Phil12

Hi. I'm trying to swap my old 6 cd head unit for one with an auxiliary port. now I've heard crazy horror stories about wiring for the Mach 1 systems. Does anybody have good luck with a certain one? Do I need a certain wiring harness to make a new head unit work?

jayglaze

I bought a double din kenwood from crutchfield and they sent the wiring harness it was really easy to just change the head and add a amp and sub. From what I understand replacing the speakers is the harder part

rsh0763

I just went through this. I too bought a Kenwood HU, it had built-in HPF and LPF. If you do it, use the crutchfield harness, they will throw it in with the mounting HW. Then plug the rca cables into the SW jacks, wire the speaker wires in the console to their corresponding wires in the harness. Then make sure you turn on the SW jacks in the deck, set the front and rear HPFs high enough to block the lows and the LPFs to block the highs for the woofers. When I did it, the sound was better than stock, but I wanted more anyways so I replaced EVERYTHING and added a sub to the trunk.

MUCH better.

caaraa

Valuable thoughts and advices. I read your topic with great interest.

dwtjr3

I did the same thing last winter and i love it never regretted it. I put in 4 rockfordfasgate punch speakers with crossovers, 8 tweeters (2 per speaker) and a pioneer amp and 12 inch sub And i had a pioneer headunit (you can never go wrong buying a pioneer) but i just switched it out last week with a touch screen sony that i got for cheap. And i agree MUCH better sound

FlamingoGT

LOL ... I saw your title (Mach 1 head unit swap) and was wondering what you were talking about. 'Mach 1' is a trim level of the Mustang; the radio is either a Mach 460 or Mach 1000 (the number referring to the power level of the amps).

Having then figured out you were talking about the radio head unit, I would have to agree that Crutchfield is the way to go as they throw in the mounting hardware and wiring harness. Yes, you can probably find these elsewhere, but for the price it seems like it would be better to get it all in one shot.

If all you are replacing is the head unit, that should be all you need to think about. If you are also replacing the speakers (and maybe the amps?), there might be a catch. If I remember correctly, the stock speakers have a nonstandard impedance (2 Ohm instead of 4, or vice versa?). If this is the case, this needs to be matched with the amp output impedance.

Just something to think about.

04Machsy

I got confused by the title too lol. Crutchfield is one way to go but I buy my audio from Sonic Electronix as they are cheaper and they also send out the wiring harness & dash kit

Phil12

Hey guys, thanks so much for your input.

Sorry about calling it a Mach 1 head unit. I just saw it written on the speakers in the car and figured that's what it was called.

I'm actually still debating on whether to swap out the whole system or just the radio head unit itself. So, if I just swapped out the head unit, there really wouldn't be any wiring issues? Just if I got new speakers? I actually was listening closer today and I really don't mind the sound of the stock system as a whole that much. I just want something with an aux port. I've tried about a million FM transmitters and they all stink.

rsh0763

IF you get the proper harness from Crutchfield (Just use the "outfit my car" option and select the Mustang with the Mach setup) you will get the harness with RCA's and power wires to the amps. Since the wiring of the Mach system is TOTALLY CRAZY, you truly need to have the Head Unit with built in Crossover or "High Pass Filters" (HPF) and "Low Pass Filters" (LPF) Since the Mach system does this from the head unit, if you change it, full signal will go to both the tweets and the "subs" and it will sound terrible and could harm it. If you wire it per the instructions and make sure that you connect the RCA's to the SW jacks on the HU, you should be able to adjust your HPF and LPF so each set of speakers gets the right signal.

If all I wanted was an aux, I would certainly have stayed with just swapping the head unit, adjusted right it is more than acceptable. I am not even an audiophile and I just bought it all, just like a couple posts up, new 4 channel amp, high quality patch cables and power wires for Amp, Infinity Kappa components with crossovers (the 5x7's that fit in all the factory spots +tweets) and a 12" sub. It was very fun, didn't really cost that much and is crazy loud with extremely high quality sound.

VoidIndigo

Ok, sorry for an OLD bump... but...

Did you ever do the HU swap? I'm wondering because I've started this over the last couple days... I got the wiring harness (didn't order from Cruchfield, I got a Metra harness, but they appear identical) and oddly enough the harness has only 2 plugs where the Mach 1000 has three plugs going into the HU. The "extra" plug has three wires... from what I have found online (and I'm NOT sure this is right) they appear to be two wires for the rear amp decks (On / Off) and one wire for accelerator / volume control.

Anyone know if that's right?

Also, there is a 3-port wiring harness that I could order to replace this one... but I have a feeling that's a waste now that I have this one. It should be easy enough to splice the 3 wires to where they need to go...

Thanks!