Aftermarket amplifier and subwoofer, how I did it (easily)
#1
11-16-2020, 01:50 AM
Aftermarket amplifier and subwoofer, how I did it (easily)
Ok, I have looked all over the internet in search for someone's guide to installing an aftermarket amplifier and subwoofer into their LR3 equipped with the Harmon Kardon sound system.
Some people were insisting it cannot be done, to just leave it alone and be satisfied with it. Other people said that you have to start from scratch, bypass the whole stereo system and factory amp, replace the head unit and basically rebuild the stereo from the ground up and sacrifice all of your steering wheel controls, voice commands, etc. But nobody seemed to have a good answer. some people said that thebstereo system is so complicated that some audio installers like best buy/geek squad, won't even touch an LR3 because of its complexity. Another thing people were saying is to not mess with anything because if the fiber optic cable connected to the factory amp breaks or is tampered with, then the whole system goes faulty.
I was not satisfied with any of the answers. So I dove into it myself and raw dogged the issue. It turned out to be relatively simple.
Firstly, I didn't want to replace the factory head unit because the car loses some of its charm when you put an aftermarket head unit into it, in my opinion. I knew that I would lose a good deal of the vehicles functionality by replacing the head unit. So my goal was to keep as much of the factory equipment as I possibly could. And do as little as possible to the interior of the car.
what I ended up doing was getting my subwoofer, (Image Dynamics IDMax 12") pushed by a Rockford Fosgate T1500 amplifier. The golden piece of equipment that allowed it to work so easily was my Clarion Eqs755 equalizer that I had laying around.
Alls I had to do was open the tailgate remove the trim to access the Harmon kardon subwoofer that is in the lower tailgate on the left side (if you are facing the tailgate from the outside.) Its a couple phillips screws to get the trim off, a flathead to release the clip that fastens the tailgate support wire from the ball joint on the tailgate, and a Allen wrench to remove the strikers (the things that latch when you shut your tailgate).
Once you've removed the trim you will see the subwoofer is attached with some bolts that you'll need a socket wrench to remove. (There's a bunch of em)
Once you have all those out you can pull the subwoofer assembly out a little bit. You will then have enough space to unbuckle the two harnesses that are connected to the subwoofer. One on each side.
Now that you have the subwoofer out you can snip those two harnesses off with wire cutters. *keep the harnesses in case you want to restore the factory system* once those are removed you have a purple and white wire on one side and a purple and white wire on the other.
Those wires are all you need to plug into ANY amp that has "speaker level inputs". Or in my case the Clarion equalizer. Get you a long spool of speaker wire and get ready to run some wire. I joined the two purple wires and the two white wires to change the four wires, into two wires.
Then I made one my negative and one my positive. Connect those wires to the speaker level inputs of your equalizer then bam you just earned yourself a couple of RCA Jack's that are putting out subwoofer signal thats ready to be amplified by your amp. Give your amp some power, wire up your sub. And your done. Now you have a subwoofer that hits hard, in your LR3, and you didn't mess with anything except the crappy factory subwoofer, that you have the ability to reinstall if need be.
If you have any questions about what I did or want a more detailed description of how I did something, feel free to comment and I'll respond as soon as I can guys. Thanks, hope this helps!
- _Disco
Some people were insisting it cannot be done, to just leave it alone and be satisfied with it. Other people said that you have to start from scratch, bypass the whole stereo system and factory amp, replace the head unit and basically rebuild the stereo from the ground up and sacrifice all of your steering wheel controls, voice commands, etc. But nobody seemed to have a good answer. some people said that thebstereo system is so complicated that some audio installers like best buy/geek squad, won't even touch an LR3 because of its complexity. Another thing people were saying is to not mess with anything because if the fiber optic cable connected to the factory amp breaks or is tampered with, then the whole system goes faulty.
I was not satisfied with any of the answers. So I dove into it myself and raw dogged the issue. It turned out to be relatively simple.
Firstly, I didn't want to replace the factory head unit because the car loses some of its charm when you put an aftermarket head unit into it, in my opinion. I knew that I would lose a good deal of the vehicles functionality by replacing the head unit. So my goal was to keep as much of the factory equipment as I possibly could. And do as little as possible to the interior of the car.
what I ended up doing was getting my subwoofer, (Image Dynamics IDMax 12") pushed by a Rockford Fosgate T1500 amplifier. The golden piece of equipment that allowed it to work so easily was my Clarion Eqs755 equalizer that I had laying around.
Alls I had to do was open the tailgate remove the trim to access the Harmon kardon subwoofer that is in the lower tailgate on the left side (if you are facing the tailgate from the outside.) Its a couple phillips screws to get the trim off, a flathead to release the clip that fastens the tailgate support wire from the ball joint on the tailgate, and a Allen wrench to remove the strikers (the things that latch when you shut your tailgate).
Once you've removed the trim you will see the subwoofer is attached with some bolts that you'll need a socket wrench to remove. (There's a bunch of em)
Once you have all those out you can pull the subwoofer assembly out a little bit. You will then have enough space to unbuckle the two harnesses that are connected to the subwoofer. One on each side.
Now that you have the subwoofer out you can snip those two harnesses off with wire cutters. *keep the harnesses in case you want to restore the factory system* once those are removed you have a purple and white wire on one side and a purple and white wire on the other.
Those wires are all you need to plug into ANY amp that has "speaker level inputs". Or in my case the Clarion equalizer. Get you a long spool of speaker wire and get ready to run some wire. I joined the two purple wires and the two white wires to change the four wires, into two wires.
Then I made one my negative and one my positive. Connect those wires to the speaker level inputs of your equalizer then bam you just earned yourself a couple of RCA Jack's that are putting out subwoofer signal thats ready to be amplified by your amp. Give your amp some power, wire up your sub. And your done. Now you have a subwoofer that hits hard, in your LR3, and you didn't mess with anything except the crappy factory subwoofer, that you have the ability to reinstall if need be.
If you have any questions about what I did or want a more detailed description of how I did something, feel free to comment and I'll respond as soon as I can guys. Thanks, hope this helps!
- _Disco
Last edited by _disco; 11-16-2020 at 01:55 AM.
#2
11-16-2020, 08:38 AM
Camel Trophy
Very nice. Yeah, the sub is easy and there are several good write-ups on modifying the bracket for the original sub to add also profile one, etc, etc, etc. No issues there. Its replacing the head unit and amp that are the issue, because of MOST and CanBus. Been wanting to upgrade my sub too at some point. The rest of the system I am pretty happy with less BT streaming.
#3
05-10-2022, 02:08 PM
Ok, I have looked all over the internet in search for someone's guide to installing an aftermarket amplifier and subwoofer into their LR3 equipped with the Harmon Kardon sound system.
Some people were insisting it cannot be done, to just leave it alone and be satisfied with it. Other people said that you have to start from scratch, bypass the whole stereo system and factory amp, replace the head unit and basically rebuild the stereo from the ground up and sacrifice all of your steering wheel controls, voice commands, etc. But nobody seemed to have a good answer. some people said that thebstereo system is so complicated that some audio installers like best buy/geek squad, won't even touch an LR3 because of its complexity. Another thing people were saying is to not mess with anything because if the fiber optic cable connected to the factory amp breaks or is tampered with, then the whole system goes faulty.
I was not satisfied with any of the answers. So I dove into it myself and raw dogged the issue. It turned out to be relatively simple.
Firstly, I didn't want to replace the factory head unit because the car loses some of its charm when you put an aftermarket head unit into it, in my opinion. I knew that I would lose a good deal of the vehicles functionality by replacing the head unit. So my goal was to keep as much of the factory equipment as I possibly could. And do as little as possible to the interior of the car.
what I ended up doing was getting my subwoofer, (Image Dynamics IDMax 12") pushed by a Rockford Fosgate T1500 amplifier. The golden piece of equipment that allowed it to work so easily was my Clarion Eqs755 equalizer that I had laying around.
Alls I had to do was open the tailgate remove the trim to access the Harmon kardon subwoofer that is in the lower tailgate on the left side (if you are facing the tailgate from the outside.) Its a couple phillips screws to get the trim off, a flathead to release the clip that fastens the tailgate support wire from the ball joint on the tailgate, and a Allen wrench to remove the strikers (the things that latch when you shut your tailgate).
Once you've removed the trim you will see the subwoofer is attached with some bolts that you'll need a socket wrench to remove. (There's a bunch of em)
Once you have all those out you can pull the subwoofer assembly out a little bit. You will then have enough space to unbuckle the two harnesses that are connected to the subwoofer. One on each side.
Now that you have the subwoofer out you can snip those two harnesses off with wire cutters. *keep the harnesses in case you want to restore the factory system* once those are removed you have a purple and white wire on one side and a purple and white wire on the other.
Those wires are all you need to plug into ANY amp that has "speaker level inputs". Or in my case the Clarion equalizer. Get you a long spool of speaker wire and get ready to run some wire. I joined the two purple wires and the two white wires to change the four wires, into two wires.
Then I made one my negative and one my positive. Connect those wires to the speaker level inputs of your equalizer then bam you just earned yourself a couple of RCA Jack's that are putting out subwoofer signal thats ready to be amplified by your amp. Give your amp some power, wire up your sub. And your done. Now you have a subwoofer that hits hard, in your LR3, and you didn't mess with anything except the crappy factory subwoofer, that you have the ability to reinstall if need be.
If you have any questions about what I did or want a more detailed description of how I did something, feel free to comment and I'll respond as soon as I can guys. Thanks, hope this helps!
- _Disco
Some people were insisting it cannot be done, to just leave it alone and be satisfied with it. Other people said that you have to start from scratch, bypass the whole stereo system and factory amp, replace the head unit and basically rebuild the stereo from the ground up and sacrifice all of your steering wheel controls, voice commands, etc. But nobody seemed to have a good answer. some people said that thebstereo system is so complicated that some audio installers like best buy/geek squad, won't even touch an LR3 because of its complexity. Another thing people were saying is to not mess with anything because if the fiber optic cable connected to the factory amp breaks or is tampered with, then the whole system goes faulty.
I was not satisfied with any of the answers. So I dove into it myself and raw dogged the issue. It turned out to be relatively simple.
Firstly, I didn't want to replace the factory head unit because the car loses some of its charm when you put an aftermarket head unit into it, in my opinion. I knew that I would lose a good deal of the vehicles functionality by replacing the head unit. So my goal was to keep as much of the factory equipment as I possibly could. And do as little as possible to the interior of the car.
what I ended up doing was getting my subwoofer, (Image Dynamics IDMax 12") pushed by a Rockford Fosgate T1500 amplifier. The golden piece of equipment that allowed it to work so easily was my Clarion Eqs755 equalizer that I had laying around.
Alls I had to do was open the tailgate remove the trim to access the Harmon kardon subwoofer that is in the lower tailgate on the left side (if you are facing the tailgate from the outside.) Its a couple phillips screws to get the trim off, a flathead to release the clip that fastens the tailgate support wire from the ball joint on the tailgate, and a Allen wrench to remove the strikers (the things that latch when you shut your tailgate).
Once you've removed the trim you will see the subwoofer is attached with some bolts that you'll need a socket wrench to remove. (There's a bunch of em)
Once you have all those out you can pull the subwoofer assembly out a little bit. You will then have enough space to unbuckle the two harnesses that are connected to the subwoofer. One on each side.
Now that you have the subwoofer out you can snip those two harnesses off with wire cutters. *keep the harnesses in case you want to restore the factory system* once those are removed you have a purple and white wire on one side and a purple and white wire on the other.
Those wires are all you need to plug into ANY amp that has "speaker level inputs". Or in my case the Clarion equalizer. Get you a long spool of speaker wire and get ready to run some wire. I joined the two purple wires and the two white wires to change the four wires, into two wires.
Then I made one my negative and one my positive. Connect those wires to the speaker level inputs of your equalizer then bam you just earned yourself a couple of RCA Jack's that are putting out subwoofer signal thats ready to be amplified by your amp. Give your amp some power, wire up your sub. And your done. Now you have a subwoofer that hits hard, in your LR3, and you didn't mess with anything except the crappy factory subwoofer, that you have the ability to reinstall if need be.
If you have any questions about what I did or want a more detailed description of how I did something, feel free to comment and I'll respond as soon as I can guys. Thanks, hope this helps!
- _Disco
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