installing front spreakers

[madscientist 0]

Hi,

 

I got some infinity componants for x-mas and i want to fit them myself as the audio place wants £50 to fit them!

So would someone be able to give me a step by step guide to fitting them. I know how to take the doorcards off so its just the wiring, crossovers and tweeters i need help with really, but you may be able to put this all in the Wiki if its a good guide?

 

Thanks

[smee 0]

Are you running them off the head unit or off an amp? And do you have ABS?(no really it is relevant!)

[madscientist 0]

yeah just off the head unit, and yes it has ABS its a 93 VR6.

 

Also do i need some extra speaker wire and where would i put the crossovers?

[Jon_vr6 1]

whats abs gotta do with it may i ask??

[Supercharged 2]

You can stick the X-overs where the ABS ECU would be...

[Jon_vr6 1]

ahh got ya!

[smee 0]

lol thought that might raise a few eyebrows! Seriously though, if you haven't got ABS then you can hide the lefthand x-over behind the kickpanel, where the ABS ecu lives. But as it's a VR we can forget about that. Might still be able to hide the r/h one in the r/h kickpanel though. you'll probably have to hide the l/h one in the dash, get all the under-dash trim off and somewhere should present itself. I fitted my tweets in the factory locations, popped the factory ones out of the dash and drilled a suitable hole in the plastic tweeter housing to take the tweeter mounts.

Wiring wise, either run new cable and splice it into the car's loom near the head unit, which isn't too tricky, or use the stock wiring, but you'll have to remove the stock speaker connectors. I think the stock wiring runs to the tweeters first, then on to the door speakers, so you might need to re-route some of it. I decided it was simpler to run completely new cables, and used some spare hi-fi cable I had lying about.

[dinkus 10]

Well if you can get the doorcards off, that's half the problem!

 

The plan

What you're trying to do is get the signal from the head unit to the crossover. It then branches from there to the tweeter and woofer.

 

Luckily, most of the wiring you need to do that is already there. Assuming you've still got the standard wiring in place - the signal goes from the head unit, to the tweeter, then down from there to the woofer.

 

So you need to take the wire that comes from the head unit and reroute it to wherever your crossover is instead of going into the tweeter.

 

You then run 2 sets of wires back up from wherever your crossover is:

 

The first set go back up to the tweeter

The other set joins on to the existing wiring that used to go from the tweeter to the woofer.

 

With me so far? :lol:

 

Working out what goes where

To work out which wire is which, pop the cover off the tweeter (it is push-fit, honest).

 

The tweeter is then mounted into a round plastic tray thing, which also just pops out. Underneath, you have 2 plugs - one of those comes from the head unit, the other goes to the woofer.

 

To find out which is which, put some music on and ideally fade it all the way to the side of the car you're working on. Now, unplug one of the 2 connectors and listen to what happens - if everything goes off, then the one you just unplugged is the one coming from the head unit. If the woofer just goes off but you can still hear the tweeter doing it's thang... and I'll let you work out which one you've just unplugged :)

 

Where to put the crossovers

Crossover positioning can be fun too - I put the one on the driver's side beind the footrest next to the accelerator pedal, but it's a tight fit so try it before you scrape your knuckles running the wire!

 

The passenger side one I actually stuck to the side of the back of the glove box with some sticky pads, but you could drill a hole in the glove box and put it in there. If you didn't have ABS, it could go in the corresponding footrest position, but on the passenger side.

 

Also bear in mind...

There will be different connectors on the Infinity (or indeed any after-market) stuff to the VW wiring, so you'll need to get you a set of spade connectors.

 

The speakers may not fit properly on the standard mounts - the diameter will be ok, but the new woofers will probably stick out a bit further than the Nokia jobbies. This means that you may need to put spacers on the pins on the door card that the woofer attaches to, or you cut away some of the door pod so that the speaker doesn't touch (you'll understand what I mean when you do it).

 

I used an extra set of the rubber bung things that are on there from the factory, but failing that some nuts will do the trick (nut and bolt nuts, not peanuts! :lol:) Just make sure they're clamped in tight otherwise they'll vibrate and drive you nuts!

 

Good luck - it's not an ideal setup, but short of removing all the skin on your knuckles and/or half the dashboard to run new speaker wiring, it's as good as you're gonna get with the standard setup :D

[dukest 0]

rather than running components and worrying about new cabling and hiding new crossovers etc. is it possible to run two sets of multielement speakers off the stock wiring? ie. some 3" or 4" speakers in the dash and 5.25" units in the standard door pods?

 

how would this work with the existing dash crossovers etc? I'm not particularly clued up on this stuff?! :)

 

Cheers

John

[vwdeviant 0]

Good Q John...

 

Also is it possible to by-pass the Tweeters? both of mine seem to be dead and was wondering if there's a way of by-passing them so I can at least have the woofers back?

[dutchboy 0]

vwdeviant. You can just unplug the two plugs from underneath the tweeter, cut the plugs off then just join the wires. It will then put all the sound down to the woofer in the door.

I have standard sized infinity speakers in my doors and get hardly any bass, is this normal in small speakers?