Hey boys. I have a few quick questions for you. Was getting ready to complete the system install and realized I could not find a place in the firewall to pull the power wire through to the cab. My boyfriend and I scanned everywhere and came up with nothing! Also, for those who have amps, did you run the RCA's/Power wire down opposite sides of the car, or one wire down one side of the car, and the other under the center console? Thanks boys!!!

 

Drill a hole and get a grommet, thats what I did. You can get a rubber grommet or a metal one at any local hardware store. Just make sure the grommet fits in the whole you drilled(you can always make it bigger but not smaller), and that the amp wire fits throught the grommet. As for the RCA/Power, most people say you should seperate the two, but on my old system I didnt and had no problems. My new system has a seperate brain to it so you plug the RCAs into the brain instead of the HU. The "brain" and amp are both under the same seat so I have about 2" of of wire running from one to the other.

hope this helps

 

Pull up your passenger side door sill, there is already a grommet in place and I just ran the RCA's down and tucked it under the carpet then ran it down the door sill along with the power supply. The remote power wire goes on the drivers side and just used a fuse tap.

 

run your wires behind the battery, on top of the inner fender, then up thru the grommet under the passenger side door sill.





more pics in f150online gallery..

 

double

 

NO NO NO, if you look under your steering wheel there is a spot to get the power wire through to the cab. You don't have to drill any holes, just pull back the carpet and look for it. Trust me thats the way I did mine when I had the batteries in the front of the truck.

And as a general rule you want to keep your RCA wires as far away from the vehicles power wires as possible. Run your remote amp wire along the same side as the power wire and everything else that has a signal in it along the passenger side of the truck. This will help give you a cleaner signal.

Get a good set of RCA's when you do becuause your signal is everything. 100 bucks on a single set of RCA's is about average for a good set. You can get away with a little cheaper set for the bass signal's.

Later.

trust me alternator whine SUCKS!

 

RT, the hole under the door sill is already there with a grommet in it..
why would you want to run the power wire across the back of the engine bay on top of the motor, when it would be shorter ( and cooler) to run it under the sill?

i ran the power wire on the passenger side, the speaker wires on the drivers side, and the rca's beside the tranny hump..

ditto on what RT said about the cheapo rca cables..

brooks

 

She could do it like that but running it on the drivers side is just the way everyone in the industry does it. Thats what I have been taught.

If you do that SVT girl then make sure you run the remote wire on the passenger side and the RCA's on the drivers side.

Try not to tangle them up either and only buy enough footage to get the job done, 20 foot is over kill. 12 foot should be enough.

Later.

what are you installing, I have a new idea on how to build a box in the truck to get allot more sound out of the sub. Facing the sub in the back wall of the cab should doulbe the bass wave! but you have to design the box to have enough vents to get the air out of there and travel. not to hard!

I'm going to try that with mine, Hopefully I'll get twice the bass I have now with 3 tens back there now.

 

when i was a installer at ye olde stereo shoppe.. (back in the days, hehe) i was told this. "the shorter, the better"

eg. - the longer your power wire is, the more resistance it has, the more it costs, ect.. this applies to rca cables too.
i was taught by MECP certified installers, if that makes any difference.

"do what you gotta do" was the other slogan..

brooks

*edit* i also remember them saying that you have to try to get the power wire thru the firewall on the same side as the battery..
if you cant, or cant drill a hole, then cross over to the other side of the bay.*/edit*

 

No drilling required. No wiring outside of the truck. The shortest possible run. Check it out...

You can do a run from the battery, down inside the fender(upper access area in the left/rear corner near the cowl). It's above the area where we spend so much time pulling the bolt out of the computer...

If you open the pass. door all the way, you will see a small space between the fender and body. Run the wires through it and bring it back inside through the accordian looking sleeve that holds the existing wiring for the pass. door. It comes in right near where the computer is, behind the kick panel.

I've got all my wiring for the amp, strobes and neons running through there and you can't see a bit of it.

Easiest way to do this:
Run a stiff/small feeder wire with a loop on the end first. Once through, attach your amp. wire and pull it through. The amp. power wire is too big to try this without the feeder wire.

Kinda **** but just my .02


Rich

 

tampa,
where do you have storbes and neons in your truck?

 

Screw a $100 set of RCA's. Make them yourself. Take two lengths of 20ga. wire (different colors) about 20% longer than you need and put the two ends in a drill. Tie the other two ends together and have a friend hold that end while you twist the wire with the drill. Twist them tightly so that the "twist" is very close. Then cut to length and solder a good set of RCA ends onto the wire. Voila! Twisted pair cable.

The tighter the twist the greater the noise rejection, the "cleaner" the signal. I was doing this a few years BEFORE twisted pair became a big hit.

For power wire, use welding cable unless you want to "look good" because that's the only difference, that and the five time mark-up on the show stuff. There's some purity difference between the copper but it will not make one hundreth of a volt difference. Then spend the money you save on a better set of speakers.

 

Mine runs through the driver side and is tapped into the battery side of the engine relay/fuse box.

Of course, I'm probably drawing alot less power then some of these other guys... I think my amps peak at ~1000watts. Havn't had any problems once the caps were installed.

Daniel

 

You should definetly change that to the battery!
Your power line that runs to that box is not ment to handle that extra load!

 

The RCA's used in my L's system are directional, the signal will only travel in one direction, like a diode. This will totally eliminate any transfer of noise in most cases. These little tricks make it much easier to have a clean sound than 5 years ago. I will continue to run the power wires separated as far as practical from the RCA's & speaker leads, but these new style RCA's do help.