VTEC11

Has anyone run new speaker wires into the front doors of a 2nd gen TL?

How do you do it? Any pics?

Plan on putting in new 6.5" components and an amp this weekend and was thinking i'll probably have to run some thicker wire into the door. Or atleast an extra wire for the tweeter if i leave the crossovers inside the cars (not in the doors)..


i'll take lots of pics..
thanks

shawhite

i would definately recommend that you run at least 16ga to the new components in the doors.. as for how i ran the speaker wire.. well it was really simple.. i ran it along the side of the car behind the kick panel.. then you should see a rubber boot that has all the stock wires in it.. i just fished it thru there and presto...

vsokolov

I see you are not really sure what to do and how to do it let me tell you one thing so you don't waste your money to water, its not what you put in, that is how you put it in. You can make $150 speakers sound like sh$t but im as proffesional gurantte you that i can make $50 speakers sound better than $150 speakers

VTEC11

huh?

what does that mean?

ou sig

He is basically saying that you can get good speakers and put them in without much care, and the sound may suffer. Just make sure you use quality wire - 16guage or bigger, Dynamat (or something similar) at least behind the speaker or the whole door. This will help the sound a bunch. Just imagine that the speaker is vibarating the air - and if you turn it up loud and dont have it installed good, then it will vibarate itself. This will distort the sound and you will lose some sound.

Moral of the story - you get what you pay for, mount it firmly and you will be happy.

dnd2984

iTrader: (6)

hey shaw how did u get the wire through to the door? I still havent upgraded my speaker wire and I really neeed to do it soon, do u think the factory wire is that bad though?

shawhite

to be honest it was a read pain... but i basically used the route of the stock wires.. i went up the kick panel and thru to the door thru that rubber boot... you might have to play with it for a while to get the wire thru that boot but after there you are done... oh the passenger side is a little more difficult since you have less room to work with since the ecu and the fuse panel is all in the way... but basically use the same process... pull the boot out fish the wire.. put the boot back in..

Scott P

you can go from the stock wire all the way up to 12 gauge if you feel so inclined, but the science proves that you aren't going to be able to hear a difference. you'd be better suited to use the money that you were going to use on speaker wire, on some form of dynamet for the doors. That will make the most noticible difference in sound from the components

shawhite

scott p i would have to disagree in a since.. yes the size of speaker wire will not make that much of a difference but i would have to say the stock 20ga or whatever it is, is way to small to run any decent power thru it.. the characteristic impedance of that small of cable is alot higher than that of say 16 or 14ga.. meaning that you are going to have alot more loss in the smaller cable.. equaling less power supplied to the speaker.. plus that means you are going to run a larger gauge from the amp and then join into the stock wiring either behind the radio or near there door.. there is more loss... i strongly recommend running a single run of say 16ga from the amp straight to the speakers..

Scott P

First i will admit i have never measured the guage of the stock speaker wire, i have only gone under the assumption that it follows generalities (i.e either 18 or 20 gauge). that being said I agree that conventional wisdom would lead one to assume that wiring in all new speaker wire would produce a greater gain in signal. This is not the case though. Under equal conditions (the assumption that appox 100w rms being supplied by an amp) the the signal gained by upgrading from stock wiring (18 ga used in tests) to 12 guage is 0.1dB. This gain is inaudible to most people. Now in cases of large power signals (i.e subs) it would be ludicris to use 18 ga, in such cases it would be highly suggested to beef up to 12 ga and even in some cases 10 ga.

In all honesty the worst case scenario that could be encountered using the stock wiring, is with line capacitances of the wires. This would basically cause the wires to act as a low pass filter. Cenerally this isn't a problem and given that there was a bose system in the car (not great by any means, but still amplified) i would be hard pressed to worry about such things occurring.