New radio wires?

[michowski]

How hard is it to replace the factory wire harness for the radio? I have an after market radio but when I first got the truck the factory power harness was all fudged up and cut so ive just ran the power off the battery with a fuse. I want to have it all hooked up now stock so that will entitle replacing all the wires. Is it a big choir? Also were can I get new wires from?

 

[RobbieD]

The harness to the radio comes out of the main cross-dash harness, that goes to just about everything in the dash, and includes the fuse box and the bulkhead connector.

Soooo ... you can replace the whole danged thing, or get a good replacement radio sub-harness from the bone yard, and go into the main dash harness and do a real clean replacement of the radio harness by soldering and heat-shrinking the new connectors' wires to the original wires, color-to-color.

Both of the trucks bought used that I have now I've had to do this exact same thing- restoring the original sub-harness, in getting rid of the aftermarket crap radio installations and reinstalling original Ford radios. It's not that hard of a job at all.

 

[97Power_Ranger]

Get yourself a test light and its easy.. the cd player usually tells you what wires need what.. so for the accessory you need to whip out the test light and find a wire that has power only whent he keys on, then find one for the constant power that stays on non stop even when key is off, and there should be somewhere for you to ground your stereo out too, if not there is probably a ground wire already in place.