I am installing an alpine deck in my FC, i've been told to change the change the speaker wires, i've never rewired anything in the car so I'm not really sure where to begin, do I just cut the wire in certain places and yank it out? and then follow the wire back w/ my new wire? Do I need to yank out the old wires + the amp at all? Also, what gauge wire is recommended for the speakers?

 

First,

you can use a small guage for the speakers, its really not going to matter.

Second, you need to hook up the 12V memory wire to the battery with a small fuse in between the battery and the headunit.

You need to hook up the Acc power (usually red) wire to some sort of switching power that comes on when the car comes on...like the radio fuse in the fuse panel or spliced in with the cig lighter.

and then you can hook up the ground wire (black) to anywhere on the chassis...just need to ground it as you would an amp.

THat should allow you to bypass the factory harness.

hope that helps

 

wait, so the power to the deck is coming through the amp? Thats why I need to change all those wires?

Should I bother removing the stock amp, or is it small enough for me not to bother and the old wires won't get in the way right?

 

Yeah,

Youll want to bypass the original amp wires...and just run from the battery to the yellow wire (if thats memory) and a switching power source to the red wire if thats the ACC.

 

do the wires that power the amp correspond w/ the wires that power the deck? For example, the red wire that you said should attach to a switching power source, is there a "red" wire on the amp the attaches to a switching power source, and the same for the one that is attached to the battery itself, is there a wire hooked to the amp that is attached directly to that battery? If so, y don't I just cut the wires that attach to the amp, and attach my deck's wires to those?

Sorry for all the questions, I want to plan ahead so I know exactly what I need to do, and I don't want to take apart everything only to find that I'm not sure about something or left something out