I'm about help a friend install a amp and a couple subs in his 98ish Explorer. Has anyone here ever put one in? He is using the factory head unit and he also has XM. My question is does the factory unit have a wire for the remote wire to hook up to? I don't want to get ***** deep into this and discover he needs more goodies to complete the job.
Thanks In Advance.

 

The factory stereo does not have a "remote turn on wire" I would just use the ignition wire on the radio, serves the same purpose. And also is he going to use rca's or just high/low the amp.

 

What do you mean by high/low the amp? I was talking to another friend and he said I might need a convertor box or something for the RCA's since the OEM unit does not have them.

 

The box youre talking about is called a line level converter or a line output converter or high to low converter. The device converts a "High"(amplified) signal to a "low" (unamplified) signal. The come in 2 or 4 channel. You will need the 2 channel. Connect this at the back of your factory radio to the factory speaker output wires. BTW you will need ford radio removal tool to get the factory deck out the look like 2 metal U's you can get them at most autoparts stores.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by VegasRex90 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">The factory stereo does not have a "remote turn on wire" I would just use the ignition wire on the radio, serves the same purpose. And also is he going to use rca's or just high/low the amp. </TD></TR></TABLE>
Use the power antenna wire if you can. Just make sure it has power for as long as the head unit is turned on.

 

I did this in a '97 Explorer awhile back. It was an Eddie Bauer edition that already had a little sub in the back... not sure if that is your case or not.

Anyway, in my situation, there obviously was a stock remote wire, but get this -- it only switched between 0 and 4Volts!!! Not enough to trigger my new amp. (Sometimes I wonder if Ford does this sort of thing on purpose.)

The way I got it to work -- and I'm an engineer so pardon me if this is beyond what you want to do -- was by soldering up a little circuit using a 4-volt relay. I used the remote wire to switch the relay on and off, and used the relay to switch +12V on and off to the amp.

The second thing that bugged me, but I just chose to live with, was that the amp would go "bang" every time I turned the stereo off. The audio signal was line level ("low level") and centered around about +6V when the radio was on, but dropped suddenly to 0V (ground) when the radio turned off, resulting in an obnoxious pop.

If this Explorer doesn't have the little stock subwoofer in the back panel, maybe these things don't apply... but it's possible that the non-subwoofer head is identical and still has these outputs??

I have seen some subwoofer systems (like the Infinity Basslink) that automatically detect audio signal and can use that to switch the amp on and off. Anyone know if there is a standalone unit that will do this?

 

Yes actually there is a converter that senses audio signal and supplies a remote turn on wire it is made by Peripheral Electronics. Part # LVT2

http://peripheralelectronics.com/web/triggers.asp

 

Thanks guys