Matt W

I am running the y-harness cable for the USA Spec Unit from the XM tuner in the trunk to the Spec unit in the glove-box in the front, but the cable is about 1 foot too short. I need to extend the cable and I was planning on using some high quality cat6a network cable to splice the y-harness cable and do the extension. I am assuming this is digital information being passed between the Spec adapter and the XM tuner so I shouldn't run into any problems? Please tell me if you think this is going to cause any problems (ie. if there is an analog signal being passed over this cable)

Also here is the current state of my RL since I know we all love pictures...

Secret Compartment Modification & USA Spec Repainted:



Car torn apart:

oo7spy

Holy crap! Was it necessary to disassemble the car?

Why not put the unit in te trunk and run a long iPod interface cable to the console?

As for your question about digital/analog signals that is completely irrelevant to the wire. I think you may be thinking of a coaxial cable that has an inner core and outer lining. In any case, I highly, highly doubt they used anything other than a Cat6 similar wire.

Matt W

Haha well I am planning on adding some MLV under the carpet and the rear set, I also wanted to give the car a good cleaning and fix a couple things (12 Volt DC Socket wont stay closed.... passenger power seat controls going bad) and clean the leather seats. As far as the digital/analog goes I was just worried about signal degradation from splicing the cable.

Matt W

I am also getting all kinds of errors when I drive my vehicle which I imagine is because everything is removed.

Check Airbags - This is because passenger seat is removed?
Check Keyless Entry System - Guessing this is because the back seat is removed and it can't accurately detect whether the key is inside the car or not
Check VSA - I was getting this after I just had the bottom half of the back seat removed..not sure why but it stopped

db22

If you are driving the vehicle with no seats in it then the errors are the least of your problems.

Matt W

I am driving with the driver seat in of course.

HEAVY_RL

iTrader: (1)

To unplug that much stuff and not expect errors is crazy. Make sure you reset your battery when you are done.

M T L T L

I wish I had the space time n tools like u to tackle my car like this...

oo7spy

Signal degradation is not a concern IMHO.

Matt W

I am really concerned about splicing this cable now....I cut around the jacket about 2 feet from one end of the cable and there are two unshielded wires running up the center of the cable. I checked the end of the harness and these unshielded wires become jacketed at the ends and have their own pin on the connector. I think this is some kind of ground line and I am afraid to splice the cable.

IanVS

What kind of gauge (thickness) are the rest of the wires? IMHO, you're right to be concerned about signal degradation. I've never had terribly good luck using twisted pair to run audio signals. I attempted to do this to extend a stereo signal from a regular 3.5 mm headphone cable for about 15 feet and it worked but I ended up with a lot of ground loop noise. You're likely correct about those being ground wires, not sure why there would be two though. Have you tried calling USA Spec and asking if they have (or can make you) a longer cable? Or even if they'll just send you a second identical cable and you can use that for the splice.

Have you spliced cables before? Do you have a soldering iron and heat-shrink?

oo7spy

I would need a picture to help from here.

Matt W

Ill post one, I need to redo the wire tape because it is melting, I have some Scotch 33+ Vinyl tape coming Friday.

Matt W

Ok heres the wires. It looks like it is shielded and has copper ground wires running up the middle or something! Click on a picture to make it larger!

IanVS

Yeah man don't use cat6 on that, you need something with a similar gauge. If anything, go to home depot or an electronics store and get some wire that looks like the same thickness. You should be able to find multi-conductor, but maybe not as many as you need, so you might have to use 2 or three main cables. It looks like the ground wires are being used as shielding. Just solder them to one of the wires in your new patch. Since you're only going an extra foot the loss of shielding shouldn't matter.

IanVS

Also, if you can slide some heat shrink down the cable to that gap, you'd be better off than using tape. Always use heat shrink if you can, and shrink it up good.

Matt W

The wires are actually about the same gauge (if not less) than the cat 6a I have, they just look really thick because I took close pictures.

I feel like if there is some analog audio signal being passed splicing the cable will degrade the quality of the audio

oo7spy

Don't go to Home Depot. They only carry solid core which isn't limp, and they won't have a high enough gauge for you. Go to Radio Shack if you need other wire. Once again I would not be worried about signal degradation. Every wire has to have a contact point somewhere. Just make sure you have good contact, and you will be fine. Use a soldering iron if you are that concerned.

I also agree with Ian that you can simply use the same wire as the others for the uninsulated wires that appear to be drain wires. I do not see any shield in that cable. A shield goes around all of the wires.

IanVS

I don't think a shield necessarily has to be around all the wires. Particularly if you're running power and signal together, which I believe is the case here. The shield is likely around the signal wires to prevent induction from the power lines. If this is the case, you might want to run the shielded wires separately from the others.

I wasn't suggesting home depot for cat6 but rather for something more like sprinkler control line. Those pictures had more magnification than I realized. Definitely want stranded wire like 007 said. Might as well give it a try and see what happens. Just try it out before you put your car back together.

Matt W

Okay heres an update. I wrote a really long post yesterday but it didnt submit properly and I lost it all. I started the stripping the process last night and took a bunch of pictures, here is one of them that clearly shows how the wiring is set up. I am not using lowes quality cat6 cable, by dad is actually a Senior Manufacturer Engineer for Commscope and I am using this (expensive) cat6a cable.

http://awapps.commscope.com/catalog/....aspx?id=17228

Certain wires inside the existing cable were twisted together so I am keeping a similar structure with the twisted pairs on the cat6a cable. The two lines you see that are copper shielded are being ran on a separated cat6a cable. That are 16 lines total so using two of these cat6a cables works perfect.

I also am using silver bearing solder to splice the connections along with heatsink on the individual wires and on the larger outerjacket. I will post pictures later tonight.

Matt W

Okay I am done, my cable extension works great and was just the right length, here is pics of it in dash, LOOKS MUCH BETTER IN PERSON flash always makes shit look dirty.

shahram72

I still don't get why it wasn't long enough. Wouldn't that mean it's not long enough for all users, or did you do something different? I'm still trying to find instructions on where and how to run the cable on mine so I don't waste an entire weekend finishing the job.

Looks great tho!!!

Matt W

The give you a long ass cable and you can install the thing anywhere you want (most people leave it in their trunk) and then run the ipod cable to the center console with an ipod cable extension, but I wanted to go all awesome with it and put the unit in my glove-box for a factory type feeling so I modified the glovebox and ran the harness all the way to the front of the car.