here are the ways i thought of for doing this.
1-dont amp the doors, just buy a subwoofer or 2 and amp them.
2-if you are going to amp the doors, just run them seperate, especially if you have to take the door panels off anyways. save yourself time later if you do upgrade.

i never really saw the benefit of amping the doors, if you have a good head unit and good speakers, you can set them to sound nice, then get sub(s) and amp(s) to give it more bass. i have my stock speakers and pioneer head unit right now installed. have a pioneer 760 amp and a pioneer 800W peak 12" sub and also a pioneer 500W peak 8" flat cone sub. deciding on huge bass behind the seat or subtle bass under the middle seat pointing down or both but have them on a toggle so i can choose which one i want working. if i like the 12 better i will end up buying another one, only problem is now they are up to 1000W peak but it should be fine. i dont turn the amp up too high, maybe 1/2 at the most.

 

Then you haven't heard the difference between a clipping head unit and unclipped amped set up at twice the volume. It's a night and day difference.

 

The reason for amping your doors is plain and simple, cleaner volume at louder levels. It's the same as subwoofers. Pioneer's headunits can use the rear high-level outputs to drive subwoofers but without enough power, you can NOT achieve higher volumes while maintaining clarity (clarity refers to the elimination of distortion caused by clipping in this reference). Some people like their midrange volume at a moderate volume, some want more. You seem to enjoy your mids and highs at a moderate volume, others want it much louder. The ideal way is to even your bass AND mids/highs. Drowning our your mids and highs with bass is just looking for attention, to be cool, to be "bumpin". But matching a loud subwoofer setup with a loud mid/high setup is replicating a concert hall.

Like GATORB8 said, it really is a night and day difference.

 

i guess i should have said, i know what it does but its not that important to me. if i never hear amped door speakers, i wont know the difference. to me it isnt worth the money or time. like those bose systems. they sound nice and all but they arent THAT great. went into a bose store and they really were good, but not worth the money to me. same with their headphones. they sounded good but it doesnt matter that much to me i guess.

 

Now that I can agree with you on, BLOSE is overpriced garbage. $500 alarm clocks, $450 of which goes to advertising.

 

There are much better sounding systems than Bose.

 

Bose earned their reputation from the home market, so going mobile they pretty much had some sort of credential. The thing with them is they are known for making lots of sound with minimal space. The thing with car audio is there is PLENTY of space, so clarity is left to speaker type, size, tuning, direction, and power. Realistically, you can't get 80hz out of a driver that's just 3mm wide. Doesn't happen. JL is kinda in the same league, very expensive, except there are very few brands that can compete with JL Audio in the mobile world, where Bose can easily be dominated by a properly designed Alpine setup in a car. If there is one thing JL did right, is the W7. Those subwoofers are used in the Fathom and Gotham subwoofers for home theater applications, and they are LOUD!!! In my opinion, louder and cleaner than Velodyne.

 

okay so to connect the eight wire from the metra harness to the new wires i use these right



to connect them to the amp i use spade connectors and i crimp them right?



and where is a good spot to connect the ground?

 

No, Solder and heat shrink your Metra harness to your new HU harness and just plug them all together. Wire nuts are not for car audio.
As far as the amp goes use whatever connectors the amp manufacturer provides or recommends. I also solder those. Some amps are designed for bare wires.

Better yet take it to a shop.

 

I agree with Norm, solder is best. But if you are not going to solder, you need to use automotive crimp connectors, the vibrations can back off screw on style household wire nuts.

 

Okay I've been at this since I woke up so I've been doing this for about 5 hours. I did everything like I said I would in the original post. Everything is connected but the rear door speakers will not play ANYTHING. I thought it was because the RCA cable was bad but I checked it and it was okay. I double checked all my connections everything works. What could be the problem??? It's really frustrating me. Here are some pics of the connections. What do you guys think the problem could be?

(Sorry for bad quality they are from my phone)

 

Bump.

So I did what I didn't want to do in the first place. Lol I ran new 16 Gauge wire from the speakers directly to the amp. Everything went smooth, but I still need to reassemble the center console. Plus there are no visible wires! Just the way I like it.

But there's a problem whenever I plug the right hand rear door speaker to the channel 4 slot. I can't here ANYTHING. (I've disconnected every speaker and left that one connected. I moved the channel 3 speaker (left side rear door speaker) to channel 4 and the same thing happened. I turned the stereo up to the max and you could BARELY here the song, but it was there. So I think something is wrong with channel 4, is there anything I can do to diagnose what the problem is???

 

Swap the RCAs at the amp and see if Ch 4 still doesn't work, if it doesn't it's the amp. Then swap RCA connections at the head to eliminate the RCAs as the problem.

And clean up you battery wire connection at the amp. That exposed copper is just like leaving the battery + terminal exposed in your car, if it gets near a ground, you'll see a nice big spark.

 

I won't have a chance to check it until probably tomorrow night. So I'll let you know what I find out. If I get an 8 gauge spade connector for the ground and power, it won't fit into the terminal, so what can I purchase to make it work?

 

How close is it? Could you file down the 8 gauge spade to squeeze it in. If not, I'd use the biggest one you can find that will fit in the opening.