Ironman,

Well, hmmmm, how do I explain. Ok, The stock wiring harness of the truck has a "clip on connector" which plugs directly into the back of the stock HU. (there is also a second clip on connector going into the stock HU, but that one is for the CD changer, if ya have one, leave that one alone [the square one]). Now, to get speaker level out and send to the amp, you have to tap into the 8 speaker wires (or 4 wires if you are only going to amplify 2 speakers) coming out of the back of the radio and going into the radio harness. Depending on what youre doing, you can either cut the speaker wires completely and redirect to the amp, or just tap into them. Tapping into them would only apply if you still wanted the signal from the HU to go to the speakers. An example of this would be if you were adding a subwoofer, you would still want the hu signal to go top speakers but also take the signal and send to subwoofer amp. Anyway, your not going that way, so in your case you would just cut the wires and connect them to your new wires which would of coarse go to the amp speaker level inputs.

Now, doing that has a few downfalls. 1. You just cut some wires out of the the factory harness, thats not a very "clean" way of doing it. Instead, you could buy a male and female plug from PartsExpress (or any other parts dealer) for $10 each. On the other side of the plugs are emty wires about 4" long to splice onto. Plug the male into the trucks factory harness and the female into the back of the radio. Now you have 2 sets of wires with the same colors hangin out. So, take the 4 or 8 speaker wires and splice them together with the wire going to the amp. Then take the remote on power wire from the amp, and splice it onto the "accessory on" wire coming out of radio(red wire I think, I forget?). Then splice the rest of the wires onto each other. Orange to orange, black to black..... When you are done, you will have either 4 or 8 wires left unused on the trucks harness side, those are the speaker wires going to the speakers. If you are running new speaker wire to the doors, then you will not need them at all. If you will run your amp speaker outputs back to the HU area to utilize the trucks speaker leads, then hook the amps outputs to these unused wires. WAHLLA!! You now have BOOM.

As for amp power. I'd go with at least 40 Watts RMS per channel. Now be carefull!! You have to look VERY closely to find the proper RMS rating for the amp. For example, my amp is the 500 Watt 4 Ch. Kenwood. That does not mean 500 RMS watts. If you read the manual, you'll find it is 80Watts X 4 RMS @ 2 Ohms or 40 Watts x 4 RMS @ 4 ohms. Most speakers today are 4 ohms (including mine), so mine is 40 Watts x 4 RMS.

Less than that in my opinion is a waste of time. Remember, 90% of the power goes to the bass. The more power, the better the bass. In your case, no sub, so get LOTS of power to make up for it.

Good luck.

 

Now THAT is a very helpful post--thanks a ton, CC!

neil

 

Ah yes...Norm you are correct. Thanks for clearing that up, I understood everything you explained. The problem with the shielded RCA's is that the shield actually creates a ground loop...a place for noise, hum, etc. to travel. To prevent this, one end of the cable needs to be grounded (not both ends). The UTP pro's use is superior because of the signal path crossing so often at 90 degrees (deals with magnetic fields canceling, etc.) It is the same idea that CAT-5 uses. I did learn one thing from your post...I did not realize that the speaker level may be as high as 14V. And you are correct about the "antenna" effect...any long run of wire that is not shielded will act like an antenna and receive any radiations of RF.

Hey...I think I do remember some things from college! (graduated with an AAS in electronics and computer engineering technologies but it is sometimes hard to remember all the info from the 4000+ pages I read!)

 

Glad I could help. I wish I could find the time to upgrade my setup. I plan on keeping the Factory HU for anti theft purposes and adding a sub and amps. I am also replacing the front speakers. Not too worried about the rears at the moment. I do not have a garage and the winter is moving in. I can use my sisters garage (heated) if the snowmobiles are out of it. I bought a remote start with keyless entry and have to put that in first. Life just keeps getting in the way if you know what I mean.

 

I just ordered a pair of Infinity Kappa 692.5i and need advices on how to install those speakers to my 4-channels amplifier. I am using factory head unit. I am planning to hook those speakers to an amp that have high level input(HLIP). Based on what I know I have to use the HLIP since I am using the stock head unit. My questions are since the Infinity speakers came with 2-ways exterior passive cross-overs where would I connect those cross over to? And where or what do I connect the high level input with? Do I connect them to one rear-speaker or both rear speakers wires? If so where in the speakers wires do I tap into. Anywhere or at the lead of the wire? On the HLIP wiring harness, there's a 'thin' black ground wire among other wires. What do I do with that thin ground wire? I mean on the back of the amp there is already a 4-gauge ground wire, which is next to the power and remote wires, thatI have already grounded to the car chassic. So do I ground that small black wire too or leave it unused? And if I decided to hook the front speakers to the amp would I have to use the HLIP to tap into those front speakers wire as well? I just need to know where to connect the HLIP to the speaker wires. I don't want to end up burning the speakers or crossover if I hooked them up wrong. Thanks you!