Amp and Sub wiring help

[mart3y]

hey,

i'm new to the whole car audio system thing and i just have a few questions about wiring up my sub and amp.

firstly, i got the sub and amp off a mate, so no cables or anything included.

the amp is a pioneer gm-3200t, so thats a 300W max 2 channel. (1 x 150 W (bridged))

the sub is a pioneer ts-w256C 800W max (350W RMS).

what guage wire should i be using... 4 or 8, i may upgrade sometime down the track.

and will an amp wiring kit have everything i need in it? (i'd say it would, but is there anything extra i may need that i dont know about?)

oh and if it helps, my headunit is a: pioneer DEH-3050UB and my car is a 1996 toyota paseo

any help or tips would be awesome, thanks.

Martin

[DJKOR]

An amplifier wiring kit should have everything you need inside, but I usually steer away from these. I usually like to get everything individually and not in a pack, but that's because I am all DIY with my electrical stuff. So when it comes to wiring up a subwoofer (with the amplifier in the boot), the basics you will need are:

- Approximately 4 to 5 metres of power cable. Doesn't hurt to have spare, so 5 metres should be sufficient. 0.5 metres of this will be used for your amplifier to ground. It's also good to have extra since sometimes you need to run the cable a little different to plan and may need that extra length.

- 1 x 5AG fuse holder and fuse (40A would be good)

- 5 metre length of stereo RCA lead

- Approximately 5 metres of thin gauge wire (normal speaker wire will do), to provide the turn on voltage for the amplifier.

- A few ring and spade/fork terminals for connecting to battery, ground, and amplifier.

- 10 gauge speaker wire (whatever length you need to get from amp to sub)

As for the gauge of wire, 8 gauge will be sufficient for you at the moment and if you were to run a maximum of 5 metres of it, you will be able to power up to 700W RMS and that is on the safe side. If you only used 4 metres of it (which is more realistic in your case), it could easily take 900W.

[mart3y]

An amplifier wiring kit should have everything you need inside, but I usually steer away from these. I usually like to get everything individually and not in a pack, but that's because I am all DIY with my electrical stuff. So when it comes to wiring up a subwoofer (with the amplifier in the boot), the basics you will need are:

- Approximately 4 to 5 metres of power cable. Doesn't hurt to have spare, so 5 metres should be sufficient. 0.5 metres of this will be used for your amplifier to ground.

- 1 x 5AG fuse holder and fuse

- 5 metre length of stereo RCA lead

- Approximately 5 metres of thin gauge wire (normal speaker wire will do), to provide the turn on voltage for the amplifier.

- A few ring and spade/fork terminals for connecting to battery, ground, and amplifier.

- 10 gauge speaker wire (whatever length you need to get from amp to sub)

As for the gauge of wire, 8 gauge will be sufficient for you at the moment and if you were to run a maximum of 5 metres of it, you will be able to power up to 900W RMS and that is on the safe side.

thanks for the help. i'll go have a look for the gear tomorrow.

[Eargunk]

i ran 4awg of hot wire through my whole car, after a while i bought a new amp and decided to go 0awg and was hell annoying ripping out everything again. If you have any plans to do this, i suggest do it straight off and go for a large wire, saves you the time of ripping everything out (i had to take all my neons out too, 2 day job) and make sure you run the hot wire (the one from your battery) and remote wire on the opposite side of your RCA. I ran my hot wire on the left side of my car cause the battery is on the left side, and on the left side of the fire wall (in the front passanger side) there is a rubber stopper that leads straight into the cabin, i poked a hole and stuck it through and ran it all under the side panel/guard of the car under the plastic of the b pillar and up the side of the rear seats and under the rear seat support (the pole that lets your rear seat swing down (this part i forgot to do the first time), and the same with your RCA but on the right side. make sure they dont cross or it creates distortion (large electrical cables create a magnetic field and alters the signal through rca cables)

[mart3y]

i ran 4awg of hot wire through my whole car, after a while i bought a new amp and decided to go 0awg and was hell annoying ripping out everything again. If you have any plans to do this, i suggest do it straight off and go for a large wire, saves you the time of ripping everything out (i had to take all my neons out too, 2 day job) and make sure you run the hot wire (the one from your battery) and remote wire on the opposite side of your RCA. I ran my hot wire on the left side of my car cause the battery is on the left side, and on the left side of the fire wall (in the front passanger side) there is a rubber stopper that leads straight into the cabin, i poked a hole and stuck it through and ran it all under the side panel/guard of the car under the plastic of the b pillar and up the side of the rear seats and under the rear seat support (the pole that lets your rear seat swing down (this part i forgot to do the first time), and the same with your RCA but on the right side. make sure they dont cross or it creates distortion (large electrical cables create a magnetic field and alters the signal through rca cables)

thanks for that, i'm thinking i'll go with the 4awg, i wont be upgrading to a huge amp, but i will be going bigger when i get around to it.

[mart3y]

just another question.

can anyone tell me how long they think it will take, or even just how long it took you to wire yours up?

thanks, just kinda want a rough estimate so i can figure out what day i can do it on.

[Eargunk]

i took about 5 hours doing the whole thing including my head unit (i knew what i was doing), usually 30 minutes to strip the car (removing air filter for better reach, side panels, removing all the rubbish inside, flipping the carpet).

but i suggest taking like a long saturday to make sure everythign is correct (took me 20 minutes to relise that the rca wasnt plugged in... when out and got new speaker cables...) I was working with a friend, one person attached the amp, did teh grounding and the other did the hot wire (positive from the battery) so pretty much 1/2 a day to do it right.

paseos are pretty easy to pull apart and having small cables will help aswell.

[the_random_hero]

I reckon I could do an amp in an hour and a half in a Paseo, not including mounting it unless it was somewhere like underneath the seat. Headunit would take maybe an hour if I had to solder connections, about half that if I used pins. Keep in mind I know exactly how to pull everything in my car apart and I installed stereo's professionally for a while.

If you're doing your first car, take your time and make sure you do everything right. There's nothing more annoying than putting everything back together only to realise something doesn't work. Work out what you're going to do step by step, then follow that to a tee.

[mart3y]

thanks for the help everyone, i've got the day off tomorrow so i'm gonna go buy what i need and get to work.

i'll be back with questions if i run into any problems lol. but i cant see that happening.