SHAKER 500/1000 in non shaker cars

theskyisoutthere · 05-27-2008, 08:01 AM

Hey everyone, I want to start off by saying that i am only here to contribute since I have found a welth of information here that sort of helped me on my way to fit a shaker radio headunit in a non shaker car. Before i begin its not even a mustang its a focus. But fitting the radio was a challenge and i know there are a few out there that want the shaker radios in there non shaker mustangs so i figured that i would post something about this that might help.

I purchased a shaker head unit from a mustang i did not realize there was anything about the 500 or 1000 difference, the only thing i found is there is zones for the sub outs as in there is front and rear subs in the 1000 unit full setup. (i only wanted to mount the focus factory one from an earlier model)

Firstissue. No harness in the rear. Time to go new school anyhow and wire it to where i will be going in a year or less. Ran 4 guage knukoncepts (my favorate wire) front to rear (not necessary for this but later it will be.) used a ground point hidden near the rear seat belt drivers side (tested with ohm meter, cleaned preped with dielectric grease and mounted) once the power and ground is run the correct way mounted a distributation block (not necessary for this) uner the trim area to keep it hidden. Ran rca from radio area to rear section left extra at rear and tied off (for later) Save time pre wrap your rcas (even though i bought shielded cables VERY IMPORTANT IN THESE CARS lets not forget groud loop noise) with an additional shield cable connect it to the provided radio shield later. Also run your turn on and off remote wire, and and additional set of remote and shield.

Secondissue amp and sub had no harness for input. (this was a b of a problem) With a stroke of luck i found a few wiring diagrams and pieced to gether that the focus amp was to be wired like a combo of a mach 460 style and a shaker amp from the mustangs. Also for the harness this sounds silly but since i was not able to get a pn for the harness i had to create one using a plug end from an old AT (yes i said AT not ATX) PC the main board connector minus the outer prongs fits perfect and can house the entire hot and ground section leaving you one for the remote six pins works gread same spacing and size. I dissembled the pins however and solderd attitional wires to beef up the thin guage in the connector. Then the all important signal line (mine are rca i had to convert to rcas out of the head unit and back at the amp but leaves me flexable for later.) THe signal + goes in the the pin on the botom right (2 are together there) the next on the left of it is the - signal.

Now that we have the wiring there time to add the harness in the radio area that i don't have.

Thrid IssueRadio headunit not have the harness for the sub out (sadly the doner retained the factory harness) The only way i found to get the rewire harness for the sub out on the shaker was to get a metra 71-5520-1 2003-up Ford lincoln mercury connection harness (plugs into oem radio) the kind of part you buy when some jerk cuts your wired stealing your radio.

Fourth Issuefollowing metras printed instructions and the shaker 500 diagram (shaker 1000 diagram was not available was told its identical except for the second row on the sub out works) I wired it up like the instructions said and all i got was no remote on and a clicking noise nothing else
I chased grimlens all over my work and did not get it i was getting voltage form the rca line and all like it was on (this was assuming i would see 12 volts on remote... in short its 4.5-5 volt on the remote) once i came accross a old half garbaged diagram that had some mach 460 things i verified the connections on the non mach sub and amp were correct and i pumped in a test tone and it worked with the remote line corssed to 12 volt That when i had a spark of genious and went back to the shaker diagram and found that the show the pin outs but its in reverse (da right, since its the pinouts for the head unit not the wires) then i went back and found that the metra instructions were backwords and basicaly reversed the whole thing (apparently they have the same inverted diag to go off of.) The metra one should appear red is sub + black next to it sub - next black shield, next is red/yellow that is remote on. dam metra it took me a week to find that, I haved sent them an email to correct there instructions.

Now it works.