Route speaker wire through door harness

Right, I know a couple of people were interested in how you get your uprated speaker wire through the existing door harness. (especially useful if your amping up new door speakers!)

Step 1:



Open door, and use fingers to pull locking tab upwards. The connector can then be removed from the plug in the 'car' side.

Step 2:



Looking at the end of the plug you have just removed, you can see a nice empty area, clear of metal connectors (my vehicle has elec folding mirrors, so I think this should be worse case for connectors present?)

This is where we want a nice hole to feed our new wire through.

Step 3:

http://s85.photobucket.com/albums/k65/bluewaver/?action=view&current=3-2.jpg

The plug has a plastic cover that can be removed by squeezing to pins to the rear of the blue circle, and prising the clip with a small flat head where the red circle is.

Step 4:



Once the cover is removed, use a dremel on it to open the two small holes into one larger one.

Step 5:



At the back of the plug, use your fingers to pull away the rubber boot. You can see the back now where the new wire run will go.

Using a dremel with a suitable fitting (I use a thin file like bit, that is abrasive all the way down its shaft) open up those two small holes into one large hole. Go slowly and hold the rest of the wires out of the way from the back. Re-attach cover that you previously dremelled.

Your new speaker wire can now be threaded down into the plug and into the door to your new speaker.

Now to the car side of the door harness plug...

Step 6:



This picture is looking inside the car just under the glovebox. (You have to pull aside a large piece of grey foam first). The red circle shows where the wire channel will be.

To remove this connector, so that you can get to it and dremel the channel, you need a stubby torx driver. Remove the two screws shown in the picture below:



After dremelling the two small holes into one larger one, re-connect connector to car side using the two screws.

The new speaker wire can then be passed through this, into the car. Then push fit connector to plug and slide the locking tab back down.

The speaker wire can then be routed to wherever you have located your amplifier!

Job done! (and now the other side!) :headphone:

Cheers Ben. The good thing about doing it this way, is that when (if) you sell the car, you can connect the factory speakers back up to the original wiring, and take out all your good stuff!

Expect a few more guides shortly, as I'm a fair weather installer and today was sunny!

Unfortunately my amp is too big, and its too nice to get kicked by passengers, so im going to have to put it in the boot somewhere. My aim for the install is to leave the car as practical as possible, so the amp will be mounted in a way that doesnt take up boot space, and the sub is going to be quick release for track & shopping occasions! The tweeters are going in the 'a' pillars instead of the factory dash locations.

I have a lot of work ahead!

I didn't think the a pillars had anything to do with the airbag systems? They are not marked? Maybe wrong though! I just don't like the original locations.