upgrading the factory amp? any other OEM ford amps plug in?

[macantley]

right now i have the RCA outputs on my cd-player feeding the signal to the OEM amp which im assuming is made by JBL, the sound is surprisingly good for a OEM system but not 100% up to my standards. Im wondering if ford makes any other car's that have a plug and play amp that would sound alot better, or provide more power?

also for anyone adding a sound system to the contour, how did they route the power wire from the battery to the trunk?

and last but not least, im planning on building a bandpass box and port the port out through the hole in the rear deck, i figure a 4" or 6" port would support a 8" or 10" woofer, but im not real sure, if i run a sealed box, im going to build a custom box that actually mounts to the rear deck and seal it right up against the rear deck with caulking and probably put a 10" woofer in the rear deck.

right now im using a alpine 7892 headunit, the factory amp behind the glove box, and if i have to ill just put an aftermarket amp in its place.

for now though ill probably be running a diamond audio CM3 10" woofer with dual 4 ohm coils i can run it from either a hollywood sound RHV2000D or an american bass 1800 amp.

both will be more than enough to power a single 10" woofer.

im looking for good sound quality without giving up too much trunk space.

worst case senario, i have 5 clarion 8" woofers, 2 tang band 8" woofers, 2 tang band 6.5" woofers and also two tang band 5.25" woofers.

im going to put alittle bump in this car

matthew

 

[Dyoel182]

RCA inputs on the factory ford amp behind the glovebox?

 

[macantley]

no, i used the RCA FRONT/REAR outputs on my cd-player, found a 3 foot RCA patch cord, cut the ends off the cord and used butt connectors on them to patch those RCA's to the amps inputs, this allows the volume to work right, when the speaker outputs were used for the factory amp it would boost the signal too much and cause distortion, basically when the amp was seeing signal from the cd-player the volume would be maxed out at 10, but now that im using the RCA outputs it works properly all the way up to its max volume of 35.

im probably bad at explaining this, but either way, it works, but isnt as good of sound quality as id prefer.

i know there are other ford vehicles with factory amps and what not, i just want to know if there are any that are more powerful/better quality that will plug in without doing anything special.

matthew

 

[Dyoel182]

That seems like a lot of work when a good head unit will probably put out more power per channel than the cheap factory amp.

 

[PurdySVT]

Can you use the ford mustang Mach 460 or Mach 1000 amp setups?

also you could try a factory amp out of a lincoln of similar age.

 

[Pienstars]

STOP STOP STOP STOP!!!!!!!!!! Whatever you do, please don't try to upgrade the factory amp with another factory amp. Like Dyoel182 said, bypass the factory amp and just use the power from your head unit. If you want more power than that, invest in a decent amp for your mids/highs. If you're willing to purchase used, I can come back with about 20 different amps that will work great for $100.00 or less. Below is a couple of links to start with.

Cheap old school Sedona amps from PPI.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Precision-Power...4|66:2|65:12|39:1|240:1318|301:1|293:1|294:50

http://cgi.ebay.com/PPI-Sedona-200-...4|66:2|65:12|39:1|240:1318|301:1|293:1|294:50

 

[macantley]

i have plenty of amps, thats not the problem, i just wanted to use the factory mounting location and factory harness.

ok, my next question will be:

can i remove the glove box, take out the amp, and mount a aftermarket amp in teh stock location, and here's teh kicker.

will the stock amps be able to power a small 4 channel amp (100 watt american bass 4 channel amp)

will it have a remote turn on to turn the amp on/off?

i have an american bass amp, its approx 10" long, 6" wide, and 1.25" tall, its either 100 or 200 watts, i cant remember, its got a 20 amp fuse, but i dont see it pulling more than 12-15 amps tops.

anyone know what the factory amps power wire is, as far as size?

matthew