Castles_Saloon

Looking for ideas on how to pass a new speaker cable from the driver's door to the cabin. I did the passenger side already which involved the use of a stiffer wire (like house electrical) to snake through the rubber gasket between door and body.

The driver door has mating connectors at the interface with the door. Anyone drill a small hole through the connector. I can't imagine drilling another hole in the door's sheet metal.

Ideas? Past experiences?

Thanks!

fourthmeal

You mean molex? Google molex door speaker and see the various solutions. But keep in mind, unless you are running VERY high power speakers in the door, the stock wire is just fine.

Castles_Saloon

Yes, I believe they are Molex type connectors.

The purpose of adding the different wire isn't a concern of wire resistance and a high power speaker, but an experiment. I wanted to find out if the fidelity improved moving to thicker (lower resistance) wire using a better insulator than the generic PVC of stock cables.

I want to avoid all Molex connectors in the routing of the speaker wire. i.e. no breaks in the wire

fourthmeal

Understood. Yes, then use one of those techniques you see in the search to achieve your goal. I tend to drill through the corner with 4 conductor 16 gauge, IN-WALL rated wire (for abrasion resistance and pull-through ease.

http://www.the12volt.com/installbay/...TID=78731&PN=1

Castles_Saloon

Thanks! That's what I was looking for before I pulled out my drill.

BTW, there is lots of insulative goop placed on all the connectors. I assume to prevent water ingress.

Molex! (in this case at least)

Castles_Saloon

There is now a wire running through a new hole in my door's molex connector. It worked fairly well. There was an larger unused pin in the lower corner of the connector.

Thanks for tip!

fourthmeal

What a coincidence I just started working on a 2007 Ford Fusion, and of course there's a Molex in the door. In light of this thread, I decided to take pics of each step to take.


The rubber boot is taken off. I used my fingers and a wide flat-head screwdriver.


Then I used a small pick to push in the plastic holding tabs. BTW, Stanley Tools sells a pick set at some Wal-marts, or SEARS. They definitely do the job here.


Tight fit!



Success!



There is often a good amount of wire available to pull, it will usually be wrapped in a abrasion resistant tape. The blue tab just needs to be pried a bit and it will snap to an open position


Always do the driver's side first, BTW. It is going to have the most wires so you'll be able to see what you can, and cannot do. This molex simply has no room for me to drill straight through it.



What's this? Oh yes, its a small hole (there's one of each side) to maybe put some wires through. Always check the other side of the connector, make sure that the blue swing-tab doesn't swing into a spot that would block this hole, rendering it useless to put wire through. This one is A-OK


I didn't take a pic of it but this set of 4 wires is actually the inner wire to a bundled 4 conductor, 16 gauge wire that I use. Well, the hole in the connector didn't accept the wire with its sheath, so I simply stripped the sheath off and here we are, fully functional.


The wire goes through the boot to the door






This is the other side, ready to slip back into the car's frame



This one took about 30 minutes from start to doing everything but running the actual speaker wire through the car. That will be done later, for now the wire is bundled in the front seats.