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.

 

[c-atkinson]

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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