96 escort lx

Hi all,
I am trying to install a new stereo in a 1996 Escort LX.
I think it had the premium CD in it before but now it has the cassette deck.
The connectors on the back of the deck match these harnesses.
https://www.crutchfield.com/p_120705008/Receiver-Wire-Harness.html
And the harness comes with a cable that is supposed to go to the amp to bypass it.
The problem is I can't seem to find the amp.
Does anyone know what it looks like or where exactly the darn thing is?
The other thing I have run into is that there is a pink wire on the existing harness to the original stereo. When I accidently broke that wire the oem stereo seemed to work fine but there was no sound.
None of the diagrams I can find give any indication of what that wire does and the harness from crutchfield doesn't connect that wire to anything.
The only thing I can think of is that it turns on the amp or something .
When I hooked up the new stereo everything seems to work fine, it tunes to the stations and I get song information etc. but no output to the speakers.

So to make a long story short can someone tell me where the amp is and/or what the pink wire is for?
Thanks

almost 600 views and no replies
Guess it was a bad choice of a car.

the amp might be on one side of the trunk under the the carpet panels. it will most likely look like a bare metal box with two plugs and possibly the antenna will plug into it also. ive never done an escort but i think its similar to the ford taurus in terms of the audio system.

if you think you have found it but arent sure, post a picture of it and i can tell you if it's right.

does your dash look like this?

Hi, thanks for answering.
The dash isn't that rounded one, I think that started with the 1997 model.
Unfortunately the car isn't here as I am helping a friend out. So he comes over, we rip everything out, find something new that is different and that we can't work around and then we put it all back together.
I did find out that the pink wire is for "amplifier turn on".
The antenna is into the radio so now at least I know that it is a bare metal box.
Hopefully that will help me track it down.
Everything I have been able to find just says "it could be behind the stereo, or behind the dash, or in the back"

well, if it isnt the escort i had in my mind then everything i posted probably doesnt apply. the factory amp could still be a bare metal box but it can also look more "amp-like", metal casing, heat sink fins, possibly a brand name if the system was branded( apline or infinity for example). it wont look as flashy as an after market amp though. the amp will probably be small, maybe 8" x 8" or smaller and can be in the sides of the trunk or mounted under the rear deck, could be under a seat or under the center console. if you find a box that you suspect of being the amp, try to read any stickers it has on it because it will probably say something about being an amp or part of the sound system.

Sorry, I just love Dave's "Guess it was a bad choice of a car.".

After "almost 600 views and no replies " I was expecting something more common...

But I'm glad Dave bumped. Thanks S'nS!

My sheet says below the radio cavity mounted on the "transmission tunnel" which is obviously wrong since it is a FWD car, but it would be abover where the transmission WOULD be if it were RWD.  Curious though if the amp works and the pink wire was broken why didn't you just fix the pink wire and attach your blue/white turn on lead to the pink lead or whatever corrosponds to it in the adapter harness...

(edit) nevermind your goal was to bypass it. On a car that old why not run new leads to each speaker. The wires in the door boots are likely about to break anyways.

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To master and control electricity is perfection. *evil laugh*

I did rip out the center console stuff, had to in order to get out the trim around the stereo.
I didn't see it by the e-brake or anywhere there.
running new wire is an option but I was hoping to keep it simple.
As far as just powering up the amp and leaving it I only found out definitively what the wire was after we had put it all back together.
I wouldn't be opposed to just leaving the amp in but I wonder about how the volume control would be if the amp was still there.
I just assumed I had to get rid of it.

oldspark:

soundnsecurity wrote:

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well, if it isnt the escort i had in my mind then everything i posted probably doesnt apply. the factory amp could still be a bare metal box but it can also look more "amp-like", metal casing, heat sink fins, possibly a brand name if the system was branded( apline or infinity for example). it wont look as flashy as an after market amp though. the amp will probably be small, maybe 8" x 8" or smaller and can be in the sides of the trunk or mounted under the rear deck, could be under a seat or under the center console. if you find a box that you suspect of being the amp, try to read any stickers it has on it because it will probably say something about being an amp or part of the sound system.

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Thanks when I get the car back I will keep looking, my fear now is that they may have also used different cables and the bypass cable I got won't match up with the factory ones. They didn't seem to worry a whole lot about "standards" it seems.

Well the tech note said it would be under the radio, so near the ebrake would be too far back. Looking dead at the radio look down and towards the firewall? It would be wedged on the floor up under the center stack. Not sure if I am explaining that well enough.   Anyways from my perspective running new wires IS the simpler method. I gave up on trying to interface pre 2000's amplifiers. If the companies that get paid to engineer the interfaces won't mess with it neither am I. I can guarentee better sound by knowing exactly what is attached to the ends of the wires anyways. Just my $.02  Good luck either route you take.

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To master and control electricity is perfection. *evil laugh*

You are describing it good, just straight down from the radio in that sorta columny thing there. :)

I thought I checked everything there, but on the other hand I was looking for something that looked amp like AND matched the bypass cable they gave me.

It's possible that they also changed the cable on the amp. , the closest  thing I found was a blue box with two cables going in that looked very close but didn't match up.

well if you are unsure if it is the amp, try looking for anything identifiable. usually everything in a car has some sort of label or marking, by studying the box marking you can at least tell if it is not the amp. if you read it and it says something about airbags or srs or anything else that isnt audio related then you know that it isnt the amp.

also you can look for things like a few pairs of twisted wires which are usually the speaker wires, USUALLY BUT NOT ALWAYS. other devices also have twisted wires, but you can look at the color of the twisted wires and compare the colors to what the speaker wire colors should be, if they match then you have your amp.

also i dont know why you keep saying something about the cables being changed on the amp, i dont know why anybody would ever do this unless they used a factory amp out of a different car and rigged it into your car, if that is the case then you should just go ahead and run new wire because there will be no telling what else they decided needed to be rigged up to make a different amp work in your car.

honestly sometimes its just not worth integrating or bypassing the factory amp, sometimes its just way easier to run new wire, even if you just tap onto the speaker wire going into each door without running the wire through the boot, it will still be easier and just as good.

Sorry I wasn't clear about the cables being changed. The wire harness kit came with a bypass cable kit for the amp.
Since they don't seem to have settled on a standard location for the amp I am wondering if maybe they didn't settle on a standard connector for it as well.
In that case the bypass cable that I have might not fit.
Your idea about tapping onto the existing speaker wires might work as well.
Another possibility is to leave the amp there and use the pre-amp out of the deck, but like you said it is probably not a great amp.
Unless someone happens to wander over here that has the same awesome car and happened to snap a pic of the amp I don't think there is much more I can do until I actually pull it all apart again.
If I do find it I will try and put a pic up.
Thanks everyone

you wont be able to use the pre-amp outputs to send a signal to the factory amp. if it was that easy then they would make a special harness with rca's already on it like they do for other cars that will accept a low level signal for the factory amp.

oh man, well that sucks.
Any chance the existing amp is smart enough to just know that the signal coming into it is already amplified and just leave it alone?

chances are, no, because if the amp would accept an amplified signal then there would be no need for the jumper harness

yeah, makes sense.
I guess it's time to dive in again.
thanks for the advise.