Got a new HU and was gonna run rca's to my trunk this weekend.
Is 12 feet of cable too much or too little if the amp will be mounted on the back of the rear seats?
Also should the power and rca's go along different sides of the car when I run them?
I've done basic HU changes but never ran anything to the trunk guessing its all getting tucked under along door sills.
Thanks for any help.

 

I like to separate all my cables. Some people say it's necessary, others that it's worthless, but I've never had a problem spending an extra 10-20 minutes to separate the cables. For me, I have RCA's down the middle of the car, power wire underneath, and speaker wire on the sides of the car. RCA's and speaker wire are under the carpet. It works great and I haven't had any problems whatsoever.

And if you have extra RCA's, just find a place in the trunk to stash them. You never know when you're going to want to move your amp, and then you might need the extra length...

 

I have a 2gen tl. My power cable was 16ft long, rca's were also 16 i believe. Honestly 16 was just right, the cables went straight to my trunk. I ran them on the left(drivers side) both power and rca and remote to the HU of course. It is all verrry basic, the only hard part was running power to battery. Find a DIY somewhere is all i can say, and expect to spend 20 mins just on that part. Like i said everything else is simple shit, take off the, valve cover, door sills, the side panel and the back seat. Btw i ran 4 gauge therefore i had to shave the inside of the door sills a little bit. This is definately worth doing yourself.

 

Thanks a ton guys

 

BTW-The deck is a Alpine CDE-102. Should I be worried about killing my factory speakers? I will upgrade them eventually though.

 

Are your factory speakers amped? If so, you might run into a bit of a snag there, but you might not, I've seen it both ways. If your speakers aren't amped from the factory, I'd say you should be fine.

 

Not sure if they are amped. Its the stock bose system in the 02 TL. There is a small amp in the back near the factory sub. Not sure if that powers all speakers or just the sub. I plan on not using that sub anymore anyway and removing it.

 

Definitely want to run the RCA's away from the power, even though they're both shielded. If you have an amp, then I believe it powers all your speakers, and all my power cables are at least 17 feet long so that I have more slack to play with

 

Honestly, i really don't get that. Why go through extra trouble, even if it is 10 mins, to wire it on the other side...After all, like you said both the rca's and the power are shielded with rubber, besides my rca's are shielded with another piece of rubber on top, so its a double layer.

 

Like I said, some people swear by it, others think it's unnecessary... Obviously Chris and dykyy are from different schools of thought...

 

Think I will just take the time and run them away from each other. For piece of mind and less chance for noise. Thanks for the tips guys. Can't wait to get rid of that crap deck in there now.

 

The Alpine CDE-102 has 2 sets of rca's on the back. I am using one for the sub but could I use the other for my Zune? Something like this http://www.crutchfield.com/p_1426RCA...e.html?tp=1934
?
Or just go with thr front AUX port?

 

The other set of RCA's on the back is an output, not an input. You have USB and AUX on the front of the faceplate. No need to go through the back of it...

 

Yea I was just trying to be neat about it and run cable to arm rest.
I thought it would work

Thanks

 

Yeah, you'd need something with a rear input for that. My Pioneer has both front and rear USB, as well as rear aux input. So my USB cable from the back goes into the glove box for an Ipod.

 

Ah I see what you mean now thanks. Any advantage of running usb instead of mini jack?

 

USB handles data. So if my hu could, I could play movies off my Ipod with the USB. Minijack (3.5mm) only plays audio, unless you have one of the first video Ipods out. The first video Ipods had video out through the 3.5mm jack. Roommate showed me that one. Other than that, my hu controls my Ipod and charges it. So no more 2 cables running to the Ipod or having to take it out at night to charge it. It's completely self contained and makes life nice as hell.

 

Well everything just got here! Very excited to get this all put in.... hopefully this weekend.

 

Bleh i'm confused....the wire harness for the radio has a place for a ground screw on the end of the black wire. While the harness kit I got for the car only has the black wire w/o screw end on it.
Not sure how this gets connected.
Anyone know?

 

Cut the wire from the hu harness and connect it to the ground wire on the chassis side.

 

So I strip both wires and solder together? HU side and new harness right?
Thought it had to get grounded to the car. Sounds easy enough then.
Sorry if I'm a little slow here.....I'm better with home audio lol.
Thanks matt

 

The manufacturers leave that on there in case you want to run power/ground directly from the battery. Some of the higher end models need this, due to the amount of current they draw.

But yes, if you're going to solder the harness (like I always do) then you strip them and solder them together.

 

Cool thanks a ton matt, you've been a huge help

Yea going to solder and heat shrink everything together. Don't want to harm anything with loose connections or exposed copper. Now I am hoping that this weekend weather is not snow so I can get this shit done.

 

You can solder/heat shrink in cold. Hell, I did the Big 3 in ~30 degree weather... It sucked, but it's doable. And besides, you're working with small wire. The cold doesn't effect it as much... 1/0 can seriously be effected by cold weather and that makes it a lot harder to bend.

 

Just because they're shielded doesn't mean that noise and interference can't get through, especially depending on the quality of the RCA's. Put it this way, I've had a dozen systems and ran all my wires on opposite sides and I've never had alternator noise or a ground loop, yet almost every one of my friends has had either alt noise or a ground loop, or both, I guess my extra 10 mins accounts for something

Different strokes for different folks, Matt knows how detail oriented I am, I nitpick down to the smallest detail

 

Thats fair. Next time I will separate my wiring just to try it out, maybe u are right, i mean you cant truly know something unless you approach it from different angles.

 

Detail oriented might be a bit of an understatement... But it's true, you do take care to make everything perfect.

 

do you have better pics of how you ran the power wire underneath? i'd rather do the job right the first time. and i'm assuming you needed to drill into the trunk?

 

yeah maybe a bit of an understatement

 

Not really any pics. There's a plastic piece that covers the brake lines that I zip-tied the conduit to. It's not really that complex. The hardest part is getting it out of the engine bay. The only place I found was to run it under the intake, up near the strut tower bar and then you can feed down to below the car.

 

Same here, there are three little holes covered with rubber.

 

New HU in and now amp wont power on. The old setup had a signal picker upper off the factory sub with the factory HU.

Now I put the Alpine and have so power from the amp. I didn't touch any power cables or anything all that stuff was there form the old setup and looks and worked fine before this.

 

You need to run a remote wire from the new hu. Should be the blue/white wire on the Alpine harness. Run a wire from there to the amp's remote turn on.

My guess at what happened is, when you ran the new hu, it effectively disabled factory amp, which is why it's no longer coming on.

 

Ah crap I knew I forgot to buy a wire....damn it.
thanks Matt

 

will any copper wire do? I have long speaker cable

 

Yea man, im pretty sure that it could be any copper wire, even 22-24g will do.

 

Any copper wire should work. I use 1 piece of speaker wire to jump the remote from 1 of my amps to the other. I wouldn't use anything smaller than 18ga for remote wire, but then again, I believe you can never have too big of wire. The more copper the better, imo.

 

Thanks guys. That was the problem indeed. All i have is 12g but lots of it and it worked fine.

 

Sounds pretty good. Sub works nicely, needs tweaking level wise. Also removed the factory sub so sound could travel through there better.

Guess the next step is replacing the factory speakers. They sound ok but they lost their luster with the new HU. I don't plan on amping them or getting components. Just want some better quality direct drop ins. What size goes right in w/o any mods? 6 1/2?

 

Yea mid level stuff should be drop in at 6 1/2.

Alpine Type S
Polk DB651
Pioneer Ts-a1683r