low speaker volume

Hello Everyone,

    Recently I purchased a 1994 Mustang 5.0 convertible that was missing the stereo head unit. The rest of the original stereo equipment was still in place. Anyhow I purchased a used original style head unit as well as the plugs that connect to the back of the unit since these plugs had been cut off from the original harness. I soldeRED / shrink tubed these plugs to the original harness and plugged in the head unit. All of the functions work fine on the head unit although the speaker volume is extremely low even with the volume on the head unit turned all the way up. I checked all of the wires leading to the speakers and 2 original amps and everything seems to be fine. What would be the cause of this problem and how can I go about fixing it? Any help would be tremendously appreciated. Thanks so much,
Tony

This is all stock equipment (amps and all) from Ford? If so check your speakers. Maybe the owner before replaced them with high watt speakers and the original amps can't push them. Since the HU seems to have been replaced the speakers could be the problem.

Those cars came with 4 configurations 1 was am fm cass premium sound,    2 was am fm cass with slave cd premium sound, 3 was am fm cd pemium sound,4 was am fm cass standard sound . If you have 1 or 3 you would have a long plug and a square plug that goes to the amp,but on top of the amp plug you need the shorting plug,if you have 2 then you would the long plug the one going to the amp and the other goes to the slave cd ,if you have the 4th option then you have two long plugs.You will get very low vol if shorting plug is not in. hope this helps. 

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Dough

Hello,
   Thanks for your response.   Actually the car originally came with am/fm cassette with Mach 1 premium sound. There is one long plug and one square plug and the antenna plug. Are you saying that I should have one more plug? I went to a local junk yard and looked at a similar car and it had the same plugs that I installed in my car.   One thing that I did notice however is that on the plug that I soldeRED / shrink wrapped to the cut wires in my wiring harness there was an extra wire that did not have a matching wire on the harness. The wire is orange with a green line through it. There are some other wires that run behind the dash near where the head unit fits that has the same colored wire but this part of the harness does not appear to have anything to do with the sound system. Anyhow a friend of mine told me to solder the extra wire on the plug I purchased (from the local junk yard) to the wire that has the matching colors and it did not help so I disconnected it. Then I went back to the junk yard and looked at another car and the plug on it did not have this extra ORANGE / green wire. This was on the long plug. Someone else told me that it is possible that this extra wire is a ground wire and that I should check it to see if it is and if so attach it to a good ground. The thing is that I have not seen any wires behind the dash of any of the cars I looked at in the junk yard that had a wire attached to ground anywhere. They were all neatly part of a nice shrink wrapped wiring harness.   Whether or not any of the wires in their harnesses attached to ground on the end I do not know but I prefer to do things as close to factory as possible. In other words I do not like to Mickey Mouse anything. If I were to put in another stereo than factory I would opt to purchase an adapter plug rather than cut the original wiring harness. It is nice to keep things nice and clean. Anyhow any further advise would be greatly appreciated.   Thanks so much,

Tony

Hi Doug,

    After rereading your post I understand what you are saying. On the back of my head unit there is an area for three plugs. One is for the long plug, the other two are square plugs, one having 8 pins and the other having six. I have one long plug in my dash wiring harness and one square plug. There are no other cut or loose wires in my dash for me to attach another plug so this has me totally confused. Is there somewhere else I should be looking for the wires to solder this shorting plug too? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for all of your help,
Tony

shorting plug would be the first square plug on the top ,the plug has no wires in it just plastic and several peicesof metal witch short the pins on radio

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Dough

Hi Doug,

   I will be willing to bet that this is the problem. I will let you know how I make out. Thank you so very much for the tip. By the way do you have any idea what the extra ORANGE / green wire might be for on the plug I bought from the junk yard? It is on the long plug but not in my wiring harness? Thanks again,

Tony

Hi Doug,

    Well I went to the junk yard where I bought my OEM head unit and acquired the shorting plug you mentioned and you guessed it, my stereo works beautifully now. I can not even begin to thank you enough. You are my hero! I was going nuts without any music in my car aside from my 5.0 with headers to listen to but sometimes it is nice to hear other kinds of music. HA! HA! I am surprised at how nice the Mach 460 sound system actually sounds. I know that there are obviously systems that are a million times better but as long as the sound is decent, clear I am a happy guy. The fact that my head unit is a cassette allows me to use one of those cassette adapters with a wire and plug attached to them to plug in my MP-3 player which is really great. Thanks so very much for your advise, it was right on.

Tony