I'm wiring up a 4ch amp and an Audio Control Epicenter and I have some questions...

Can I run my RCA's, Speaker wires, and remote turn on leads in one bundle? Or will there be interference?

What size speaker wire should I use for 3.5"s in the dash and 4-way 6x9's in the rear?

How picky should I be about the quality of speaker wire for the 3.5's and 6x9's?

Will running the wiring for my cd changer near the 4ga power wire give me interference?

Also, would I gain anything from running new wire to the speakers, or can I just run the speaker wires from my amp to the factory harness?

Basically I'm adding a **** ton of wiring and I don't want to pick up any interference since it'll be a major pita to move the wiring once its all laid into the car.

 

I run my rca's and remote turn on wire down the passenger side and my power wire down the drivers side with my ground on the drivers side and i have no interference what so ever. At my amp i have the power wiring and the remote cable tied together and then have my rca's and speaker wiring from the subs bundled together.

AS for the speaker wire i've always just used the 16 guage basic speaker wire. WE ran some 8 awg wiring to the subs on my buddies system but i see no difference.

For the wiring to the stock harness, the only time i had to rewire everythign for a stereo was in my firebird becasue the guy who had it before me wasnt exactly mechanically inclined and tore all teh wiring apart.

 

I have all of my wires on the passenger side and have no noise at all. Just make sure you have good grounds everywhere.

 

If you run them down oppisite sides, their should not be a problem.

I have my power running down the drivers side, and rca's down the passeneger side. Like was already said, just make sure you have good grounds.

It will all work out, if it dosen't the first time, just keep trying, and asking questions.

 

first you have 4x6 in the front and 6x9 in the raer.. unless you upgraded them..

be very picky on speaker quality.. most quality diff can be heard on the speakers, get components for the best quality. i'd suggest getting kick panels in the front and put 5.25 inch components with a separate tweeter in it. put no rear speakers. and get some good quality sub(s) and amp(s)

dont run power wires near signal wires.. any1 who knows electronics knows this, if you must cross the do it @ 90degree angles.

dont bundle wires up. make a plate that will hide your winring nicely with it routed in proper ways..

 

Thanks for the replies, that is basically what I figured, I just want to be sure since this is about the 10th time I've had the interior out of this car and hopefully this is the last time it's coming apart. So I want it to be right the first time.

For reference the system previously/now consisted of the factory cassette with EQ, a line out converter, a Punch 45.2 amp running bridged into a 2ohm load. The subs are Kicker Solobaric S8's. In the dash I'm running Alpine 3.5's and the back are 1996's top of the line Pioneer 4-way 6x9's... The CD duties fall back to a Pioneer FM modulated CD changer. Power comes thru thanks to Stinger 4ga, and the ground is RF 4ga. Power distribution block is another RF piece, the ground block is Phoenix Gold.

I'm adding a 4ch RF amp, an older Audio Control Epicenter, and an in dash Pioneer Premier CD player. The wiring is all getting routed/bundled with the factory harnesses from front to rear, so its not something I want to mess with on a regular basis. I'll post some pics of everything when the car's all back together. I'm happy with the appearance, it all looks stock except for the amp rack and subs in the trunk area, but they're covered by the security curtain.

The only reason for putting the Pioneer CD deck in is to provide a better RCA output signal.

 

"dont run power wires near signal wires.. any1 who knows electronics knows this, if you must cross the do it @ 90degree angles. "

I know electronics and I've worked on gear that had so many different types of wire bundled together. Anyone who's seen military electronics know's what I'm talking about.

It is unlikley you will get EMI from the 12v wiring unless you have some really bad connections or poor shielding. I wouldn't purposely put them all together if you didn't need to, but it's not the end of the world if they are.

you can splice into the existing wiring as most shops do, personally I prefer new wire to the speakers, soldered onto the terminals....but if the factory wiring does the trick, why bother?

 

good points but unless you get some decent wiring you gunna get interfernce.. besides miltary stuff isnt for SQ its for reliablity... if your running tons of power thru a wire and its near a signal wire you will get interference... 500watts of power or more and id separate your wiring bundles to signals on one side and power on the other..

 

if you got more than 200w to each sub i would use 10 gauge inside the box and coming off the amp. i used to have a setup with just 16 gauge and it sounded nice but when i swapped to the 10 it just pounded deeper. the bass was deeper and more defined. it does make a difference.

 

if the wiring is of poor qaulity you will get interference with just 50 watt amps.

in car audio its common knowledge to run the rca down the oppisite side than you run your power wire. it amazes me how many people try to rattle of falsehoods as facts. its science. how do you disprove science?

 

The only thing I've ever had that put noise in any car I have worked on have been poor grounds. I have over 1500 watts running in my setup along with all wires running down the same side, and I have done this in several vehicleswhich the install had to have them run together. The one time I had noise in the setup we upgraded the big 3 and it disapeared. in my experience in the 12 volt world good grounding is the key to eleminating noise not $100 wire or placeing wire as far apart as possible.

 

at an audio control seminar , they pounded in our heads that proper grounds were vital to keep noise out . it amazes me how someone will shell out the cash for 2or 4 gauge power wiring for the positive lead , yet leave that crap 12gauge body ground from the battery to the body. you might say "wait, what about that ground going to engine?" nope, not good enough. you have a engine /transmission sitting on rubber mounts and rubber does not conduct electricity worth a flip. a good rule of thumb is to take an ohmeter , and measure where you have grounded your amplifier on the body to the negative battery terminal. if the resistance is over 1 ohm (and this is marginal at best) it's not a good ground. also ,sand down the paint , use a non-painted screw and a star washer to bite into the ring terminal (you did use a ring terminal ,didn't you? wrapping a bare wire around a screw ain't gonna cut it ).one last point : the ecms on the passenger side of third gens are crude by today's standards and they do emit rf interference(that's fancy talk for engine noise or alternator whine ) avoid runnig rca's close to them if you can . those super cheapo radio shack rca's are junk too ,so don't scrimp on quality rca's.'nuff said

 

"good points but unless you get some decent wiring you gunna get interfernce.. besides miltary stuff isnt for SQ its for reliablity... if your running tons of power thru a wire and its near a signal wire you will get interference... 500watts of power or more and id separate your wiring bundles to signals on one side and power on the other.."

yes, this stuff can happen but it's not written in stone. Sometimes electronics have strange problems, but these days things operate rock solid provided quality installation.

Also, military equipment is above and beyond SQ.......there are some junk pieces still bieng used, but other devices are light years beyond most car audio equipment. Grounding and good shielding/filtering is critical. I've seen systems with 120vac/60Hz,12v,5v,25v,tty,voice,Rf coaxial ect.. all coming through the same multipin connector.....good stuff!



DC power and signal level voltages are right next to eachother in a printed circuit......and what about microprocessors? what a mess!

I've seen so many systems with 4g wire parallel with RCAs, and I honestly believe it's not garaunteed to cause problems. If it can avoided, sure, but I wouldn't over obsess about it.

 

i went out and bought some really good stinger wire i have stinger 10 guage power due to i have a low watt amp with high rms also i ran some stinger helix rca cable in which i have no prob with interference at all and they are side by side all the way down the passenger side.

 

Hmm i have some 8 guage speaker wire laying around here but thought it would be too big to do the parellel setup i did, so i just used 16 guage. So in the box bigger is better also?

 

as a rule of thumb bigger is better.. in case you wanna upgrade and not redo everything..


resistance in parallel is the follow formula: 1/Rtotal = 1/R1 + 1/R2......... so if you got two 50ohm loads in parallel its like 1/50 + 1/50 = 2/50 or 25 ohms of resistance. i know that 2/50 isnt 25 but you flip the end number to get the real resistance so 1/25 = 25 ohms

in series its easier Rtotal = R1 + R2.... so two 50ohm loads is 50 plus 50 = 100 ohms total..

you should think of electricity like water more resistance less out put. in like terms more pressure thru the same resistance more out put ie: it takes 1volt to push 1amp thru 1ohm of resistance.. i think but i may have volts and amperes switched.. just dont let you wiring be the weak link