ahgrafx

I have a question on installing an amp. I think my stang came with a factory amp, because it has two different connections on the back of the radio. I cant figure out the speaker wires and what speaker they go to. Please help, ive looked in my chilton manual and the codes are not even the same colors. thanks for any help you can give.

pacepony

if you dont know what wires go to what speakers, get a double a battery and hook the wires to the battery and move the wire around. the speaker will crackel and you will know what speakers it goes to , mark it and try another pair

ahgrafx

do you know where the stock amp is?. and ive heard of doing this with a 9 volt, do you havet to have negative to negative and pos to pos?

whitelightning

When checking for polarity on speakers with a 9volt battery, when you hook neg. to neg. and pos. to pos. the crackling will cause the cone to move. If the cone pushes outward then it is hooked up correct, if the cone pulls in then you have pos. and neg. reversed!! Good luck, also I would recommend pitching the factory amp if you have one!, Just my 2 cents. If you can afford it put in an aftermarket, like a 4 channel, you don't need alot of power, just match it best as you can with the speakers that you install. You'll notice a big difference in sound quality no matter what kind of music you listen to!!!

ahgrafx

so do you suggest just cutting all of them and grabbing one wire and trying to matchh it up with its mate by rubbing all of them on it?

whitelightning

First off what year car and what type stereo do you have. I'm not sure I like the idea of just cutting wires and rubbing them together with a battery. You need to have some sort of idea what the wires are. You can try counting the wires to narrow it down. Although it might have common grounds. you need to find what you think might be pairs, then check with the battery. If you grab the wires from the output of an amp then they should go directly to the speakers, but it you grab input wires you may find turn on leads, power, ground and signal input wires. Really I would need to know a little more of what exactly you are trying to do with your stereo!!

ahgrafx

I have a 96 gt and am installing subs and an amp,and i think i have the speaker wires narrowed down becuase im pretty sure there is a stock amp in the car and all the speaker wires on in one connection so i cut the covering and have 8 wires. 2 for each speaker, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason for the coloring. what i would like to do is hook up the four channel amp to the subs and the rear speakers to it. im not sure if that is possible though

tchamber

OK, its simple. Pop a speaker out, and look at the color of the wires going to it, on will have a stripe, one a sold color. Then go to the head unit and find the same color wires. Or to the amp. Do that with all speakers.

whitelightning

If I am understanding you correctly you are trying to add subs to your system. If that is all you are trying to do then I would recommend using the new amp for the subs. if you have a factory amp then the amplification of the stock speakers is probably balanced well and I would leave it alone unless you change speakers. You can add a amp but if your amp doesn't accept speaker level inputs then you will have to get a converter to change from speaker level to line level (RCA's) that will do the trick. As for the speaker wires if you kave found a bundle of 8 it is probably the output to the speakers. Try taking the battery like I mentioned before and using it to determine what wire goes to what speaker. you may need to be able to have access to look at the speaker to determine polarity. YOu shouldn't hurt anything by using the battery to check!

whitelightning

Checking the wires at the amp and at the speaker doesn't always work, sometimes the output goes through a different wire harness. Example on a mach 460 if you pull the back speakers you will find black and black/white for one and red and red/ white for the other. Then if you look at the amp the colors are different. It goes through a different wire harness just before going into the big box mounted to the rear deck!!!! You cant always check at both ends for colors of the wires!!!! </P>


This is response to tchambers post</P><edited><editID>whitelightning</editID><editDate>37958.7730208333</editDate></edited>