Wiring a radio in a 1994 F-150?

Question

Ok here's my problem. I went to best buy and bought a $100 JVC radio to put in my F-150. I bought the wiring harness for 1986 and up Ford vehicles. It looked surprisingly like the Mustang harness I used for my buddies car but I didn't think about it. I pulled my old radio out and found 3 plugs. One that fits to the new harness, the antenna wire, and an 8 or 10 gauge wire. That huge wire is my speaker wire! It runs down underneath the dash and at some point it branches off into a bunch of smaller wires. If anyone knows what I'm talking about do they make a converter clip for that wire or do I have to rip it out and redo the speaker wires to hook up the JVC? If I'm way off can someone tell me what to do?

Answer 1

If the "8 or 10" gauge wire terminates in a small, square 8-pin plug, then you have a factory-amplified sound system.  The thick cable is running to the factory amp, which is usually buried deep inside the dash in these trucks.  If you can locate the amp, you'll find two plugs.  The smaller plug is the thick cable from the radio; the larger plug has all the output wires to the speakers.

The best way to do this truck is to unplug the amp and connect all the speaker wiring directly to the new head unit.  The amp is located close enough to the radio that this isn't much of a stretch, but a harness like this one http://us.st12.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I... makes it much easier.  (This is a Metra 70-5514 harness; Best Buy should have it in stock).  You may have a hard time finding the amp; you really just have to know what to look for.  You can get to it from below the dash.