Might pick up this head unit.

[Wicked_Sludge]

ive never seen red as a ground but who knows. hit it with a DVOM untill you find a ground wire (theres probably more than one even).

dont worry about the illumination wire, i doubt that HU will need one (ive never seen an aftermarket HU that uses it).

power antenna is for raising/lowering power antennas...like on your grandmas crown vic. you can also use it to remotely turn on an amp. just clamp a butt connector on it for now so it wont find a ground and short out.

 

[koda6966]

Already has a great big one on it. The wiring diagram for the pioneers a little sketchy, it's not all the correct wires, looks like I found the wrong ones. But oh well, it helped a little.

I think the purple and grey wires are the right front and right rear, while the green and white wires are left front and left rear.

I'm going to pull the stock HU out tomorrow and check the Ford wires out. I'll use the process of elimination to figure out what wires what. Right now I'm just labeling and zip tying the wires on the Pioneer's harness, so that when I pull it again in probably march or april, I'll know what's what. Or if I decide to leave it in, the next owner will know.

 

[gatlin04]

if you buy the connector, it says on the package what each wire is. Normally.... NORMALLY, on the radio, there is a sticker that says what each wire coming out of it goes to. Every radio that i have hooked up in my vehicles has had the same color combinations as the connector.

 

[koda6966]

Well I already have the wires from the Radio all good and figured out, it should say (for the harness wires) on the package when I get the harness.. right? I still need to pick one up. I dropped all the money I could afford to spend on a pack of connectors and a pair of stereo removal tools.

 

[Wicked_Sludge]

just match the colors from the stereo to the adaptor and everything will be a-OK.

 

[koda6966]

Think I'll be able to shrink the connectors with a blow dryer or should I look around for a heat gun to borrow?

 

[Wicked_Sludge]

i just use a lighter....quick and easy.

 

[koda6966]

i just use a lighter....quick and easy.

Yea? Any problems melting the wires? (plastic insulation)

 

[Wicked_Sludge]

heat shrink shrinks at a much lower temp than insulation melts. youll melt the heat shrink before you melt the insulation. thats not a desired effect either though. just start slow, hold the flame 2-3" under the heat shrink and let the heat rise and shrink it...move the flame closer if needed. you need to turn and roll the wire to evenly shrink all sides of the tubing.

i prefer a butane lighter (one of the jet-like, wind-proof ones) as it can operate at any angle, its easier to apply heat to all sides of the tubing when there might not be enough room below fo hold a regular lighter.

 

[koda6966]

Ahh.. I see. Well, I still need to get the harness.

I COULD just hack off the Ford one and put mine in, but I don't want to ruin it.

Oh, and what I thought was my factory Ranger stereo, was really one out of a '95 Taurus.

 

[Wicked_Sludge]

please dont hack into the factory wiring. stereo harness adaptors are so cheap these days its just uncalled for.

 

[koda6966]

please dont hack into the factory wiring. stereo harness adaptors are so cheap these days its just uncalled for.

I wont. And I think the one I need is only about 8 dollars at Advance. Plus it makes it soooo much easier for an install. I highly recommend using them. Plus it makes it easier to swap the stock HU in when you go to sell the vehicle. The pioneer is NOT going with the Ranger when I say bye bye. Even if my new car has a cd player in it, I'll either put in the Pioneer or give it back to my brother, since it's his anyway.

 

[bayouranger]

That's a good deck. Pioneers are great units, even their bottom of the line units have awesome sound control features. I keep wanting to try out some Alpine decks, but don't like the lack of EQ features. At least with Pioneer you get a 3-band EQ. Most Alpines are just Bass/Treble. Well, at least the more affordable ones.

 

[Bryan22]

I'm glad you went for the adapter harness, will save a ton of headaches later. plus you can do all the wireing on the couch go out to the truck plug it in and go. On my ranger somejackass cut all the wires and didn't even hook up the rear channels to the deck he had in there. took me a few hours to figure out where he had all the wireing going, and pull apart the wires he had twisted together and inslulated with MASKING tape. if you can beleive that. haha. Moral of the story, hacking all the wires when you pull the factory deck is a bad idea.

 

[koda6966]

The harness had some troubles. I bought a pack of the little shrinky things you melt on, somehow I ended up missing one, and accidentally put a positive speaker to it's negative counterpart so I had to twist/tape two wires. Got them done pretty good so I'm not too worried. I plugged it in and..... NOTHING WORKED.

I was pretty mad, my fuse wasn't blown and all my wires were connected so I figured either the stereo was fried or the wires were. I took it out one more time and wiggled the connection to the stereo, it made a clicking sound and then it worked.

I couldn't be happier, the stereo sounds great and is capable of handling some subwoofers down the road, although I'm not yet sure if I want to go that route, my current speakers have pretty decent base to them but I don't like the distortion.