'Free! Use at your own risk. No warrantee 'Not fully tested or proven to be accurate. 'Provided by www.Inlet.net comments@inlet.net Written June 30th 2004 This thursday NJ will enact the Auto Hands Free law for Cell phones. Failure to use Hands free in your car while using your Cell will cost you $250.00. How to connect your Cellular hands free device to the Ford Explorer's 6 Disk In dash CD changer. I connected my Motorola Hands free Bluetooth device to my Ford factory 6 disk in dash AM/FM/CD player and it works great despite Fords claim that there is no such connection (unless they install it for you of course!) My Ford Factory AM/FM/6 Disk CD had these numbers printed on it, YLSF 18C815-CG YLSF 18C823-AC The radio also had a BIG Sticker on top that said, SCRAP IF DROPPED Hey how's that for Ford Quality! Gee do you think they mean the whole truck or just the radio? Skip by the Rant unless you need a laugh. BTW NEVER NEVER NEVER buy a FORD, My last vehicle was a Toyota 4 Runner. Brought it for 22K, drove it for 7 years and 100,000 miles. Sold it for 10K. Never had any problems. My current Ford Explorer Sport Trac, Brought it 4 years ago and currently have 58,000 miles. So far: Dead Water Pump Defective Mud Flaps Defective Door Handles Defective Fuel Door Defective Tires Defective Hood Latch Defective 4WD selector switch Bottoms of all 4 doors missing paint completely (can you say future rust!) Leaky Sun Roof 3rd set of Front Brakes but still original Rear Brakes Truck Bed Squeaks Power Seat is loose and Squeaks Defective Engine Thermostat Dashboard Squeaks Defective Cruse Control And that DAM Ringing noise coming from under the truck at highway speeds! And the latest items Defective Antilock Brake computer Bad Ball Joints (BTW, trucks never been off road) Squealing Idler pulley during cold starts Failure of the limited slip differential clutch. Now if I had been smart I would have notice that Ford only has 3 year 36,000 mile warrantee. My Toyota had 6/60. So all of the above will cost me $4,000.00!!!!!! BUT after days of arguing, Ford decided to cover ONLY the limited slip since I was complaining of that problem on the record for 3 years but they couldn't find what was wrong. To fix the rest will only be $3000.00 now. To those of you saying Lemon Law, well in NJ that's ONLY if a problem occurs in the first 18,000 miles and only if the dealer can't fix it in 3 tries. My first complaint was at 20,000. So IMHO NEVER NEVER BUY A FORD!! How to locate the Cellular Mute connection on a 2001 Ford Explorer Sport Trac in dash 6 Disk CD changer. ( I assume most Fords have the same/similar plugs.) On the back of my unit were 2 plugs. One plug on the left edge (drivers side) and a second just to the right of the first plug. This second plug has wires that go to the back seat audio controls and is the plug that contains the Cellular Mute connector. On my system this plug only had 3 wires but a total of 21 pins. There are 3 rows of pins. Each row has 7 pins (I think, I didn't get a chance to count them) But, the pin you want in the middle row and the middle pin. (Middle Row, 4 from the left or right) There is no wire on that pin so we jammed the wire in the hole and hot glued it in place. If you want to be certain that your system is the same, use a 12 volt test light. Connect the test lamp clip to ground and touch the tester to the middle pin on the middle row of the second plug. If your right, the music will mute and you will see the word "PHONE" on the radio display. If your wrong, nothing will happen OR the test light will light OR you may cause static in a speaker but I'm told you will not hurt the system if you use a fused 12v auto test light. With all those extra pins I'm also assuming that its possible to feed the Cell phone audio from my Bluetooth adapter back into the Ford audio system. Most car systems with Cellular mute are also designed to use the front speakers for cell phone conversations. But I cant find any information on this. Please email me if you find this out. The rest is up to you. Enjoy! If your interested here is how my overall install went. Sorry I can't be REAL specific cuz I just observed the install and didn't get to document everything, like how to remove and reinstall pieces. We removed the radio and ONLY the top of the Center console that contains the Cup holders and coin tray. This part is plastic, one piece and silver in my vehicle. (I have the leather package and I think if you have cloth you may not have this part. We put all the guts and electronics under the console. There was plenty of room and the 12v accessory outlet on the side of the console also made it easy to connect the power. While the top of the console was removed We drilled a small hole in it on the vertical face of the coin tray (The coin tray is the squarish area just in front of the cup holders. The vertical area is the part of the coin tray that faces the driver/rear seat.) and threaded the Bluetooth control panel wire thru the hole to the control unit. We installed the control unit under the coin tray with the antenna side facing the roof and glued the control panel to the vertical face covering the hole. It looks perfect. We had to mount the speaker under the dash on the passenger side but I hope someone will write me that they discovered how to connect the audio to the CD player. Coming Soon a pic of the finished install http://www.inlet.net/pics/CellularMute.gif