First time adding an amp AND speakers to a car,,, wiring help please!!!!

[jimmyducati 10+ year member]

So im adding alpine 6x9's, 6.5's and a sound stream amp to my F350 Crew Cab and am completely confused about how to wire it. I would like to use the factory wire from under the dash to the speaker to avoid threading new wire through the door, but have no idea how to do it. I have a Kenwood headunit, 2 6.5s in the front doors and 2 6x9's in the rear behind the seats and will be using a 10" sub on a mono amp (the sub will be easy enough to figure out). does anyone have a wiring diagram showing how to do this with minimal confusion/work? thanks!

jimmy

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[jimmyducati 10+ year member]

just researched the low vs high level inputs available on my soundstream and awnsered my own question... rca's from the hu to the 4 channel amp, wire back to the factory harness to the speakers. I love the google machine //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

 

[JoshC 10+ year member]

You cant use the original speaker wires, they run to the HU. Your amp will be at the back of your car, not in the center of your dash.

 

[maylar 10+ year member]

What he said ^^^

... although with a truck I suppose you can run speaker wires under the floormat and get them back to the dash...

 

[Z1NONLY 10+ year member]

just researched the low vs high level inputs available on my soundstream and awnsered my own question... rca's from the hu to the 4 channel amp, wire back to the factory harness to the speakers. I love the google machine //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

That's how I do it. (Particularly when door speakers are involved)

 

[>>SQL<< 10+ year member]

You cant use the original speaker wires, they run to the HU. Your amp will be at the back of your car, not in the center of your dash.

This is completely a wrong answer.

OP you are correct - from the amp you run the speaker wires to the dash and tie into the factory wires. Make sure to cut them so they are no longer connected to the headunit.

That is how my current car (Honda Accord) is ran as well as just about every other car I have done.

Now for the rear speakers I normally just run the speaker wires from the amp to the rear speakers as the amp is normally mounted in the rear and it is just easier.

 

[All_Logix 10+ year member]

HAHA, wow there seems to be a back and forth on if you can or cannot do this. OP first thing you need to find out, make sure the kenwood has the available preouts to send signal to both amps. Most kenwoods these days do, but in case you don't know look for 3 sets of RCA on the back that say 'R' 'F' and 'SW', pretty obvious what they stand for. Now since you have an aftermarket HU, hopefully you used a wire harness....go buy you some of this stuff called turbowire, it looks like 4 gauge power wire and has 9 smaller wires inside. Connect the blue (inside the turbowire) to the remote wire on the HU and then just match up the others (on the side of the harness that goes into the vehicle), be sure to do what crispin mentioned and disconnect the HU's speaker outputs. Then you can just run that turbowire to your amp with the RCA wires.....PS dont do this is your going to run ALOT of power to the door speakers, like anything more than 60 watts per speaker, then I would have to recommend you run new heavier wires