaxial speakers). Standard and premium sound speakers are not interchangeable. The premium speakers, used in the optional premium sound installations, are removed and installed in the same manner as the standard speakers.

 

[Mustang5L5]

Since original 1993 radios are hard to find, I decided to make one. These CD players (and even the 93 premium tape decks) came in other 90's Fords. The main differences are the botton tray is unique to the 1993 Mustang to mount the storage cubby, and the edge of the radio faceplate on the Mustang is square, vs other radios being rounded over.

The bottom tray problem is easy. ANY 87-93 bottom tray can be used if you have one. The square face is trickier to find. Ford used it on the radios they put in the F150 and F250, and possible the ford escort, so those faceplates can be used in the Mustang. Another difference is the COLOR of the radio. Some of the Fords used radios with BLUE color LCD displays and buttons. Most are green fortunately.

I used a bad 1993 radio donor for parts. It didn't work at all. Buttons had wear and were broken. But, it had the brackets and square face frame i needed.

For a new radio, I picked up a 1999 Contour CD player. If you search around, salvage yards have these for about $50.

Here you can see the bottom plate in which the storage tray attached. These interchange between the CD players, so it was an easy swap. Some of the bottom plates clip on, while others are held on by small torx screws. Remove, and swap. Very easy. Now the bottom storage cubby fits on.

You can see the subtle differences between the faceplates below. Top one with the square edges is the Mustang. The contour radio has rounded edges. The faceplates come off very easily, but you need to be careful. Simply pry the faceplate off VERY carefully. I had already begun disassembling the faceplates to swap the good buttons over to the cd player face with square edges

Here are the part numbers for various units if you want and try to locate some to use as Donors. The revision codes at the end (-AA, -AD) do vary so there may be more than what is listed below. I'm just listing actual part numbers I've seen

Edit: for a list of radios, see this thread

Interior and Upholstery - 1993 Mustang Premium Radio interchangeability with other Ford radios.

Decided to spin this thread off from my main thread here due to answering this question more frequently these days. https://www.stangnet.com/mustang-forums/threads/1993-premium-sound-stereo-into-87-92-mustang-install-thread.833958/ This thread focuses mainly on 1993 CD players for now...

www.stangnet.com

 

[Mustang5L5]

The faceplates come apart very easily. All you need to do is remove the clear insert from behind by unclipping the tabs on the 4 edges. Then the buttons pretty much come out

A little parts swapping, and good as new! Will clip right in! I'll get a final shot once i slap this into my console. I kinda like it...unique for sure.

Final product

 

[91TwighlightGT]

Bumping this for a quick question...

Is the "Cubby" portion of the radio the same as the other 91-93 premium sound cars with the cassette option? If so, assuming I got the CD player part of the radio out of a Contour/F-150/etc. would the bottom plate swap from the cassette to the CD Player? Thanks!

 

[Mustang5L5]

No. The bottom plate with cubby will not swap to CD player. I tried to do this. Seems the 1993 mustang CD player is unique.

In my car, I bought a junk, broken 93 CD player, and a working CD player from a contour. I swapped the bottom plate, and the faceplate (mustang version is square) and made that work


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[91TwighlightGT]

Okay, I figured that might be the case. Is the plastic cubby portion the same, or different? I could probably fab up my own bracket, but I don't think I could fab up the cubby.

 

[Mustang5L5]

Cubby is the same as the 87-92 mustang tape deck


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