Running Speaker Wire through Rubber Snake in Door
 

I'm about to give up! I purchased some Kappa Perfect Components to put in the doors. I also bought an amp to power them. I ran 16-gauge speaker wire from the back, but I can't figure out how I'm going to get the wire through that little rubber "snake" into the door. It is very tight in there, and I'm about to give up on this whole project because of this!

Does anyone have a suggestion on how I can run this wire! :confused: :confused: :confused:

I dunno how tight it is but try gettin a really thin stiff wire and taping the wire to the end of the rod and fishting it throu. Try to make the tap tapper on to the wire. Give it a try. :)

Finally! A lurker like me can make a useful post.

Soap, my friend, soap.

Just a drop of some liquid soap, rub it over that and snake it through. Its an audio installers trade secret.

it is a total PITA because of the lack of room. I worked on it for hours one day and finally gave up. Good luck to ya.

USE COATHANGER!!! bend it straight and tight wire to one ned and feed it from door to cabin.....cake

damn keyboard...he.heh.! put wire on one end

You could always use the factory wires. You just have to tap into them behind the head unit. They should work fine.

Stock wires suck. He's using an aftermarket amplifier so he needs to rewire anyways.

Coathangers are cool but the nubs in the rubber door grommet can catch the hanger itself and puncture... depends on the car of course. But sometimes its not a strait line so even thats hard to feed through. The real answer is indeed soap, as strange as it may sound. Lube it up nice and push it through... it will come out the other end pretty quick.

(Audio is what I do for a living.)

Out of curiosity, have you guys ever wired an FD? I'm not doubting that you guys know what you are talking about and I'm not saying that it can't be done, but I have snaked plenty of stereo wires in my day and this one is not your average ford!! :) it's kind of an 'S' shape, has small, hard plastic plugs at both ends and already has a crap load of wires running through it. I took it to a couple of well known stereo shops in the area and they came back and said that because of how it is set up, it would take quite a bit of time to get everything right ($$$).

My guess is that taking the door off would be the easiest way. I ended up just using the factory wires, but it bothers the hell out of me. :(

How about cutting larger holes in the doorjamb & door, and using larger grommets connected to a larger flexible tube? Someplace has to sell that kind of stuff...

I didn't want to use the (tiny!) factory speaker wires to run my component set and ISUposs is exactly right. At the door jamb the plastic connectors are removable by popping a clip off the inside. This still leaves you with no room to run the new speaker wire "through" the connector. I drilled a hole in the jamb right next to the connectors and added a rubber grommet to the hole. I then pulled my wires through this new hole, plugged the plastic connectors back in and pulled my wires through the rubber "snakes" and into the door panel. I had to make a notch in each rubber snake to allow the wires to pass into it as soon as they exit the door jamb.

It's a much bigger task than it looks. You can pull the jamb end of the rubber back and see what you are up against; it's not a case of merely pulling wires through :) Unless you are willing to remove the doors you'll find there is also no room to drill the holes from the outside or inside :o: I ended up using a right angle drive on a drill in order to drill mine. The left side is just above all the little electronic boxes in the drivers footwell and the right side is just above the ecu. You don't wanna screw up when you are in there ;)

i'll tell you the problem :)

the factory door harness does not simply run the wires through this grommet, if you were to remove the grommet (peel it back a little) you'll notice that the door harness has a female/male plug receptacle on the body of the car...so in essence, you can simply unplug the harness right there if you want to remove the door

does that make sense to everyone?

so you can't run additional wires with the existing wires...you'll hit a big plug that's blocking the path

I haven't taken my fd wires out, but why not tie the new wires to the factory ones and pull the new ones through and remove the factory ones so you have some room !??

Don't work that way. The plastic plug we keep talking about is actually an electrical connector with all the speaker, door lock, power window and mirror wiring in it at the door jamb. You can't pull the wires through it; it's essentially a firewall type connector.

I'm still waiting to hear what's wrong with the stock wiring... :)

Bingo...I struggled with this for a while too...even had the stock wiring cut out and ended up having to reuse the harness because I couldn't run it through the hole. When I re-do my system someday, I'll make new holes for bigger wires, but it wasn't worth the effort for what I was doing. Soap will get you nowhere, in this case.

It's tiny, tiny! I would never run "real" components through that stuff. Especially if you're using a Vifa component set such as me is :)

You guys are working too hard:

Drill two new holes, one in the door, one on the frame side. You'll need to figure out what size you'll need to accomodate some thick grommets.

You want them to be offset about three or four inches vertically so that the wire comes out the frame and then down to the door, this way when the door opens/closes the wire will flex into a loose "S" shape in the space between the door and frame when closed. Insert rubber grommets in both holes and find a spring that fits tightly into the grommets and is also the correct inner diameter to let the stereo wires pass through with a little slack.

If you want it water proof you can always put some shrink tube over the spring, then insert it into the grommets and caulk with a small bead of The Right Stuff where it enters the grommet.

Not only looks decent but keeps the wire flexing in the same loose "S" pattern every time you open and close the door.

Badabing.;)

Here's what I did with my FC:

Take out all the panels 'n stuff you can. Next, YOU NEED TO DETACH THE RUBBER SNAKE FROM EITHER THE DOOR OR THE CAR.

To do this, you cut the tape holding it in on one side. Then you can get the wires through easily. If you leave it attached on both sides it's about a million times harder to get the wires through. Once you're done running wires, tape it back up.

There's no reason to run around drilling extra holes in your car, unless the wires you want to run are just so big they won't fit.

Mr. Overbuild thinks that the stock wiring is sufficient?!?! :eek:

:)

Vifa be da shiz-nit! LOVED my 6.5's in my FC.

Mr. Overbuild knows the stock wiring is sufficient... but be my guest and run all the $1.50/foot lamp cord you want. :)

Im an installer for Best Buy it took me all of 10 minutes to wire up both doors...but I also have a wire snake, it's basically a pipe snake with little hooks on one end to hold wires.

In both Fds' I have owned, I put high end speakers in my doors. To make it easier, because it is a pain in the ass, because of the connectors, I just removed the entire door, then predrilled a hole in the stock connectors where there was no wires, and ran my wire through that. And then re-hung the door. The door comes off with only 4-bolts and there really isnt any adjustment in that part of the door, so it just bolts back in place where it was before.

Yeah, I figured I could do that as a last resort...