I recently bought a clarion camouflage sub with its own amp for my expedition. It fits into the cargo area bbehind the third seat. The amp is 50 watt rms class d with 150 watt peak. What gauge should I use for the power and ground wires? Thanks.

 

8 awg will work just fine & leave you a little room to upgrade since you aren't running very high wattage. Always use the same awg wire for the power & ground, otherwise you will have problems.

 

Forgot to add...don't get suckered into buying an expensive amp kit from Best Buy or Circuit City. You can get a standard 8 awg kit from Walmart for $20...there isn't any audible difference.

 

There is in the RCA CABLES!!!!

Cheapy RCA CABLES.. like weak little home audio RCA CABLES will not perform well in the Car Audio environment. They are MUCH MORE susceptible to noise problems.

Shielded, Twisted Pair RCA CABLES are the way to go.

But the rest of the power wiring is okay to go with the cheaper stuff.. especially since you don't have a lot of power.

 

Cool. Thanks guys.

 

I highly recommend the 8GA amp install kit from Knu Konceptz. Good shielding on the RCA cables, lots of strands in the power/ground wires, and all the little pieces you need.

 

Third the recommendations already. 8 guage is more than enough and don't buy the package from the chain stores. The RCA's are important as was mentioned for the issue of interference. You can also go to Radio Shack and buy the exact lenghts of power wire you need.

 

Molonko,
I have roll of 6 awg wire (approx 200 ft left). Email me if you want some, I'll save you some cash.

*The RCA's will not make an audible difference in this install*

 

The kind of RCA Cables you use will not really matter if you are a person who just wanted ur radio to sound better than factory, but if you are a serious audiophile who plays ur system loud and hard you will find a noticable difference in the detail level and dynamic range with RCA Cables with wound wires, Kevlar covers, and gold or platinum tips. It all depends on how much you care.

 

I was referring to the cheap CHEAP RCA cables with no shielding or noise protection. Obviously he doesnt need to go out and spend $100 for his RCA Cables but nonetheless he'll need some quality CAR AUDIO RCA Cables with some form of noise rejection. Its better to do it right the first time than to discover you've got induced noise on your cheap inadequate RCA's.

 

You can get a good set of rca s for twenty dollars at circuit city. I got suckered on an amp kit from there. That is where it gets expensive. 8 gauge amp kit at circuit city will run 70 dollars without any speaker wire.

 

70 bucks for a single amp 8 AWG kit? WOW!!
I paid $100 for a DUAL amp 4 AWG kit...with GOOD RCA Cables (phoenix gold kit too)

 

Yea i started the day at best buy and saw the rockford fosgate kit which i really liked. It was like $80 and then i thought that is to much for some copper wire. Then i moved on down to circuit city where i got it for $70. My next power wire is coming from wal mart or ebay. Then i got hit up for the rca's. Ended up walking out of there 90 bucks liter. Then i had to find some speaker wire. The dude at tweater sold me some monster home speaker wire because they were out. It was about 3 bucks for 1 foot. I bought 6 feet. He said as i left i would have the pimpest car speaker wire on the block.

 

Hate to say it, but you wasted your money...Circuit City is the biggest rip off when it comes to installations & wires, rca's, etc. The only difference (besides price) between the RF amp kit and the one at Walmart is the name.

But you live & you learn, when I first started getting into car audio I didn't know any better & I bought the $70 RF amp kit.

 

Thanks 2T1W, but I already bought the power wire. Can you tell me what size fuse I will need to install for that size amp?