Dose anyone have any idea WTF is going on with this harness behind my radio? Looks like the factory harness was cut
but why are there two factory harnesses? Anyone have a wiring diagram for the factory harness?
The factory radio had two plug in connectors. If it had premium sound it also had an amp in there as well with more connectors. That's all I got...lol. Next!
Looks like it's the amp harness. Should be a small football shaped amp connected to the trans tunner mount behind where you are taking a photo
Here's the harness. Two plugs on far left connect to the amp, middle female plugs connect to the body harness and the two far right plugs connect to the original radio.
The body harness plugs that connect to the two middle plugs look exactly like the two plugs on the far right, so you will have four of those. If you want to bypass the amp, these get disconnected from the amp harness and plug into your radio harness with the typical "amp bypass" harness you buy for $5
The nice thing is that you can bypass that whole harness in the photo above, but once the amp harness is removed you will only have dash & rear speakers. The door speakers are added for the "premium sound" for the 6 speaker system. What I would do is to re-wire the dash and door speakers to run front/ rear channel and then a small amp to run the rears. Maybe add a second amp to run the two front channels down the road.
I need to get me one of those uncut radio harnesses. My friend at the stereo shop volunteer to put my new cd player in after I bought it from his store. He also volunteered to hack into my harness! Car was only two years old then. I'd like it to be back factory so I could just plug an adapter in and not have to splice.
A ton of fords from the fox years used the same plugs for the radio, my 97 SD has the same ones my 89GT has.
i think anyway, I remember the radios were nearly identical. Been a long time.
If you REALLY want a nice installation, you need to buy some of these Ford radio pin connectors. <- click here for details.
Or you can buy them from Summit Racing: 5-pin package
Rock Auto sells them under part number"DORMAN 85347" and will allow you to attach the radio end pins to your new radio harness. From there it is pretty easy on Fords to remove the wires from the adaptor harness you buy to connect to your aftermarket radio. I will add some photos of the process, but to be able to run a plug to plug adaptor and not 20 butt connectors is such a nice way to do it.
The problem is that you are either stuck with dash and rear quarter speakers if you plug into the harness up under the bottom edge of the dash. (Stock radio plug for non-amplified is tucked up there when they plug in the amp harness) OR you need to keep the stock amp in the system if you still have it. Otherwise, you are hacking up the wires and hooking two speakers together which is a bad way to install your radio. As I mentioned above, you could run a small 2-channel amp for the rear speakers and a 4-channel for the doors and dash. On mine, I cheated a bit and because I had a spare dash harness, I removed some extra pins from a harness side plug. Then I removed the four rear speaker wires from the speaker plug. I then took the 4 wires going to the doors and soldered the pins onto those wires and repinned the stock plug so that the stock radio harness is running the dash and doors. I will add a 2-channel amp as mentioned to run the rear.
Here are some photos from when I did mine. The first photo shows the pins and my completed Kenwood wire harness adaptor. (In hindsight, I should have separated the wire loom into two harnesses out to the plug.)
In the 2nd photo, you see the red wire lock retainer which needs to be pushed up and pulled out of the plug to release the pins. This plug is one of the adaptor plugs you buy to install the radio. Just make sure you CLEARLY mark the plug and write down exactly where the pins go back in.
The 3rd photo is, well... it's a photo showing you exactly what I told you to just do... but double check your own. This shows the pins removed. With the red lock pulled out, you will easily see a little tab that you push to one side to pull the pin out. Very easy to do, just don't bend it out so far that you break it.
Photo 4 shows an alternative to buying the new pins. IF you have one of those soldering jigs with alligator clips, you could open up your old pins where the insulated wire is crimped on. You will not be able to remove the stripped wire end, but you "can" solder the pins on top of where they are crimped. You must have that solder jig to do this. I have replaced many damaged wires from using the right pin from other plugs. The new pins make this job much better though so I am just giving you an option.