Just an update.

I got all three existing speakers working, and they sound nice. I'll replace the back speakers with two new ones today. My nice amp isn't powering up for some reason...the dude at the car audio place is testing it. He's going to have a look at my door sub too. Maybe we'll mount something in there, though I'm on the fence about that. Probably not needed. If there is any adding of speakers, the back doors are probably the place. Again though, probably not needed...it's sounding pretty rad with -1 speaker and no sub so far.

Wired up the pioneer aux input hack, and it works great.

Found this pretty good looking hack for the wired remote. Even if I don't make this one, I'm pretty confident that I could buy a pioneer remote and wire up the right color wires in the car and those buttons would work. I'd like that.

Should have everything but the remote worked out today.

 

Another Update.

Installed 2 new back speakers. Took a seat and a bunch of trim pieces out and have all the wiring running nicely under carpet etc.

A few questions about the on-door sub hookup...

I took off the on-door sub, and it looks like it's in good shape. I want to hook it up just to hear if it works, and how it sounds. Weigh my options. It looks to be in great condition.

I'd like to power and give it signal from the aftermarket amp in the back. Or at least using the same inputs as that amp.

Looking at the diagram, I'm a little confused about the wires that go to the on-door sub amp. Here is a snip:



Rover Chris answered this before, but I'm unclear on the particulars.

Seems like I have 2 options.

Option 1 - Use the on-door sub amp.

I assume that this amp needs the same inputs as my aftermarket one does. Power, Ground, Remote turn on, Audio Signal. Looking at the wiring diagram above, I'm guessing that I have Ground (B's), Signal (#3 R) and Remote Turn on (#1 LGO). Where should the amp power come from? I believe that my factory speaker amp is disconnected/gone. Didn't the power for the sub-amp pass through that? I don't know what the devil PY is for.

Also, just guessing that R is the audio signal. Just 1? My signal is coming from the deck with RCA (Black + Red). How should this signal be wired into to the one R line?

Options 2 - Bypass the on-door sub amp.

I guess if the little amp is not getting power, I could just bypass the sub-amp, and let my aftermarket amp power those two little subs. If I did that, I'd just run the speaker line from the output on my amp right to the speaker wires on the subs in the door. Would that work?

FYI:

I don't _really_ need the back door subs, but I'm just curious. My after market amp is working now, and the aftermarket sub in the back sounds good. I hate the footprint of the amp and sub though, and am still figuring out where to put it. I love the enclosure idea that Chris Rover mentioned. But for now...It's in a big 18"x18"x18" (or so) box with silly looking flexiglass on the top, and 2 sound holes on the sides. In fact, here is a photo:





That's right.. sUb BASS. Classy.

This came with my car. I may build another box for it, or mount the amp to to box...who knows. At the very least, I'll replace the plexiglass.

 

I hate bandpass boxes! anyways to try to answer your questions the best I can:

for your diagram wire 1 (light green/orange) is your power wire for the amp, wire 2 (purple/yellow) is the remote turn on, and wire 3 is a little more tricky, this is a shielded audio cable, it will be a larger looking wire that has a red shielded wire inside it, a black shielded wire inside it, and a bare metal wire inside it (you will see them separately at the amp connector) the bare metal wire is your common ground and the other 2 are your positive right and left. As far as hooking up to these wires goes I would suggest finding a cheap set of RCA cables and cutting one end off of them, then inside you will find the same thing as described above, the right and left positives don't matter too much as far as which is which as long as they are connected to the red and black wires independently, and the bare wires together. then your amp turn on wire to the purple/yellow wire and you shouldn't need to connect to the power wire as this wire is connected to the same fuse as the rest of the audio system (if there is no power on that wire at the amp then you will need to run power to it, but I would cut it and make a direct connection to make sure there isn't a short somewhere else). as for the amps ground that is the black wire at the bottom of the diagram next to the sub woofers. when looking at the plug you will have 6 wires 3 side by side are the shielded cable and the other 3 are power, remote turn on, and ground.

as for option 2: I would feel pretty comfortable saying your amp will overpower those subs. you could go with a higher power set of 6.5" subs, but for what it would cost I doubt you would be happy with the sound (due to the free air design)

 

another thought (not sure about your aftermarket amp) some amps have pass-throughs for the RCA's to add an extra amp, if yours has this you can use those.

 

Thanks Rover Chris. Your explanation cleared it right up. I turned things on and poked around with the multimeter.

LightGreen/Orange has power.
Purple/Yellow did not, but I ran power to it from the remote on the deck.
Grounds were fine.

I had a cut RCA, and spliced that into the shielded cable parts. Ground to ground, red to red, white to black. The RCA came straight from the "Back" output from my deck. Unamplified signal.

Turning on the stereo, I got vveerryyy weak sound coming from the speakers. I actually thought it was still off until I moved it 1 inch from my ear.

Just to test, I bought some amplified signal back from the deck (The RR, because it was easily accessable.) The speakers were then loud, as you'd expect.

It sounds like my in-door amp is not functioning, right? Any way to test the amp?

It would be easy enough to run those two speakers off the same RR and RL signals (respectively) from my deck. Maybe that would be too much draw for each of those two channels. Or maybe to much power for those little subs.

I'll keep playing with it.

 

don't hook up the rear speakers and the subs together if that's what you mean, you will drop the impedance and damage the amplifier (deck or stock, whichever you are using) not too mention a full range signal will damage the subs (they cant handle the higher frequencies)
I might say if you want to try running speaker wire off your aftermarket amp (with the gain turned way down) and hook it up directly to the factory subs, a little bit shouldn't hurt it too much as long as your not pumping 1000 watts to them or something ridiculous like that. I would turn the gain on the amp all the way down, then power up the system, then adjust the gain slightly from there.

P.S. that is exactly how my stock subs sounded when I first bought my truck, I didn't even know they were on until I put my ear up to them.
the amp would be difficult to test without the correct equipment, If I was in a shop I would try substituting items to try to pinpoint the problem.

 

I would say your best option to use the factory subs is to buy a little amp to power them, real cheap on the internet, but in the end they are 6.5's so you cant expect much. I don't care to much for bandpass boxes either but it seems that one isn't too bad figuring its all enclosed and don't have too worry about throwing crap on it and damaging the speaker. q logic usually makes a desent box.

 

you are absolutely correct with all of that statement, the stock subs are not going to win any competitions they will just give your regular stock audio a SMALL AMOUNT of low end fill. I hate the sound of a bandpass box, but they are protective (I just use a waffle grill that I painted to match my enclosure and interior) and QLOGIC is in my opinion one of the best assembly line speaker box builders (right behind bassworx, now if we were including the woofer manufacturers boxes like JL audio and MTX that would bring Qlogic down a bit further)

 

oh yeah I thought I might add this for you, if you dont like the plexiglass look on the front, get some black spray paint and paint it, then it wont look so silly! I actually did that for a customer once and it came out really good looking, however he didn't have any logos on it or anything and I painted it on the inside.

 

I'll say this, I have 2 12" vofenhag subs with a kenwood 1200watt amp and they have never sounded better than in the back of my disco. i put them in alittle smaller box than my previous cars but the open back and thick mat under the carpet nothing rattles and they are more punchy than ever.