Stereo and Speaker install guide

[NixRX7]

ok, seeing as a few people have asked, here is my piece by piece install i did today, nothing complicated, just a new head unit and four new speakers.
Hopefully it will help out anyone who wants to upgrade.

TOOLS NEEDED

Various screwdrivers, flat and poisidrive
Wire cutters
Wire strippers
Crimping tool and various crimps
Large pliers / cutters

ISO connector ( to make life a lot easier )

you will also need the body of a top gymnast for bending into all the wierd positions needed, and the patience of a bloody saint.

PART ONE

Ok first step was to remove the passenger door trim, there are several screws holding it on, some obvious some down right sneaky, in the first picture i have highlighted where they all are, the most awkward one is located behind the electric window switch, right up inside.

Once you have all these out, carfully lift the door trim up from the bottom and lift it clear, its a bit tricky as the door latch tends to catch.

Once that is off remove the factory speaker, two screws are easy to get too, the third is under the plastic speaker cover and is a bit of a pain, once you have managed to get it off, throw it far far away as you will never have to listen to its horrible crackly noise ever again :p

Ok, now in the space where the speaker used to live you will see a back support where the magnet once sat, this needs to be removed (see pic below) i used a pair of side cutters and just snipped it out.

[NixRX7]

PART TWO - XOVER AND SPEAKER

Right, next step is to get your new speakers fitted, i used a pair of Alpine SPS-171A 17cm components for the front, which i got here

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Budget-Car-Audio

17cm is about the biggest you can fit into the standard door enclosure without going over to a custom door pod,if you want to save yourself a few problems then 13cm is the standard size, but for a little extra effort its worth it to have bigger speakers.

If you trial fit them you will see that they are too deep and touch the window if it is down, so what you need is a spacer, this is usually accomplished with a piece of MDF, luckily though the Alpines came with some extra fitting brackets that where exactly the right depth (see pic) the one on the left is the one to use.
Iif you choose another make of speaker just remember the mounting depth cant be more than 65mm, these alpines are 65mm and JUST fit.

It is at this stage that you need to consider what wire you are going to use to run the speakers, you have two choices, use the original mazda speaker wire, which is fine if your only fitting low power speakers, but as mine where 250w i thought some thicker wire would be a good idea.

Now, i spent about an hour trying to figure a way to get the wire from the speaker back into the cabin, and short of removing the door the only real option is to drill a new hole (if anyone has a better way please post it)

You will see in the pic below where i drilled the hole to feed the cable through, then sealed it with silicone (or use a rubber grommit)

if you need to buy some decent speaker cable then here is where i got mine.

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Audiov2005_W0QQssPageNameZviQ3asibQ3astoreviewQQtZ km

Once you have your wire fed from the cabin to the door, connect it to the x-over, one of the wires should be marked with a continous line down it, this will be your negative wire.

You will then need to run another wire from the x-over to your speaker (woofer) remember that the woofer will have a large spade for the positive and a small spade for the negative, so you will need to purchase the correct size of crimps to fit them and none of that bare the wire and wrap it round the terminal rubbish either :p you will also need to connect the tweeter wire to the cross over, remembering to always keep the striped wire to negative.

I drilled a hole through the plastic and fed the wires through that (see pic) to connect the various bits up.

[NixRX7]

PART THREE- THE TWEETER

Once you have the x-over / woofer all wired up and screwed down then its time to fit the tweeter, as the tweeter on mine came with a long length of wire i refitted the door trim and left the tweeter loose, just dangling over the edge of the door trim, i had already decided to fit them to the corner of the door, so i held the base of the tweeter on the trim piece and marked the three holes i would need (two screw holes one for the wire) then drilled them, the tweeter i had came with a adhesive bottom which i then stuck on ( see pic ) then screwed the tweeter on ( see pic ).

HINT - make sure you have the various parts of the tweeter threaded onto the wire before you assemble the door, i forgot :reallymad and had to strip it again to thread on the two other bits.

[NixRX7]

PART THREE CONTINUED

Now you have the passenger side done, repeat the procedure for the drivers side, the only thing you will have to do differently is the placement of the x-over, if you look at the picture of the passenger side, you will see where i mounted the crossover, you cant do this on the driver side, as the window switch block hits it, the only place you can fit it is above the speaker itself, tucked into the door trim, if you look at the door trim after you have removed it you will see the recess i mean, it is a TIGHT fit, but it will go in with a little patience.

[NixRX7]

PART FOUR - REAR SPEAKERS

Start by removing the edge trim (see pic) this just pulls off.
Then remove all the little pop fasteners that hold the rear panel on ( i have bins, if you have rear seats you will have to work it out yourself, sorry)
There is also a screw down near where the seat belt is bolted to the floor.

Once you have all these out you will need to pry the panel off, it WILL BE TIGHT and you may find it may crack or break so be careful, once you manage to get it off pull the seat belt right out to allow you to move it out of the way (see pic)

and then remove the old speaker (mine where bolted AND glued in)

Your next job is to run a new cable along the floor under the carpet, make sure its well away from the wires that run along the sills, i pushed mine right down under the carpet, well away from any other wires.

Mark the end that is going to connect into the headunit, use a piece of tape or something like that.

[NixRX7]

PART FIVE - REAR X-OVER AND SPEAKER


Next job is to fit the x-over (see pic) and connect up your feed wire you just laid, again making sure the striped wire goes to negative.
Run a wire from the x-over to the speaker(woofer) and screw the woofer into place.

The speakers i used here are ALPINE SPS-571A Components and are 5x7 in size, they are a direct fit, no spacer is needed, i got these from the same place as the fronts.

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Budget-Car-Audio

HINT - the speaker brackets are quite weak and when i went to fit the driver side speaker the new speaker was fouling the seat belt winder,this was due to me bending the bracket out of shape slightly when levering out the old speaker, i just bent it back to where it was meant to be and everything fitted.

[NixRX7]

PART SIX - REAR TWEETER

Much the same as for the front, connect it up and then refit the rear trim, then put the tweeter where you like the sound of it, or you could possible leave it out and only have tweeters at the front and use the rears for mid range / bass fill.


PART SIX B

Repeat procedure on the other side :cool

[NixRX7]

PART SEVEN - HEAD UNIT

Once you have all the various woofers / tweeters in place and all the trim is back on you should be now looking at a hole in your dash with quite a few wires hanging out of it (see pic)

My car already had an ISO connector present (SEE PIC), which i used to connect to my head unit, you will need to buy one if you dont already have one.

I used the ISO connector to control everything except the speakers, i cut the wires about an inch back from the plug (SEE PIC)and fitted spade connectors to them.

The are two wires the ISO does not control, one is the dimmer wire, which dims the headunit when you switch your lights on, this wire needs to be spliced into your lighting circuit, i already had some guages fitted that dimmed so i spliced into that, if you dont have this you will need to locate which wire it is under your dash.

The other wire is a HIGH POWER live, my head unit needed a second live wire that was connected directly to the battery, i fed a wire from the battery, through the bulkhead (where my boost gauge tube goes) and connected that to the fused wire on the headunit.
I also fitted another fuse at the battery end, as i didnt fancy having a live wire running around my engine bay that might get melted/shorted (Better safe than sorry)

[NixRX7]

PART SEVEN CONTINUED

Right, now take your new speaker leads and trim the ends and fit crimps to them all.

Next refer to your headunit manual as to which sets of wires power which speakers, you will know which are your rears as you marked them earlier, you did mark them did'nt you ;)

Connect them all up, and use a few cable ties to tidy up all the wires, this will also make it easier to fit them all back into the dash, as theres not a lot of room back there.

Carefully feed all the wires into the dash and slowly push the headunit home, if it sticks at all or does'nt want to go, just pull it out and try again, whatever you do dont force it, have some patience and it will go in eventually.

PART EIGHT

Turn on, Tune in and enjoy your new sounds, then go indoors and put plasters on all your grazed knuckles and cut fingers.


I hope this helps a few people out


Nick

[Gman]

I'll be using this next week, thanks.

[Steve Burnett]

Great write up, I'll be using the screw locations for fitting my new wing mirrors and also my front speakers. Great!

[tr1cky]

Helpful post mate! :)

Well done, sure this will come in handy for lots of people. :yes :yes :yes

Maybe worth making a sticky!?

[craigr]

This is good stuff.

I'm just finishing off my install this week. Will post some additional details & pics on running separate amps, a sub and fitting in larger front speakers into the stock locations.

Craig

[Turbotez]

Excelnt work there mate, very indepth write up, covered all the probs etc, well done

[NixRX7]

Thanks for the comments guys :)

Hopefully it will help a few people out.

Craig, additions on subs/amps etc would be a good idea as that is the next logical step.
Though i doubt it is possible to fit bigger than 17cm speakers in the front without a custom door pod, standard is 13cm, and getting those 17cm Alpines in was awkward, and they JUST fit.

Though a tutorial on custom door pods would be a very good idea


Nick

[Pointman]

Very helpful Nick, cheers.

Glad it`s not just me who is having a hard time getting the headunit to fit in because of the wires. LOL

[the lemster]

one question...

how did you get to the screw behind the window switch... how did you get the switch out in the first place?..

good write up though mate...

stickyfy please ...

[NixRX7]

Use a small flat bladed screwdriver to prise the switch out, then i used a magnetic screwdriver to extract the screw, its a right pain to get to, and without a magnetic screwdriver i would imagine a real pain in the a** to get back in.

Nick

[Tim Oldland]

Mods - Sticky? Ah go on go on go on go on go on go on go on go on......

[probedb]

Excellent article :D I think the car I'm getting has all the speakers replaced but no the wiring.

I don't know whether it's possible but in the Probe I managed to get wires through the wiring block that connects all the door wiring to the car, sorry not seen what it's like in an FD yet but that's how I did it without drilling.

[craigr]

Sorry all, I realise I owe you all some details on amps, sub, etc. Will get onto it over Xmas - the install is all done and working nicely, so I will get some pics and pen some instructions. Watch this space.

Craig

[cannibal]

Looking forward to it as I've just bought a system (head unit + "brain", speakers, amp amd powered sub) and am interested in things like amp location.

[craigr]

A MUCH delayed update to this article.

Here is a brief (noddy) guide to taking it to the next step, and running everything from amps.

If you examine the diagram, I have tried to make it fairly self-explanatory, but there are a few tips that will come in handy.

1) Most people maintain that a decent amp/speaker combination in the front will negate the need to have rear speakers; in fact, rear speakers will only serve to make the sound more 'woolly' and out of phase. I have removed my rear speakers due to high quality Rainbow front component speakers.

2) It is much easier to do this kind of install if your head unit has 2 or 3 discreet line-out jacks. The Kenwood I own has 3 - front, rear and sub which allows me to run separate amps for each channel.

3) Always, always put a correctly rated in-line fuse at the battery-end of the amp power cable, and then if you are running multiple amps, split the cable as near to the amps as possible.

4) Always, always use correctly rated power and earth cable for your amps.

5) It doesn't show it perfectly, but I tried to depict the separation of line-out phono cables, power cables and speaker cables. This will avoid line noise/interference. I ran power down the driver side under the carpet, speaker cables up the middle of the car along the transmission tunnel, and phonos along the passenger side under the carpet.

6) I used a monoblock amp for the sub woofer, but you can also bridge a stereo amp to do the same thing. Alternatively, you can use a multi-channel amp to handle both the front speakers and the sub.

I guess the best thing is to open this up to questions in order to cover the right things, so the floor is yours.... !

Cheers, Craig

[cannibal]

Craig, got any photos of the boot setup? Mine is in having the boot trimmed up this week. I'll post som pics when it's all done.

[craigr]

Yep, attached

Kenwood KDC-W8531 Headunit
Kenwood Music Keg MP3 unit
VIBE Monobox running VIBE Space 12 sub.
VIBE Blackbox III running Rainbow CS265 Profi Vanadium Kick components up front.
VIBE 1.0 Farad powercap.
Custom sealed MDF & fibreglass enclosure using wheel well for capacity.
Custom removable MDF & fibreglass cover with carpeted finish.
Sequential LED Neons.

[Archbish]

Wouldn't you be better off running power down the transmission and speaker along the side? I've taken my RCA leads even further away, over the top of the door, and behind the rear seats...

[craigr]

Good point, but as long as they are routed separately then job's a good'un.

[dj_dee99]

When I fitted my amp & sub, I routed the power leads down one side of the transmission sunnel & the RCAs down the other side of it. The hardes part of it all, in my opinion was getting the main power feed into the car from the engine bay!!!!!

[craigr]

Agreed, power through the bulkhead was a bit of a nightmare, especially with the fat old cable you need (I used 1AWG if I remember rightly).

One thing I forgot to mention was the Powercap. There are two distinct schools of thought on these.

The first school thinks that Powercaps are good things, and are great when you are suffering from power issues such as dimming lights when the volume is cranked (it's a dirty great capacitor that stores energy for use when the amp(s) need it).

The other school thinks that they do more harm than good, and the amount of time it takes for them to recharge is longer than the spike they are trying to smooth. Some research even showed that they remove more energy in the charging cycle than they give back when the power is needed.

I've read so much conflicting stuff about it that I spun myself into confusion. My lights were dimming when the volume was reasonably high, I added the 1.0 farad Powercap and the problem went away. That's all I know....

I'm sure there are some more technical audiophiles on here that can give a more considered opinion.

Cheers, Craig

[probedb]

...and in case anyone wanted to see the driver's side with a speaker/crossover installed:

http://static.flickr.com/51/129370863_880530cad7.jpg

I ended up hacking the speaker bracket to pieces to make some space for the crossover to sit but seems to be good.

If anyone kept the tweeter mountings for the speakers instead of throwing them away can you let me know as i used the same on both sides and the passenger door one can't point at me so not ideal :(

[shaunwil]

You want them both to point to a common point in the middle of the car or the speaker on the opposite side will not sound right.

As for the power and rca cables you want to keep them as far away from each other as possible, you can get interference between the two if you run them side by side.

Some very nice installs, never actually thought about sticking the cross over in the door, mine are behind the seats and the tweeters are reed style ones that are stick to the dash !

I've ended up with 6.5in components all round, made some mdf spacers for the stock positions to get them in and massaged the rear metal work for clearance.

Still need to get my finger out and fit my decent amp in the car (DLS A4 - the big Four) in the spare wheel well !

Really good howto. Always alot of work to get a stereo sorted !

Shaun

[Mave]

Great write up, and gave me the confidence to go off and do mine. A word of warning though; if you've got the full BOSE system, the door speakers are completely different. I hadn't looked at mine before buying the same Alpine system used in this write up, and I had to do a cut a large chunk out of the speaker enclosure to get enough depth to mount the speakers. Its still very tight, and I had to cut away some of the fibreglass backing on the door panels to clear the edges of the speakers. Haven't sorted out the back yet, but sounds great already!

[trotter]

As Nix and craig have already said, most cars (with a relatively small interior), will give better sound when no rear speakers are used. Buy some decent front ones and a good sub and you will be laughing all the way to your first ASBO! :Laugh

I dont have personal experience of ICE-ing a rex (yet:) ) but the general principles are the same for any car:

1) most importantly THINK about what you are doing/are trying to do.
2) as when playing with engines - ALWAYS, ALWAYS get the right tool for the job (example: dont try mucking about with wires with pliers/scissors/etc, get a proper set of crimpers/strippers - you can get them for a fiver these days!)
3) For a major install, remove as much of the interior (carpets, seats, etc) as possible. There is NOTHING more infuriating than trying to run wires under seats when they are still in place. - Trust me, I know this :Nono!

Follow these 3 points as well as those from Nix and craig and you will find ICE installs a piece of cake. and as most people know, there is nothing more satisfying than getting admiration from others for something that YOU did yourself! :wiggle :wiggle :)

[NixRX7]

Even with the standard non bose system you still have to cut a chunk out of the door speaker enclosure as illustrated in one of the pictures to get enough mounting depth.

Im glad you went ahead and did your own install, its much more satisfying doing it yourself.

And if you do run into any problems you will almost always find an answer on the forum somewhere

nick

[Mave]

cheers guys, I quite enjoyed it, spent a few evenings and made sure I did a proper job with crimps, heat shield etc.

Haven't yet put the back speakers in; on fronts alone it lacks a bit of bass, going to try rear speakers driven by head, with crossover to give bass only. If that doesn't work, I may try putting the bass tube back in the boot, but I guess I'll need some 4 ohm speakers for it.

Here's some photos of the front speaker enclosers, modified using a coping saw and then a pair of 6mm screws to hold the adaptor ring on. When I fitted them in the door panels, the sticky-out bits of the adaptor ring had to come off with a pair of pliers. The inside of the enclosure shows the crossover mounted upside down, so any condensation runs away from it.

[trotter]

that install looks ace...well done that man!

[Mave]

Just thought I'd post some feedback as I've just finished putting my rear speakers. On a type X, getting at the speaker positions is exactly the same as in Nix's write up, except you need to undo the rear seat belt top bolt, and wiggle the panel over the rear seat belt bottom pivot. The screw holes for the speaker bracket are already in position, and the map pockets have an inside shell which pulls away easily. The holes are then exactly the right size for the speaker grills, so its all as easy as you might hope. Took my 3 hours in total, including all the wiring, and pulling out my back seats and carpet as I've discovered I've got a leak :( Anyway, pleased with the results, after 18 months I've finally got music in the Rex :)

[Bazza]

My thanks to everyone who has posted something on this one, it helped a great deal. :wiggle :Ladys-man
These alpine sps-171 speakers are fantastic and only £80 delivered, the only thing that shocked me about doing this is that the stock (and very s--t speakers) are made by pioneer, shame on you. Next month the rear ones. :cheers