Front Door Speakers - Factory Wiring

[SteveInNH]

Hello,

My front speakers sound like CRAP.

I have a '99 Civic sedan with 6 1/2 inch speakers in the front doors. They are Cerwin Vegas that dropped right in. I have an Alpine 7840 Head Unit with 4v RCA outputs and an Alpine 3547 2 channel amp hooked up to the front speakers. This amp is 45 watts RMS x 2. I have the speaker wires running from the amp in the trunk down the drivers side of the car and up behind the dash. From there, they are spliced into the aftermarket Honda wiring adapter that I bought to connect my Head Unit to the Civic. I did this because I wanted to avoid running speaker wire into the doors.

If I ran the heavy gauge speaker wire all the way to the speakers in the doors and avoided the factory wires, would the sound improve?

Thanks,

Steve

Click to read more...

 

[Gauntlet 5,000+ posts]

If you've done everything correctly, there shouldn't be any problems with what you're currently doing....what exactly is wrong?

 

[maylar 10+ year member]

Yea, sounds like you did it right. Factory wirng ought to be at least good enough for 45 watts.

Define "sounds like crap"...

 

[SteveInNH]

If I put the fader all the way forward, I only get to about 12 (out of 30) on the volume and the sound starts breaking up. Scratchy, etc.... If I fade all the way to the back, the 6x9's sound great! They are running on a cheap Jensen 2 channel amp.

I've tried a couple of different sets of 6 1/2's up front and get the same distortion from them all. This is what made me think of the factory wiring as a weak link.

Thanks for your help!

Steve

 

[maylar 10+ year member]

Try switching stuff around. Like switch the front & rear RCA cables. Switch the amps so the 'good' one drives the front speakers. If the problem stays with the front speakers, it's possible the wireing needs to be redone.

 

[SteveInNH]

Awesome. Thanks!

I will roll up my sleeves on Thursday and climb in the trunk.

I will try to have an update tommorrow night.

Thanks again.

I hope I don't end up having to re-wire everything.

I re-did the grounds on the amps today and feel very confident there.

Steve