motoxrider295

Here is a simple mod to make the stock Bose sub in our back panel work when changing out to and aftermarket headunit.

What you'll need:
-About 15ft of speaker wire.
-An RCA splitter
-15ft of just plain wire
-One RCA either already split into 2 wires, or an old set of RCA's your willing to cut.

How to:

1) First, lift off the back sit bottom and remove the bolts holding on the seat back. Lift off the seat and remove. On the right side of the car you will see the sub amplifier. Find the wiring harness and cut back the tape or protective wire lume to expose alll the wires.

2) Second, you're going to look for 2 wires colored blue/green and orange/blue, or on the other side of the connection those same wires will be just yellow and the second purple. These wires are the source for the sub amplifier. Here you will take the 15ft of speaker wire and solder on to the labeled wires. Positive on one and Negative on the other, polarity doesn't matter. Now take the 15ft of single wire you have and solder this one to the orange wire on one side, which is equivalent to blue after the harness. This will be the remote turn on when the radio is on.

3) Third, run these wires under the carpet and under the plastic panels making it all the way up to behind the radio and pull them through to let them hang. Here you will use the stripped RCA terminal or one pre-made with 2 wires at the end. Solder the RCA onto the speaker wire you ran from the amp. This wire will plug in to the output labeled SW, SUB, or something like that indicating subwoofer. The with the single wire you ran from the amp, hook this to the remote turn on indicated on the radio's wire harness.

4) Finally, give everything a test you should be able the fully tune the sub through the radio depending on what your chosen radio can do.

I hope I was thorough enough for you but feel free to ask any questions!

fsttyms1

silver2003tl

iTrader: (1)

Alternate method:

The low level amp wires can be obtained at the EQ's wire harness - just above the stock radio. It's cavity 3, blu/grn for positive and cavity 10, orn/blu for negative.

The only other wire you need to make sure you hook up is the stock amps remote turn on lead. It's on the main HU's harness, otherwise it won't turn on. It's cavity A1 (orange wire).

I just installed a kenwood dnx5140 so I no longer need the EQ because it had a feature to just pipe out mids/highs to the door speakers. So I unplugged the EQ wire harness and made a custom patch cord to goto the HU sub output. I snipped about 8" piece of RCA patch cord and soldered a paper clip on the ends of the two leads (inner conductor and shield). Then pushed them into cavity 3 and 10 and secured with a wire tie and some elec tape.

Works great.

Type_So2

I tapped into the sub wires right behind the radio also. Works great. I just hacked a RCA connector and plugged it into the sub out on the cd player.

klectic

Didn't know it wouldn't be compatible when replacing the deck. Thanks for the tip!

twistedwedge

might be a silly question-but what did you guys use to take up the extra room left behind from the factory head unit? I want to put my alpine mp3 unit in, but want it to look clean.

Thanks

dssking

You can get a single din dash kit or a double din. If you go single din, your kit will have a "junk" holder....... double din will take up the entire area, thus looking MUCH cleaner.

I installed a Clarion VX409 and used the DIY here for the subwoofer retain.
Works awesome! (Thanks again for the DIY).

iv4hcx3l4

do you know how to go about installing an aftermarket deck and an aftermarket amp using the stock sub? is there a way to wire the aftermarket amp to the stock sub? and out of curiosity, does anyone know the max power of the bose sub? thanks

jjashaa

iTrader: (23)

^ pm uncald4

he has soo much info he's like.. a library of audio

iv4hcx3l4

thanks for the tip

dcloud102

Silver2003tl, so I am wondering if you use 2 or 1 of the RCA cable, that is the red or white one? Or do you use both? Because on my sony xplode CDX-GT640UI, I have two RCA plug for SUB OUT. What should I do? Thanks.

jjashaa

iTrader: (23)

^ Y-Cable is your friend

something like this
http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...ductId=3511981

dcloud102

Thanks for the advice. So I'm just gonna splice it then?

dc2kid

iTrader: (2)

so do i still have to take the back seats out for this or?

silver2003tl

iTrader: (1)

jjashaa got it right. You need to split them. I think most amps want both inputs fed unless it says otherwise in the manual. Mine wanted both so I split them.


Hum. Probably. If your lucky you might try to unclip the harness from the trunk side. But then I don't know if there is enough room to pull the wire harnes out to start splicing it.

No pics. Basically there are 3 existing wires you can use that already runs from the head unit section to the rear trunk/seat area. The first pair (2) wires will save you from running a Mono RCA cable for a sub amp (if you want stereo then your on your own), and the other (1) wire is your remote turn on lead.

The first pair (2) wires: I'll describe some more
part 1)
- remove stock head unit
- just above it your'll see equalizer
- unplug the harness
- remove the Eq, it's dead weight

part 2)
- now find an RCA Y splitter cable similar pictured by jjashaa (but make sure each of the ends are male, as shown the left two ends are female. This is for illustration only, the Y splitter is too short since you probably need 8" or longer to get to wherever you need), and cut it just right of center leaving leaving the one male end
- using the half that would be on the right, pry open the insulation and you should have a center conductor (positive) and an outer shield (negative).
- unfold the shield a little and bring it to a nice point so you can solder a paper clip to it. We just need about 0.6" of the paper clip.
- solder the positive center conductor to another 0.6" lenght of paper clip (bend it so it's straight)
- take some electric tape and make sure these do not touch each other or any other metal
- shove the positive paperclip into cavity 3 of the harness that was plugged into the EQ. This should tie you into the blue with green striped wire
- shove the negative paperclip into cavity 10 of the harness that was plugged into the EQ. This should tie you into the oragne with blue stripped wire.
- elect tape everything so it won't come loose, secure with cable tie for insurance

part 3)
- now get to the rear subwoofer amp by removing rear seat.
- unplug wire harness going to it
- throw away stock amp
- now look for those 2 wires (blue with green) and (orange with blue)
- because there is more room back here just cut the 2 wires away from the harness and solder directly to the left side of the RCA Y splitter we cut in half in part 2. Solder center conductor to blue w/ green stripe. Solder outer shield to orange with blue stripe wires.

Hope this helps. Good luck. And BTW I didn't need to run seperate power wires to my amp either. I reused the ones in the stock amps harness. There was a pair for power - just tie them together. Each is fused to 15A each, so that's enough for my amp. For ground use any bare metal you can find back there and scrape away paint if it's painted. Yeah I didn't want to mention that earlier becaue it is a little hackish but for smaller amps that required I'd say less then 20A continuous your golden. Might be worth leaving running for a week or so to make sure you don't blow fuses. If you do then you'll need to run dedicated power wires. Word of caution, if you do blow fuses you'll probably need two 15A handy. And turn it down so you don't blow them again.

Another note, make sure your paper clip isn't too big or small, test fit it and make sure it slides in w/ some resistance with you push in.

Colic

Is that mean also using original Amp

Hondas4Life

I finally got around to doing this. The previous owner had a huge box with dual 10's sub woofers and did not have the need to worry about the stock subs. Since my days of trying to start car alarms with the vibrations of my sounz are over, I decided to try this DiY.

My tips? There are a few bolts holding the seat and seat back. If you find these, the back seat will easily lift up. Also, I unscrewed the amp and worked on it from inside the house. It was easier to solder the RCA leads.
Also, I connected the RCA cables from the HU to this gadget : http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...ductId=2103793 and connected it to this :http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...ductId=2102955 which is connected to the AMP wires mentioned by step 2. Works great and I saved alot of time splicing and soldering wires.

Julius Friedman

I too have a 2003 TLS With Premium Bose Sound...

This thread was extremely helpful as I could have swore I was going to have to buy an integration harness or re-wire the car...

I have the bv9370nv coming in a few days and I just ripped out the stock Bose stuff to make sure I have what I need...

I am having some trouble finding the 'EQ' however I didn't really look that well as I wanted to get everything cleaned up and ready for the new head unit...

Since I am going to wind up running the video wire for the backup camera anyway I may just end up using the alternate method so I do not burn anything out...

I had three questions which are related to the radio and I am hoping someone knows...

1) Where is the diagram for the Steering Wheel controls as my radio does support them... I just need to connect the wires and assign the functions...

2) Where is an easy way to tap the Reverse solenoid for a backup camera?

3) What is the additional harness used for next to the stock radio harness?

Thanks in advance!

Julius Friedman

And actually I just saw...

https://acurazine.com/forums/1g-rl-1996-2004-77/help-wire-harness-aftermarket-head-unit-850314/

Which says if I get the harness and hardware included in that product then it should be plug and play... what about the steering?

demetri

guys i want to use an aftermarket head unit with the stock sub and the stock sub amp powering the sub. i can not access the low level sub wiring behind the head unit since i have a TL with navi and its impossible to get at without removing the dash vents. also i plan on selling the car in a couple years and want to return the car to stock.

can i just run a mono cable from my aftermarket head unit down to the sub amp? are those still low level going into the sub amp?

thanks

fsttyms1

It doesnt matter if its navi or non navi, all the wiring is in the same spot. With the radio out every thing can be gotten to. If you still cant, remove the 2 screws by the inst cluster (up and behind the steering wheel) and pull on the black trim bezel. It is just clipped in and you can remove that piece.

demetri

thanks fsttyms1 i took apart the dash including the instrument cluster. the wiring is too tight back there and i would rather tap into the sub's speaker input wires behind the rear seats. are those blue/green orange/blue wires going into the sub amp behind the rear seats low level input?


i have read all the treads on this topic and there is no definitive answer on this specific point.

silver2003tl

iTrader: (1)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_level. From this site looks like consumer audio is 0.894 peak to peak.

If you have the stock head unit still connected , measure it (at the rear seats). Something tells me they aren't line level because I don't recall the wires being shielded. Anyhow, get a multi-meter and put it on Volts AC. Turn the head unit up to a max listening level and see what you get. Because the voltage fluctuates watch it for a minute. Take note when the bass hits, this is when you'll get peak voltage. Note most meters measure RMS so 0.894Vpp = 0.632V RMS. So if you voltage is IMHO between 0.5 to 5Vac RMS your probably low level.

I threw my stock amp out a long time ago. The problem is the stock amp doesn't have a gain knob and your new head unit might put out much lower voltage than stock, so you probably won't hear the bass much. This is why better amps have a gain knob because line voltage varies from manufactures.

Good Luck and report back what the voltage is if you get a chance to measure it.

Josue Montoya

Thanks alot

Josue Montoya

I'm more of a visual guy but your instructions are clear, can you post a quick sketch of what your explaining looks like???? please, I hate not having my sub. smh

Racers'edge

Hi ! This tread is really helpful, cause it is a huge positive change to put in another receiver, but an unfortunate event to lose the stock Sub if doing so...

But I Got 1 Question about your step 2... I'm about to do as you write, when soldering speakers wire and plain wire on those you show, I understand that I must cut them loose near the plug and sold on the free side (not the plug side), or just sold them without cutting none...?

I Personally would like it better if the sub amp would work again after that...

Thanks So Much

Racers'edge

Finally, I do cut the wires near the plug and it works very Fine

orlandoortiz54

I just tried what silver2003tl said and it works great without removing the rear seat I'm loving it thanks bro it's not a lot of base but works for me

3GTLOwns

It didnt work for me.













I found these under the seats.