How to get speaker wire into the doors?

[naiku]

Does anyone have any tips on getting 2 runs of 14 gauge speaker wire into the front doors on a B7 A4? I do not want to use the factory wiring as planning to run an active system. I have searched here, VWVortex, Audiworld, Google etc. I am sure many people have done this, but it is hard to find any information.

The closest I could find was someone saying to Dremel a hole in the door by the harness to get the wires through. I would prefer not to do that, and am sure there must be a way to move the connector out of the way in order to install new wiring. I also found something on vortex of some guy drilling out the molex connector, but the pictures were not working.

Thanks.

[8520]

Do you even have molex plugs? My A6 does not and I was able to run speaker wire directly through the door "harness sleeve".

[naiku]

From what I can tell from this thread http://www.audizine.com/forum/showth...peaker+install and others I have found, I would assume yes.

[earthtodan]

Did you find a solution yet? I found there's a narrow space on one side of the Molex plug, just enough to stuff some 16 gauge wire through. But then you have to put a shim in there to protect it from the chassis.

[naiku]

Nothing yet, I am hoping to find a solution before this weekend as I want to install the speakers then, and would prefer to have an idea of what I am doing before freezing my ass off in the garage trying to figure it out.

[earthtodan]

Here's what mine looks like on the driver's side.



The gap is only on one side of the wiring harness, and the harnesses on the driver and passenger sides are identical, so on one side it will be toward the front of the car and on the other side it will be toward the back of the car. Similarly, the way you release the harness is turned. On one side you pull the purple tab forward, on the other side you pull it back.

First, push the wire into the car from the door jamb, then draw as much wire as you'll need into the car. The wire spool should be outside the car. Cut to length. Then push the other end through the rubber boot into the door.

The wire exit into the door is sealed by a rubber membrane. You'll have to reach through the speaker hole with some kind of sharp tool, like a small screwdriver, and poke through the membrane. Then take a rigid wire and poke it up through the door into the door jamb, attach it to your speaker wire and pull it into the door.

[naiku]

Thanks.

[koolade9]

Glad I could help

[earthtodan]

Glad I could help

LOL, that's right, koolade helped me with mine!

<- koolade9

Now if only we could have a local sound comparo with hooked-up Audis... oh well.

[naiku]

LOL, that's right, koolade helped me with mine!

<- koolade9

Now if only we could have a local sound comparo with hooked-up Audis... oh well.

Would be nice to meet up and compare systems, bit of a drive from VA to CA though!! Haha. I wish it was Saturday already, my crossovers arrived yesterday, so I have everything I need to install the speakers. For now the sub / amp etc are in temporary homes, but at least I can ditch the Bose.

[koolade9]

LMK when you pull the bose amp and if you plan on selling it (assuming it's the cast silver shroud and not the square black one). I need one to hack for a 5.1 project

[naiku]

LMK when you pull the bose amp and if you plan on selling it (assuming it's the cast silver shroud and not the square black one). I need one to hack for a 5.1 project

I should hopefully be pulling it this weekend, it is the cast silver shroud one with rounded corners. I am definitely going to try and sell it, has been hoping to sell it with the sub, but shoot me over an offer for the amp. I have FS ads up on here, Audiworld, and VWVortex :)

[earthtodan]

Would be nice to meet up and compare systems, bit of a drive from VA to CA though!! Haha. I wish it was Saturday already, my crossovers arrived yesterday, so I have everything I need to install the speakers. For now the sub / amp etc are in temporary homes, but at least I can ditch the Bose.

Take a week off to do your install, that's what I did.






...or two.

[naiku]

Take a week off to do your install, that's what I did.

Thankfully most of what I need is already installed, all that is left is to remove the Bose sub/amp and install new speakers, wiring and crossovers. The sub and amp I am using are already in the car, but not in their permanent positions. My main concern is going to be removing the trim in order to run the new speaker wires, but I think it should be easy enough, just probably a pain in the ass, much like everything else I have done on this car!

When I have some more time I plan to build a new (better) box and mount the amp, processor, crossovers etc in final places. For now I will simply be happy to have the equipment out of the closet and into the car.

[earthtodan]

My main concern is going to be removing the trim in order to run the new speaker wires, but I think it should be easy enough, just probably a pain in the ass, much like everything else I have done on this car!

This is bound to be harder than you think, there's just no room if you don't want to pull up the seats and the molded carpet. Speaker wire will fit but I ended up running my RCAs up the A pillar and above the passenger side windows.

[8520]

This is bound to be harder than you think, there's just no room if you don't want to pull up the seats and the molded carpet. Speaker wire will fit but I ended up running my RCAs up the A pillar and above the passenger side windows.

Fyi, you're doing it wrong.

[earthtodan]

Fyi, you're doing it wrong.

How do you do it?

[naiku]

Mental Note: Next time someone tells you to take a week off to work on something you think should be easy enough, heed their advice.

So, here is my story of how I wasted an entire weekend and now have a non functioning stereo! Started off easy enough, figured Saturday I would run the passenger speaker wire, install speakers on passenger door, repeat drivers side on Sunday. The door card came off easier than expected, and I took out the Bose woofer. Whilst trying to figure out how to remove the woofer from the plastic housing, I put a hole through the cone, so ended up ripping it to pieces before managing to get it off the plastic piece.

Secondly, the tweeters I am using have a large plastic surround that I needed to dremel off. Start cutting, my dremel dies. I eventually get the surrounds cut, break some off the pieces off the stock tweeter housing and my tweeters now fit. Good. Next to get speaker wire into the doors, I pull off the kick panel plastic and see the hole by the harness. Feed 2 lengths of wire through, and then f*ck it, because the wire I am using is so thick, the harness will not plug back in. So, I end up having to mount the crossover in the door, something I did not want to do. So, I pull one length of wire out of the door. The new mid goes in easy enough.

Time to put the door card back on, line everything up, push and WTF, discover my new tweeters (which by the way I just hacked up the surrounds on) are too deep and push the stock grill out of the door card. Not much I can do at this point, so I leave it on, with the stock grill sticking out by about half an inch. Getting annoyed now.

Pull off B pillar trim, and break something behind the lower trim, not sure what it was, but the trim at least clipped back on fine. Get first length of speaker wire to the trunk. Remove Bose sub and amp and call it a day. It literally was all frigging day.

Sunday, figure I will start on the drivers side. Thinking to myself, it should take less time as I know where to find hole for speaker wire, know only to run one set of speaker wire etc. So, everything comes apart easy enough, now I know how to separate the Bose mid I get it off easily enough. Already expecting the tweeter not to fit, but figure at least I will have music while I figure out what to do. Get speaker wire in, get door card back on, get speaker wire to the trunk.

Connect speaker wire to amp, connect RCA's to amp, connect power and other leads to PXE-H650.

Turn on stereo, and.......


Nothing, well, not quite nothing. If I crank the volume on the head unit I at least hear some music, but is is incredibly quiet. Go to trunk, PXE-H650 is not powering on, check wires, weird. Figure I will connect the H650's remote turn on to the same as the amplifiers. Check again, still no power to H650. Damn it. By now I am too tired to deal with it, I am hoping it is simply that the power that I spliced into at the Bose harness (should be + to battery) is simply not good, as I used these plastic connectors that I hate using.

So, this morning I have no stereo. And 2 hours of commuting. Crap.

I think the problem was that I tried to rush this, now instead plan to remove everything except the amp and mids/tweets so that I at least have some music until I have more time. Then I plan to remove the speaker wire I put in (it is about half an inch wide, by a little under quarter thick, was simply some I already had that I used in the house) and find some thinner wire, especially as I am sure most of the width of this wire is insulation. Will then remove the crossovers from the doors, and put those in the trunk. Figure out what to do with tweeters, which is probably going to be not use them and buy new ones (a HUGE pain as I am broke). Then re-wire the H650 back into the loop and start again.

Oh, and to top if off. This morning I discover that I forgot to hook the wire back to the interior door handle. So I look like a moron having to put my window down, reach outside and open the door. I am hoping it is simply the wire and nothing more.

[earthtodan]

You're saying you're tapping into the Bose amp's power wire to run your aftermarket amp? Check the specs on the amp, but unless it's super tiny you need to run a bigger wire straight from the battery.

What gauge of wire are you using for your speakers? Normal 16g speaker wire is about half the size you described.

What kind of tweeters are you using? If they have a large flange, that is likely for SQ and is meant to be surface mounted instead of behind a grill. Search for articles on diffraction. http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b7...uprabaffle.jpg

[naiku]

You're saying you're tapping into the Bose amp's power wire to run your aftermarket amp? Check the specs on the amp, but unless it's super tiny you need to run a bigger wire straight from the battery.

Sorry, amp is wired directly to the battery. I tapped into the Bose amp's power to power on the H650.

What gauge of wire are you using for your speakers? Normal 16g speaker wire is about half the size you described.

I want to say it is 16g, it was some I had left over that I figured I would use. My guess on the speaker wire size is probably a little off, but it is pretty wide speaker wire.

What kind of tweeters are you using? If they have a large flange, that is likely for SQ and is meant to be surface mounted instead of behind a grill. Search for articles on diffraction. http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b7...uprabaffle.jpg

I can't find the model number, but they are some Vifa's that did have a larger flange on them.

[earthtodan]

Yeah, the tweeter situation we have from the factory kinda sucks. I don't have any good ideas for how to deal with it except to use small tweeters and cross them over high. And if possible, remove the grill from the new tweeters so you don't have two grills blocking the sound.

[naiku]

Right now I am looking at what they have on Partsexpress, problem is I need to sell something now in order to fund new tweeters. Do you know how much mounting depth we have available in the stock locations?

[koolade9]

Fyi, you're doing it wrong.

This.

Pull your seats & carpet...there is a plethora of open channels underneath to run wiring. I ran RCAs & speaker wire down the center of the car (to avoid EMI sources) then split off each direction to the doors. The rest of the (non-audio signal) wiring runs through factory channels. This is actually a really easy car to run wiring...

[earthtodan]

Well, I was running out of vacation , and I had to get it back together in time to bring the car in for some warranty work looking like I hadn't screwed with it. So I decided to leave the seats and carpet alone. Anyway, this version of my install is mostly done, and I posted a separate build thread.