Well WTH??

[EMB1230]

OK, a lot of you know how the lower end trucks didn't come with rear speakers or even the wiring for them, well I discovered that my 96 apparently didn't come with wiring for the fronts either!! According to the door sticker, it didn't even come with a radio, but I have wiring in the dash for one. Why the hell would Ford inc. wiring for the radio but no wiring in the doors for the speakers?

 

[exbass94]

The radio harness is probably attached to some other harness (for gauges, airbags, computer, etc) and it was probably easier for them to just leave the radio harness instead of ordering a completely different harness for the <1% of Rangers sold that didn't have radios.

 

[wiesket]

The connections for the radio is standard in the wiring harness. Order a radio and you get the speaker connections. They just plug into the connections that are in the wiring harness. My 94 was one of those that the original owner ordered without a radio. Was used for delivering Steak and Sea Food, part of a small fleet of Rangers the owner had. When I got it one of the owners employees had added one of those cheap and dirty radio/cassette combos and hacked the harness all up. When I replaced the the harness from a donor truck I found that all the connections were there, got the rest of the harness from my local pull n pay and installed both front and back speakers the proper way. Was probably a cost saving measure by Ford. Easier to have one generic harness then to have numberous specific harnesses!!!!!

 

[EMB1230]

Thanks, it makes sense now. I'm glad I wasn't the one that had to figure that out, crawl under the dash and find the 2 wires to cut on each side to wire the door speakers into the stock harness, for the rears they just ran some generic wire directly into the HU. at least they did it the right way, used a harness adapter, wired all the wires up with some insulated crimp sleeves, even the wires that aren't used are capped off.