in case i havent yet said so, thanks so much for your help. this forum is awesome.

 

no that should be fine it is just a signal wire it does not actually power anything, like I said if you are concerned you can jump the 12 volt wire over there, that will at least eliminate that concern.

hmm, well the factory setup is working great but it is very quiet on the aftermarket setup, I still am unsure about the picture of what you think is the amp under the passenger seat even though thats where it should be, so lets try this first can you match all the speaker signal wires on the harness (the brown plug) to wires in the harness that you think is at the amp they should be close together? also can you get a clear picture of these wires in the brown plug? my next step would then be to pop the speaker signal wires and see how loud it is, maybe we should be sending an amplified signal. I am sorry I can only be so much help when I cant actually see whats going on, but I am sure we will figure it out!

 

Unfortunately, I have to hop on a plane to LA, I'll be back Tuesday. Then the saga will continue. Thanks so much Chris.

 

What ever happened? You lefted all of us hanging! lol

 

Nothing happened! There's a hole in my dash with wires hanging out! But I'm travelling for work a few days.

In the meantime, any and all ideas appreciated!

I looked in the RAVE manual, and I'm pretty sure that's an amp under my seat. It is mounted at the same angle shown, and I have tweeters on my A-pillars which weren't shown the the base (non-amped) model.

 

Chris, let's suppose that my head unit should be sending an amped signal...what would I need? I different type of Metra harness?

 

then you will need a line level converter to take your speaker level output from the head unit and drop it down to line level

 

actually quite the opposite, all you would need to do is bypass the rca jacks on the metra harness and run the high level speaker wires from your radio to the speaker wires on the factory harness (I would suggest using T taps to do this, unless you want to get a new harness) We would have to test this theory first, this is where "popping" the speakers with a battery would be used.

does your rave manual have wiring schematics?

 

aha, i see. can you explain the popping procedure? do i have to splice into a speaker wire on the other side of the harness? I'd rather not modify the wiring from stock.

How can I avoid modifying the wires on the other side of the harness? is there no way to add a blade onto the speaker wire from the radio to plug directly into the harness?

Or would I have to buy this: http://www.crutchfield.com/p_1207017...s.html?tp=2977

you asked about RAVE having a diagram...the speaker wire diagram for the harness is here: http://www.nexxia.co.uk/More_Information/ISO_wiring.htm

 

it would be metra harness number 70-9401, that harness is basically the same but speaker wires instead of RCA's, and that is the best way to do this without damaging the factory wiring, however you can probably use short pieces of wire and tap the current metra harness pins just to pop the speakers. as for popping the speakers it is a simple concept, the purpose is generally to get the phase right on speakers and to determine which wires go to which speakers, you basically quickly tap a battery on the speaker wires and this will cause the speaker to either pop out or pop in depending on the polarity(you can see what I mean if you actually look at the speaker while you do this), if + on battery is connected to + on speaker the speaker will pop out towards you and your polarity is correct. You will be doing this to determine what kind of signal the amp needs based on how loud of a pop you get. after popping a speaker you will hear one of 3 things, either the sound of nothing, a popping sound like someone tapping there fingers on a desk, or a popping sound like someone lightly clapping there hands. let me know what you hear, you can use either a 9 volt battery or if you have a cordless drill no more than 14.4 volts that will be fine too.

I asked if you have a schematic because this diagram (http://www.nexxia.co.uk/More_Information/ISO_wiring.htm) is for a non amplified system on connector B and connector C is a 3 piece plug that has the common ground low level wires in it, however you said you only have connectors A and B. now if you have all 8 wires in connector B then it is probably a high level input since most low level systems use a common ground style input (RCA's). The other problem I have with that diagram is that I have wired a few Audi's with the Bose systems that use this exact layout, not too say it is not the same, but I think if there are any differences they are in the audio connectors (B,C) not the power connector (A), anyways I was asking about a schematic so I could check each individual wire from the deck (by wire color) and see exactly where they go to see if we are missing something.