Amp wire thru my firewall, but where?
 

I am going to be upgrading the Mound's sound system in the next week or so. I want to run an 8 or 4 ga. wire from the batter to the amp. Does anyone know of a convenient pre-existing hole in the ol' flamewall that I can use for this task? Surely this has been done before by ya'll.

Second thing. Where is a good place to put an amplifier? I was hoping to stick it beneath the storage bins, home of the original amps. Plenty of space (next to the rust), but is there enough circulation of air to cool the amps. Nothing too big, maybe a 60X4 or something similar.

Third thing. Can you put 5 1/4's in the original kick panel locations without modifying the kick panels, or should I start hunting for some brown kick panels?

Thanks and Right on.

I am actually just taking some plywood and cutting new kick panels and fitting 2 Cerwin Vega 5 1/4s in there. did all the measurements and found thats all you need. real cheap mod too. :)

I was thinking of trying to put some 6 1/2's in there. I can get a set of 4 of them cheaper than 2 (step dad works at best buy), so I was gonna come up with something. Also, like my -SE, im gonna be putting the rear speakers behind the seats in the "B" pillars (sounds AWESOME), and then im thinking I want to try my hand at custom door panels if I cant work out the kick panel idea...Plus my custom sub box will house two Audiobahn 1000 watt subs (yes, RMS), and the amp (undecided) :D. My car should be slightly loud by the time Im done :).

~T.J.

Ok first the 5 1/4's :) If you dont want to cut your orginal kick panels, go get you some thin plywood or paneling or whatever you got. Trace the old kick panel (remove the factory grill) Trace the hole, now when done tracing, trace the new 5 1/4 hole centering it with the 4 inch one, and it will work, even can use the same carpeting or just go to autozone and get a roll of ozite in the closet color...

The firewall on an Rx-7 is EASY, just go through the main engine harness on the drivers side, cut gently with a razor knife and show the wire through. My 80 had 2 awg ran in there :)

If you feel up to a challenge try a 7 series beemer or a new cougar they are a BITCH to get wires through,....



OH BY THE WAY, when running that thick of a wire, or anywire that is ran directly to a battery's (+) PUT A FUSE ON IT WITHIN 6-12 INCHES of the battery. Dont want the brownmound to be the crispy brownmound

Haha, Mike, that reminds me. I just put a JVC KD-LX300 in my friends Jeep Comanche, and we fired it up when I was done and the thing came on a worked fine until we turned it up a little then it just shut off. The first thing that came to my mind was fuse. Well we checked the one in the back of the unit, it wasnt blown, so I headed out under the hood. I got to looking around and the guy that had the truck before them only had a 2 amp fuse running the old clarion tape deck!?!? I dont know how it was working. So I called JVC about it, and they said that it didnt need an inline fuse (they didnt mention one anywhere in the paper work), but if I was gonna put one in, they recommended a 15 amp. So thats what I did. Everything works fine now, and it bumps real nice with the Kenwood 6.5" in the doors (its a truck). Its actually really impressive. Soon there will be two more 6.5" back in the stock locations kinda behind the seat, and a 10" sub, but thats all later.

~T.J.

Sweet. Thanks for the replies. Firewall sounds easy, as does the replacement kick panel to fit 5 1/4's. Now, I just need to score some brown fur. :D

Right on.

Ok what I dont understand is why run wires for a deck, everyhting is right there for the taking,... All Jeeps are prewired for a radio/speakers.. Just get a Jeep wiring harness match the colors and BAM you are done ...

Well anyways he put a fuse at the battery, maybe I should post pics of a 1999 s-10 I went and looked at the junk yard for a buddy of mine, that thought oh we can put that amp in and we dont need a fuse at the battery :)

This guy was NOT what you would call intelligent. I should snap a pic of the wiring mess he had going on. Im totally with you on the wiring harness idea, I do as many cars as I can like that. He didnt even bother to snip the old factory connector off, he just spliced into every wire for it with those damn vapire connector things :rolleyes:. Then after that mess, it went on to those Radio Shack "noise filter" things, and he had wires splitting off running THREE of them. Seeing as he was running three, there were wires LITTERLY going in loops through this mess (out (+) one end, in (+) another end, back out (+) one end, back in (+) another etc) :(. Then after all of that, on the "new" connector he was wiring in for the Clarion deck, he didnt connect any of the grounds for the speakers, he just used a common ground for all of them :confused:...Anyway, I found both wires for the two door speakers and did it "right" :). Plus my wire cutters came in very handy in removing that mess...

~T.J.

Ah ok , i was wondering :)

Man you should see when I get those messes at work :D I had a friend of mine there talking to me when I was doing a full rewire, ripped everything out. My friend said it was fuuny as hell, he said he watched wire flying outta both sides of the truck for about 5 minutes :D

well i just used the old hole where the choke cable ran through,
if you dont wanna remove your choke cable then just drill a hole next to it,
it will come out just above the pedals
dont forget to protect the wire in some way

Oh I forgot to say when you do the new kick panel approach that I did and use the grills that came with the new speakers.. You have to, or at least I did, turn the hood release handle from horizontal to vertical... Just grab ahold of it and turn it :) Works the same and dont hit the grill or speaker..

Good advise Mike, I dented my speaker grill by not doing that oh well. :D

Just drill a new hole or if you can, feed the wire through the big ol' grommet. :)

yes, the "big ol' grommet" is definatly the way to go. Looks very clean and easy to do as well. :D

follow-up question
 

This may seem like a stupid question, but how do you hook both the amp wire and the positive starter battery cable to the battery, since they both have big ring ends on em and the battery terminal is only so big?

Right on.

I always turned the flat side of the ring terminals back to back and put them on that way.

ive installed 4 decks into my 85, every time wires get smaller and smaller, i have them all labeled so i dont have problems reacuer every time

My car had the wiring for an amp in it. The amp, however was missing, as was the aftermarket head unit. (Stolen from the looks of it.. Nice hack job.)

Anywho... I recall the Amp wire running through the same hole as some pull cable, either the throttle or the choke. It had a rubber, semi accordion looking gromet around it.

It ran behind the kick panel and along with the wires to the rest of the rear electrics.

I got some free RCA Cable back there too :)

Re: follow-up question
 

Dunno if Im following you there? Still got the factory conectors to the battery?

At work or here when doing installs here, I use a #1 ring terminal with a 1/4" hole... dunno if I said it USE A FUSE at the battery!

Re: Re: follow-up question
 

I guess I was under the impression that the amp cable terminates in a connecter similar to the connector found on the starter cable (clamp with a bolt through it). If it is just a 1/4" ring, do you then just run the aforementioned bolt from the starter cable through the 1/4" ring and connect it that away?

Right on.

That's how mine is hooked up the bolt on the main clamp thing goes through the eyelet on the ring at the end of the 4 ga. That makes for a nice neat looking install. Peace :)

Easy. Thanks.

Right on.