Quote:
Originally Posted by NFS
Just spent a bit of time looking at the PDF instructions for this.
I haven't done anything like this before so bit worried I might be biting off more than I can chew. Could anyone confirm that I have understood correctly?
So ...
1. Amp goes in boot
2. Harness goes from amp to ...
a. Battery / Earth
b. LHS of car
c. RHS of car
3. Harness runs through rear seat and under front / rear door sills.
4. Dismantle doors and fit new midrange speakers
5. Fit new tweeter housings and tweeters.
6. Crimp ends of wiring to:
a. Radio cables
b. Door loudspeaker cables
c. Sub Woofer cables either side.
It's the last bit that's confusing me. There is nothing about opening up the dash etc.. so are the cables right there under the door cills? Certainly looks that way in the pictures.
So .. no need to remove seats or any part of the dash?
Are the existing cables labled? If not .. how do I know which is which?
In practice then .. is this tapping into the existing wiring, picking up the output from the head unit under the door sills, then routing it back to the amp and on to the speakers?
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Yeah, that's a about it.
Good question about if the existing cables are labeled. They aren't
. I was lucky enough to choose working on the driver's side first. On this side it was easy to find where the existing wires were connected and you could visually determine which wires were going to the subwoofer, to the headunit (via under the front of the seat) and to the door speakers (towards the front). The wiring was as shown in the install instructions.
On the passenger side however it was a bit more difficult. The connections were further forward and the existing wires were included in a much larger loom. It was impossible for me to see which pair of wires were from the headunit and which were from the subwoofers. They all had the same colour code so I had find way of determining which wires were which.
This is what I did.
1. Find and expose the two connectors.
Each connector will have three wires leading into it. The three wires will have the same colour code. For the passenger side, the wires will be either blue with a white stripe or blue with a brown stripe. The white striped wires are the positive ones, the brown striped ones are the negative ones. (The wires from alpine amp will also have either a white or brown stripe.)
2. Pick a connector (positive or negative) and snip one of the wires. Switch the radio on.
If door speaker works and subwoofer doesn't then the wire you snipped is the subwoofer wire. If door speaker doesn't work and subwoofer works then the wire you snipped is the door speaker one. If both door speaker and subwoofer don't work then the wire you snipped is from the headunit.
3. Label your wire. I used masking tape.
4. Join the snipped wire back to the connector. (using masking tape again!)
5. Back to step 2 - snip a different wire to determine which one it is.