Alternate radio for 94 Explorer XLT

Walmart sells wiring tails, and kits to install just about any radio into your rig. I installed a CD player I had lying around the house into my Ranger using those resources, and had it installed myself in under 30 minutes. However, will need to install two speakers behind the seats. Does anyone know if the wires are already run back there? My Ranger is an '03.

Plasyd

If you had one of the better radios in a '94, you probably have an amplifier in the right rear fender area. With an aftermarket system you will need to pull the plastic trim and bypass the amp. You can get a bypass connector from Crutchfield, along with the adapter to adapt a aftermarket radio to the Explorer wiring harness.

The alternative to bypassing the amp is running new speaker wires.

The premium sound systems do have amplifiers. What I found works best is a little workaround I devised. I have been told that many times, factory speakers are a different ohms rating than aftermarket speakers or radios. Therefore if you bypass the factory amp in favor of the one included in the new aftermarket unit, the ohms ratings may be different and the sound quality not as good. Since the factory amp and speakers are matched ohms, I decided not to bypass the factory amp, but to bypass the amp in my new aftermarket unit. If you have a new unit with RCA or pre-amp outputs, you can go to radio shack and buy some RCA to Speaker Level cables. These have RCA connectors on one end and speaker wires on the other. I used the RCA ends on the preamp outs on the aftermarket unit, and the speaker level wires to connect to the speaker wires on my wiring harness adapter. The sound quality is quite good.

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