I thought I would post these here since they are third gen spacific. I am hoping you guys can help me with these two things. My car is wired factory bose. I am putting in an aftermarket head unit and all aftermarket speakers and a two amps. Normally when I amp my front speakers I pick up the wire at the kick panel up front, well I cannot pull the wires down far enough to splice into them, so I am hoping you guys can tell me the wire colors I am looking for for the front speakers and where you are hooking into them for an amp.

Second, I am running component speakers in the front doors, I have made pods to hold the 6.5" woofer and I am trying to mount the crossover on the side of that mount but there is not enough room. Where are you guys mounting your crossovers on your doors?

Thanks for any help, I hope to work on this more tomorrow.

 

Yellow and Purple are the Pos and Neg inside the factory amp box. (atleast for me)

Thinner MDF? place the crossover inside the door well? at the top where it's rounded?

 

what about leading to the amp box? The previous owner had the bose replaced with some pioneer speakers, so in the driver side door there is a white and a black wire that are being used for the positive and negative. I am hoping I can splice into these some where under the dash/kick panel I am just not sure which wire to be looking for since I cannot pull them away from where they come through the door enough to see them.


As for the thinner MDF, I do not think that is the problem. I am using Boston's and the cross overs are long and narrow. I am having trouble finding a spot they can fit with out hitting the door panel.

 

Mine are in the map pockets in the door, I cut holes in the door panel to run the wires through. Not the cleanest thing in the world but it works fine.

Did the previous owner bypass the Bose amps? If they are still even there.

 

Red and Blue I believe were leading to the box. I could be wrong though.

 

The bose amps are not in the car, I can look to see if they were bypassed, but the two thick wires were cut an not hooked up so that leads me to beleive they were bypassed.

 

If they were bypassed there would be wires spliced in the door, but the previous owner might have run new wire to the door altogether. I think you're pretty much going to have to do your own sleuthing on this one to figure out what is up.

 

The wires look factory, they still have all of that wrapping around them, so I don't think the previous owner ran his own wires. The only info I am finding online are the wire colors for the non bose system.

If I hook into the wires just behind the deck would these wires go to the leads that I already have hooked up on the speakers? I am not sure if there was something funning with the bose wiring, or if the wires coming off of the harness that the deck plugs into goes all the way to the door.

 

Considering the previous owner removed the bose amps I would say that those wires go straight to what you have behind your HU.

 

If it were me, I would just run new wire and do it up right even though it is a pain in the rump. Depending on the wattage of your amp and quality of your speakers this would be your best bet any way. Too many splices lead to too many points for failure and loss of power (unless you are a freak like me and solder all of your connections any way). Go grab a spool of wire from Best Buy or Home Depot and you'll be good to go. A little trick that I use is to tape the new wire to the old wire and pull it through the door. Lube them up with vaseline and wear rubber gloves and it will go faster than splicing. Use the trim to route your wiring and if you are putting an amp under a seat use a coat hanger to route the wire under the carpet (unless you have a fish tape). Ground the amp as close to its location as possible and use a power distribution block off of the battery (I like to use a circuit breaker also) for power. That's car audio in a nutshell. Hope this can help you in some way.

 

The thicker wires were the power wires for the amps( that are no longer there ) so the thinner wires are your speaker wires. Check your plug behind the radio they may or may not match. As for the cross-overs what I normally do is the fabricate a mount for the cross-over in the large opening on the door (where you can see the window regulator moving up and down)....will take a couple of trys fitting the door panel and making sure the regulator doesnt hit.....GOOD LUCK!!!!

 

Thanks for the advice guys. I had to give up on it for the night but I made some progress. I basically started over. I took out the mounts I made and altered the stock housings to hold a 6.5" speaker. Then I mounted the crossovers inside of the door. I rolled the window all the way down to make sure it would not hit so I should be good there. Then I drilled holes in my door panels to mount my tweeters. I got one side done tonight and I will try to finish tomorrow. This project is taking too long

I wanted to run wires all the way from the amp to the speaker but I do not think it would be very possible with out some serious work. So I am going to amp the speakers before the wire go though the door. Anyway that's about it for now, I have taken a few pictures and will post them when i remember to bring my camera in from the garage.

 

Make sure you put your crossovers in a plastic baggy or something, they don't like water.

 

Hello cardana24, I've done this to my car and have some experience about it.

I strongly recommend to run new wire for your component speakers, I know it takes some work but nothing over 1 hour if you have experience removing seats and carpet, when I did mine I run all the cables at once, 3 pairs of RCA and 16AWG wire for speakers on the doors, so I'm not sure what kind of amps/speakers you are going to use to suggest the appropiate wire gauge, trust me it matters, I did not know back then but I learned, that's why my advice.

Also, good thing you have your windows rolled down because the 6.5" speaker could have some clearence issues, I had to deal with mine for over 2 hours or improper measurements,

 

+1 Above.
Put the windows down when working, and use good wire.
I was making my own door pods, and forgot about that, it took me 2-3x as long to install those speakers to clear the window AND line up with the door trim.
Crossovers are mounted on the opposite side of the pods, and the tweeters are mounted into the triangle-shapped access to the side view mirrors.