I have a clarion cd player I took out of the car I sold and was putting it into my 1988 cougar with premium sound. I am using a harness to mate the radio to the factory harness, I figured out the ground problem and now get power, but still no sound. I know it has somthing to do with the factory amp. What do I do? HELP!! Thanks. Dan
look behind the glove box. there should be a harness taped up against itself somewhere in there. mine was between the clock and the clove box down low. plug into that. it bypasses the premium sound/amp and goes directly to the speakers.
I had nasty problems getting my Pioneer cd player to work in my '88 bird. I ended up wiring it up to that extra harness shame302 mentioned. Even tho your car has the premium sound it's probably got all the wiring for the basic, non-premium setup in addition to the premium wiring. Mine was taped up kinda behind the glovebox...check out this pic. It's blurry but you can kinda see it.
When I put my cd player in at first I only used the red ground wire that the factory radio uses. I got sound but it was weak and distorted. It didn't work right until I ran the ground from the cd player's harness straight to the car. Maybe that's an amateur mistake but I figured the factory ground would be enough. Apparently I was wrong. Works great now, all 6 speakers are functional too.
(http://harness.jpg)
ahh do it the good ol' ghetto way... Cut the wires.. wire them up directly
Why do all that ford already ran two sets of wires to the speakers. One set for the premium sound and one set for the non-prem sound. they should both be the same plug really just plug and play.
one setup runs to the factory amp, which requires a differenet wire layout all together