kyleking777

Okay I have seen so many people discussing this all over the Internet and I can't seem to get a straight answer so I'm really hoping somebody can help me. Last night I replaced my 2007 stock shaker 500 head unit with the new AppRadio. Everything went smooth and I really like the look and feel of the new head unit. I have everything wired up great. Except for one part. I noticed the subwoofers in the doors are not working. I have a wire harness kit to make it easier even tho I could probably just as easily wire it without that. But after researching I found the door subwoofers and factory amps are run off the J4 plug (8 pin) and looking at the wire diagram of that 8 pin plug, it looks like the wiring from the factory harness and the kit do not match up. The pins arnt touching each other when connected. So, I want to just bypass the whole thing, cut both clips off the harnesses and wire it directly. So my question is, what is each color of the wires in the J4 (8 pin) plug. I think the purple one is the amp turn on, and I know I need to add a 5v regulator between the head units remote turn on wire and the factor amps. But I'm not sure what color wire is what. Also I want to splice the factor wires and wire them into RCA cables to that I can easily plug them into the sub out RCA cables on the aftermarket head unit. How would I go about this? When you splice the RCA cables, do you connect the outer coper wire to a ground and hook the other to another wire? One last question is I know that one of the wires coming from the stock whirring is a shield wire? I have no idea what to do with that or even what it is. Thanks so much and sorry for the novel lol!

Chromeshadow

I ditched the factory amp and went with a real amp and real door speakers. Here is the inside of the Shaker 500 amp from my 2012. It uses 2 low power amp channels to drive a dual voice coil "sub" in the door. I calculate it has about 15-20W RMS to the door "subs".
http://akrsd.com/Factory%20Amp%20PCB.JPG

If your head has a sub output you could run it to a real amp and replace the Factory 8" "subs"and use the Shelby Kicker 8" subs in the doors. Your new head will have enough power for the 6x8 door speakers imho.

There is enough room to install a Sony 200W amp where the factory amp was in my 2012.

Here is a pics of the Sony amp and the Kicker 8" subs



Here is a pic of the amp installed



This gave me 50W RMS per channel for the 8" subs in the doors. I think this is about all the power the doors can handle without putting in dynomat

kyleking777

That's an awesome set up and it sounds great, but I want to keep the factory speakers and amp, let me know if you find any of the answers to my questions!

DirtFarmer

You got the standard ford adapter, not the shaker 500 kit. Both kits include the same large adapter but the skaker 500 wiring harness also comes with the amp harness. I think you're going to have to buy another wire hareness kit that includes the 8 pin plug. You connect it to the factory plug and it provides two rca's and two blue remote turn ons. you can hook up the rca's to the new HU like normal and connect the two blue wires to the remote turn on on the new head unit. you'll need to go down to a local audio shop and have them wire up a resistor that you can instal inline to the blue wires. Otherwise everytime you turn on the system you'll hear a pop.

dr.dirty

I just used the pac harness for my 2006 shaker 500. No pop that is mentioned the harness was spendy but took like 5 minutes to install and everything works like normal.....

kyleking777

Any info on what the wire colors mean coming to the stock harness?

pentavolvo

just buy the correct harness

wayne613

Seriously man, just buy one of these at the local auto store, and don't f'up your factory harness as stated...

It's just the 8 pin, Ford 2003/4 and up metra that damn near anyplace with car audio sells. Then just slap a 1k ohm resistor in-line(radio shack for $.50) to the blue power line on it to drop the voltage down to 5v. It will have the RCA inputs already done for you, and the packaging will show the wiring color codes. The shaker subs have a factory amp, all you want to give them is line-level from the back of the aftermarket radio. Unless you wish to bypass the factory amp, in which case you will need to either bypass the existing in above the drivers-side foot-area (bypassing harness specifically for this is sold), or run your own wire. Bypassing is usually sufficient for all but a few of the more powerful shallow-mount subs.

If you absolutely insist on learning the lesson in stupid, here's your splice-away references..
http://iihs.net/fsm/?dir=40&viewfile...Navigation.pdf (page 2)
and
http://iihs.net/fsm/?dir=40&viewfile=Symbols.pdf (page 3, for the color code explanations)

Further information on the layout, and pictures here:
http://www.installer.com/cars/by_car.php?carid=2248 (bottom of page)