Stereo Information (Wiring, Upgrades, etc...)

[bitterXend]

I am about to upgrade my speakers in the front (6.5", 3.5" and tweeters). The kit I ordered comes with a crossover for the mids and tweeters. What I can not find so far is where the wiring for the 3.5" and the tweeters split, so I can put the crossover in between.

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[Cathul]

Routing new wires from the crossover to the tweeters would be the easiest way.

 

[S550_Newbie]

I am about to upgrade my speakers in the front (6.5", 3.5" and tweeters). The kit I ordered comes with a crossover for the mids and tweeters. What I can not find so far is where the wiring for the 3.5" and the tweeters split, so I can put the crossover in between.

Run new tweeter wire, its much easier and your done.

 

[bitterXend]

I am trying to find some pictures or videos of how to rewire, but I'm not able to find anything. How hard is it to run it down the A-pillar and through the door?

 

[Cathul]

You don’t need to run the tweeter wire through the door. That is why it’s easy.

 

[bitterXend]

At which point do you pick up the wire for the 3.5" mid then? Sorry, haven't done that before.

 

[S550_Newbie]

At which point do you pick up the wire for the 3.5" mid then? Sorry, haven't done that before.

Take if from the drivers kick panel amp wiring area, there are wires there that go to every speaker in the car. You can tone each pair and mark which ones go to which speakers. Just cut & cap off the existing tweeter wires and tuck them into the dash.

 

[Cathul]

Tbh... if you replace the whole speakers together with amplifiers, get the idatalink harness for your years Mustang... it gives you all loose end connections to your speakers (midbass and midrange front, center, rears). You still need to rewire your tweeters, but that harness prevents you from cutting the original wires in the car (which i always advice people not to do!).

 

[bitterXend]

Replacing the Amp with a DSR1 and an amp behind it was the plan after replacing the speakers, incase I want more power.

 

[S550_Newbie]

Replacing the Amp with a DSR1 and an amp behind it was the plan after replacing the speakers, incase I want more power.

You will want more power. Replacing all of the speaker takes some time, to do it right, you will use components up front and the stock amp can barely even be called an amplifier. The factory tweeters are 12 watts.

 

[djcwardog]

Thanks! I’ll wait to do the rears, trunk sub and external amps for my “new” leather seats (adding the heat/cool feature as well) to arrive. All of this is so much easier without an interior in the car!

I spent more time in the car yesterday. After pulling out much of the interior - seats and panels - I installed rear speakers and ran cables (power, remote turn-on and RCA preamp) from front to rear for the amps. I got a used pair of rear speakers from a 401a car -these have plastic woofer cones and a small tweeter overlaid in a coaxial manner - factory coax’s. Far superior to the paper cone with wizzer cone “tweeter” that was there from the factory.

I also figured out how to route the 4 gauge power cable from the power block under the hood.
1) From inside the car at the front passenger footwell, look high on firewall near the kick panel.
2) Push that rather large and squishy wire bundle and grommet forward, goes maybe an inch.
3) Under the hood, remove your battery and then the three bolts that secure the battery tray.
4) After lifting those out, you’ll see a hard plastic snap-in grommet (square on one end, rounded on the other) about an inch forward from the rear of the metal opening seen when you pull the battery and its box. This hard plastic grommet has a “chute” aimed downward and an opening just right for your power wire to fit through.
5) Push that ovalized grommet down and look under it to the rear. You are looking one inch up and just in front of that squishy rubber grommet you pushed forward at the firewall inside the car.

Next step is critical…

6) Feed your long run of power cable from under the hood, through the plastic grommet, down its “chute”, and towards the opening in the firewall. I fed maybe three inches for this step.
7) Go back in the car to the firewall opening, reach up to find the end of your power cable, then pull it through the opening.
8) With the path now created, feed more cable towards the rear of the car to wherever you are mounting your distribution block and amps.
9) Make a small cut along the side of the squishy grommet, tuck your power cable in, apply rubber cement to seal/repair the cut you made, then pull back wire bundle and grommet to snap the squishy grommet back in place on the firewall.

In my case, my amps are going on a vertical board formed as part of a Zenclosures single 10“ forward-facing sub box. ~$200 plus sourcing a nice JL Audio 10” sub with optional press-in grille should provide me enough bass along with a readymade area to install the amps, etc. - all out of sight unless I fold down the rear seats. Viewed from the trunk all you see is a new vertical wall. You lose the pass-through feature unless you can make all of this removable for when you need all that space.

 

[jkindler]

Looked under the rear speakers for the first time last night. Just got my Mustang 2 wks ago. The speaker connection to the car is just some wires soldered onto a connection stem. Is it a good idea to carefully solder my amp RCA wires onto those stems as well? Saves from cutting into any wires.

That is what I did to add my sub, worked fine.

 

[S550_Newbie]

What spex Molex?

If you ditch the passive crossovers make sure you have enough amps or channels to power all of the speakers. That's the nice thing about the passive crossovers, they take a single channel of output and power 2 or 3 speakers. For example, I am using 4 channels of output instead of 8. Those molex connectors are nice though. Looks great.

 

[S550_Newbie]

I understand. How much to passive crossover degrade sound, if at all?

What is the molex spec 3 pin, 4 pin etc please...

Not sure what he is using, molex connectors are the same thing you find on older PC power supplies, you can pin and de-pin them easily and just solder on your speaker wires to 2 pins (+,-) on the male and female sides and you have a quick disconnect. In my experience, passive crossovers from reputable manufacturers are very nice, well made, and even have the ability to attenuate or increase the tweeter output. What is even better is that they were match made for the manufacturers components with a slope that allows proper blending of frequencies. You could do the same thing with an active crossover with a little more work. As long as you have enough power to drive the component set there is nothing wrong with using the passive crossovers. They don't include them in component speaker sets that cost over a thousand dollars for show.

 

[NGOT8R]

What spex Molex?

2 Pin - 0.093

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