Has anyone bypassed the factory amp?

[briandye]

I have a 2008, factory had the 6 disc changer, no nav, but premium sound with the subwoofer.

Ive already replaced the headunit, but soon will be upgrading the door speakers, and adding a 4 channel amp, as well as a sub/amp setup which is undecided yet.

Ill only be running about 50w RMS, so the factory wiring is more than adequate, and it will save me from running new speaker wiring to each door, and fighting to get it through the wire looms.

I remember back in the day, most factory amps could be bypassed with a simple plug and play wire harness that just connected the speaker inputs and outputs on the in/out harness of the amp.

Ive been searching, and I can't find anyone thats done this on a third gen, and I can't find a harness that claims to be compatible from any of the car audio websites, not even crutchfield.

I don't want to cut and splice the wiring, because I want to be able to easily return to stock if/when I sell it.

(Always gotta throw this disclaimer out there - searched the forum and came up with nothing, but I tried! Lol)

Thanks for any help!

 

[Knox GSL]

I think the door speakers in the expy are run off the head unit. Take a tone generator and see if the speakers will buzz off of it from the dash harness. No generator you can sub a 9volt battery. The premium systems have a high pass crossover for the door speakers built into the head units as well.

 

[1955moose]

The problem with most of Fords mach and premium systems is that their not plug and play when it comes to add on amps and such. In most cases you have to swap out the whole system, sans the speakers, they do it so you keep buying Ford stuff. If Crutchfield doesnt make an adapter harness, you may have to start from head unit back. We used to have a Stereo guru named 1k, but haven't seen him here in over 1 year. Maybe we've got a resident Hi Fi genius that can chime in.

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[Trainmaster]

I'm not sure this answers your question, but there are adapters available that plug into the door wiring and have leads for universal speakers. Crutchfield sells them but you can find them for 1/3 the price on ebay. Each speaker has two wires going to the head unit plug. A wiring diagram will show you which wires go to which pins on the plug. You can remove the pins from the plug and rewire them onto another connector, or you can buy a connector that fits into the Ford's body/head unit plug and has wires coming off it. It's all available on ebay.

The front speakers on your 08, regardless of the sound package (premium or audiophile), do indeed have a high-pass filter on each one that runs a pair of wires up to the tweeters. You'll have to address this and the handling of the tweeters if you replace the door speakers with aftermarket.

Premium sound systems on XLT's have 25 Watt speakers, Audiophile systems (ED, Limited, navigation) usually have 50 Watt speakers. All the Expedition door speakers are 4 ohm, which isn't common in the aftermarket, as Moose tells above.

I recently upgraded my XLT to OEM navigation with the stock audiophile speakers and the Ford sub-woofer and amp.

 

[briandye]

I was almost positive there was a factory speaker amp mentioned on Crutchfield, being right behind the headunit in the center stack. If there’s not, that would be great. Ok lhave to poke around when I open the dash back up and get my SXM module connected to the factory satellite antenna.

I’ll more than linkely be running a component set up front, so the tweeter will be replaced with the component tweeter, otherwise it’ll be replaced with a better one.

Thanks for the input so far guys! I’ll keep you posted on what I find (if anything).

 

[JExpedition07]

Didn't all the expys come with "premium sound system package"? I Think if you got a radio that's just what they call it. Mine said that too but I've never seen an expy without the tweeters up on the door panels.

 

[Snowblind-ca]

I have a 2010 Expy that had navigation and subwoofer. There IS an amplifier for the door speakers that sits below the radio, behind the A/C controls. It has been a year since I put in an aftermarket radio, but I'm pretty sure that I had to tap into the wires coming out of the amplifier in order to connect an aftermarket amp to the stock door speakers. I ended up disconnecting the connector from the stock amp that had the audio output wires and soldered the outputs from the aftermarket amp to the wires coming out of the connector (and to the speakers). Was a bit of work to do. I don't remember there being a wiring harness to make it easy.

I had some connection problems with the stock speaker wiring and ended up running all new speaker wire directly from my aftermarket amp to the door speakers (which were upgraded as well).

 

[1955moose]

First edition mach Stereo systems like mine had a preamp only head unit connected to a 35x4 amp directly under it . They also used a 35 watt mono amp mounted in the rear below the 8 inch subwoofer in passenger rear. Now on the 3rd edition I can't comment, although if you have a separate rear sub, I was told it was upped to a 60wpc amp for it. Maybe someone that does installs or definitely knows for sure can comment on the compliment of your stereo setup.

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[Trainmaster]

Here's my take on it and my observations on my XLT. The head unit runs the speakers, with no amp. I have an 08. The XLT came with the "Premium," or lowest priced system, which is a stereo head unit with single CD and no amp. A six CD head unit was also offered. Navigation systems were made by Pioneer in 07 and 08 and Clarion in 09 and 10.

Eddie Bauer and Limiteds with Navigation also have speakers run right off the navigation unit and a small amp mounted on the sub-woofer in the quarter panel.

The parts book shows an amplifier that mounts in the dash behind the radio. I have no idea which configurations use this. My "Premium" unit in the XLT didn't have it. Maybe it's part of the "Audiophile" upgrade when navigation's not ordered?

 

[1955moose]

The premium system was the lower powered single CD system. Don't what they called it, but in 2008 they offered a DVD based 6 CD in dash 340 watt navigation truly premium system. Again I believe it had 60 watts or more for the Subwoofer alone, and I would guess 60 watts x4 for door speakers. We had that very same stereo in our 2008 Lincoln town car I drove about 7 years back. Great sound! Ours didn't have the Dvd or navigation, but one rocking Stereo! Anybody know what Ford called their high end system in 2008? The earlier ones were called Mach stereo.

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[purevw]

Check http://maestro.idatalink.com/ and see what they have for your vehicle. As I remember, I had to cut and solder several wires between the Maestro unit and my aftermarket Kenwood head unit, but most of the factory wiring had plug-in adapters. They do have many extra adapters available. During setup, I had the option to either use or disable the factory subwoofer amp and speaker.

 

[Trainmaster]

Moose, the 2008 high end stereo was the "audiophile" option. It had 50w door speakers instead of 25w as well as the subwoofer with its separate amp mounted on the housing in the rear quarter.

The Audiophile was not available on XLT's, but came standard on all the other models. All navigation systems (which were also not available on the XLT) were considered Audiophile Sound and had the subwoofer and 50w speakers.

The single CD 160W stereo was standard on the XLT. Optional was the six-CD stereo, also with 160 watts.

The Eddie Bauer and Limiteds had the six-CD radio but equipped with audiophile speakers and 340 watts. This may have been the same XLT optional radio equipped with the behind-dash amplifier.

The Pioneer navigation unit was also available only on the Bauer and Limiteds with 340 watts, which were produced by the head unit.

Satellite radio was optional on any Expedition, using a receiver mounted deep under the console on the captain's chair cars. It communicated with any head unit that was properly programmed using the CAN buss system. I don't know where they put it on the XLT's equipped with the cloth bench seat. 2008 was the last year the bench seat was available in Expeditions.

I believe all this applies also to the 2007's. In 2009 and 2010, things changed.

 

[1955moose]

Great info trainmaster! Where did you get it from? From what your saying the Audiophile version like my Mach used a separate amplifier, and the deck is preamp only with no amp inside. Was the lower powered premium a receiver with a large 4 channel 40wpc x4 amp built in? How much wattage did the Subwoofer have powering it on the Audiophile top unit ? I'm guessing 60-100 watts.

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[rjdelp7]

I added a Sound Ordnance 8" powered sub(Crutchfield), to my Mustang factory "Shaker 500" system. The Shaker system does use separate amps. Ford wanted $1900 more, to upgrade to the Shaker 1000. Its only difference, was a dual 10" sub and amp in the trunk. I tapped into the rear speakers, for inputs. I also added two extra, 1" high end tweeters, behind door panels and 4 Blaupunkt 6x8's. I left the 2 stock, 8" door subs. It sounds, clear, crisp and excellent.

 

[Trainmaster]

Moose, some of what I wrote came from my researching the parts book when looking to install Navigation and "autophile" in my 08 XLT. The rest came from the 08 Ford sales brochure which lists the available options and standard equipment on the different models. And of course I learned from doing the job. The XLT's I learned, have a stripped harness with few wiring options.

I believe the sub-woofer amp in the rear quarter is rated at 80 watts. I know even less about the behind-dash amp that equipped some audiophile systems, as I never saw one, though read about it in the parts books.

The single-CD radio was only available on the XLT, with 160 w output. The six-CD radio was optional on XLT's with 140 watts out and standard on the others with 340 watts out and a woofer. I suspect it's the same radio with a separate in-dash amp (AR3Z-18B849-C). To make things more confusing, Ford lists this amp with their Pioneer Navigation system, which I know didn't need it. The same amp is also used in 2010 and up Mustangs, mounted in the trunk.

The premium radio has the amp built into it, and sends power directly to the speakers. Perhaps the audiophile uses the same radio, but with an external amp to boost the 160W output to 340 or whatever. Ford seems to advertise wattage by adding up all the speaker driver inputs. Again, just an assumption: Premium with four 25w speakers and two small tweeters. Audiophile with four 50W speakers, the same two tweeters and an 80W sub-woofer. Something like that I suppose. I'm guessing here.

You probably recall when parts books were very specific about which option packages contained which parts. Now it seems everything is coded by VIN numbers, so it's difficult to tell what came with what accessories in what models and how it was advertised.

 

[1955moose]

Thanks for the info. Everytime I go online to research answers for our members, I hit road blocks. I don't think Ford would try to use a bumper amp on top of their built in amp. I'm old enough to remember booster car equalizers of the 1970's and 80's. They boosted the built in 5 watt per channel power that was built into the Blaupunkt, Pioneer, and Jensen cassette decks of the day. It pumped the power, along with the midrange, bass, and treble. Problem was, it was blaring and loud. They didn't have preamp only decks till about 1980 or so, I had one of the early Pioneers. The specs that Ford lists like 340 watts is what they refer to in the Stereo world as RMS. I believe it stands for root mean square, basically its the power the amp can briefly put out at a high distortion rate, usually 5 to 10 percent distortion. It's always been an advertising ploy to sell product. In reallity the 340 watts is only about 150 clean watt power, say under 2 percent distortion. Still sounds great, compared to the garbage oem Stereo that came with vehicles as far back as 1995 or so. Making it harder for aftermarket companies like Crutchfield to sell product.

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[Trainmaster]

To make matters worse, Moose, the parts listing show the external amp used after 9/23/08 on Autiophile and after 12/02/08 on Premium radios. Were they still making 2008's then? Also the 6-CD radio changed mid-year which explains the amp dates.

Hey, do you recall the "reverb boxes" they sold for car stereos? Now that was hot stuff in the '70's! They had a set of springs in a metal box with a pickup. You'd listen to an echo in your rear speaker (singular) and it would go "boing" when you hit a bump. And those magnets on the old time OEM speakers? They were the size of a dime. Oh yea, eight-tracks that would switch tracks in the middle of songs...

 

[rjdelp7]

To make matters worse, Moose, the parts listing show the external amp used after 9/23/08 on Autiophile and after 12/02/08 on Premium radios. Were they still making 2008's then? Also the 6-CD radio changed mid-year which explains the amp dates.

Hey, do you recall the "reverb boxes" they sold for car stereos? Now that was hot stuff in the '70's! They had a set of springs in a metal box with a pickup. You'd listen to an echo in your rear speaker (singular) and it would go "boing" when you hit a bump. And those magnets on the old time OEM speakers? They were the size of a dime. Oh yea, eight-tracks that would switch tracks in the middle of songs...

My first car was a 77 Monte Carlo. It had Mindblower 6x9's. Speakers with amps mounted on the back. The put out like 50 watts per channel(impressive back then) and were loud. One of the wires shorted out and blew a speaker. I replaced them with Jensen tri-ax, another gem from back in the day.

 

[1955moose]

Ah a trip down memory lane! A friend of mine bought a new 1974 monte Carlo with a premium 8 track am/fm delco stereo. 2 6x9 in rear, and one in dash. Blasting tower of power sounded pretty damn good! I do remember reverbs, kinda of an exaggerated version of hall setting on modern surround home receivers.

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