First Post + question???

[Hitson16]

Hey everyone, just wondering if anyone could help me out. First off I rock the P5 which I love, and am happy to find a message board with people willing to share some knowledge about it. Moving on, I had my system hooked up a ciruit city a while back and was thinking about changing up some of the stuff myself now. I want to rewire my amps and cap with new wire and change their location in the hatch. Right now the amps are on the back of the seat, but I want to build a amp rack down one of the sides so I can fold the seats down and us some of the space for cargo. I've look at the car a little today and it doesn't seem that hard since Circuit already did the work once, I should be able to follow what they did but with longer better wires. My questions are

Is it hard to get the P5's front doors off?

How do you hook up a cap? Will it uncharge if I unhook i and hook it back up?

Can you use a cap and a distribution block at the same time. If so how do you wire them.

Sholud I ditch the cap, for a distribution block?

How do you get wires from the back seat into the hatch, do I have to remove the back seat?

Should the power wire be down the center of the car to aviod the speaker wire?

What size fuse do I need, I have a jl 300/2 on my front comps and and a older kenwood performance standad 300t for 2 10's. I dont know the watts on the kenwood but It's maybe 300???

I know that is a lot of questions and a long first post but if anyone could answer any of the questions it would be great.

Peace
~Jay

 

[1sty]

Its not that hard to get the door off at all:
There are 4 fasteners on the door panel
that need to be removed:
1. The large screw under the door handle, not the door open handle but the
big one you grab to shut the door. Once that screw is out you can simply use
your fingers to pull off that handle. It has seems you can easily feel when
you get your hands around it. Part of it stay so don't try to yank the hole
thing off.
2.There is a push clip in the door jam. Just use a finger nail or pick to
pull out the center then the pin can come out.
3. There is a screw up by the rear view mirror under a cap. The cap snaps
off. You can use a small screw driver but be careful not to slip and scratch
the door.
4. Another screw is hidden by the door handle you use to open the door from
the inside. Remove the screw then that plastic peice will be able to slid
and be removed.

Once these are out of the way, you can pull on the bottom corners of the
door panel to release all the pop clips. start on the bottom and work up.
Don't pull on the top as it does nt pop off but slides off over a lip and
the door lock.

A cap just needs power and ground and if the terminals short or the power terminal touches any ground on the car while charged you will see a rather large lighting bolt in your car so be carefull or discharge the cap first. Caps will charge the instant they are reconnected and again you will see a nice sized ZAP!

You can use a cap as a distro block and many people do. Distrobution blocks are just to help maintain wire neatness and are not neccisary.

The back seat pulls out very easy. Just lift up on them from the front and they pop right out. There is a small rounded piece of metal on the back to keep them in so make sure to work around it. Taking out the seats is not needed as wire can be tucked under the seats but just removing them can be easier.
The seat backs do not need to be removed.

Keep power wire on the drivers side of the car and RCAs on the right.

A 60 amp fuse will be fine.

Welcome to the board.

Enjoy!

 

[Hitson16]

Hey thanks for all the advice. Just a few more questions, I see that circuit ran two seperate power wires off of the battery, is it better to run one and split it or run two. Also are power wire and ground wire the same wire only different colors? ? What do I need to get a alpine hu out? How would I discharge a cap and can I recharge?

 

[1sty]

No difference between 1 wire or 2 from the battery as long as neither are trying to run more current then they can hadle.

Power and ground wires are the same minus color.
It what they get connected to that makes one power or ground.

Fro an alpine you need to Take off the trim ring of the radio then use a pick tool or something close to that to lift the little side posts that hold in the cd player. It should describe it in your manual.

Caps come with a resistor that you put in line with the power wire to slowly charge and discharge. However with out a resistor you can just disconnect the power wire at the battery and tap it to body metal, It will leave a mark though and make a big spark. Or unplugg the power wire at the battey then turn on the system and the amp should come on and drain the cap for you.

To recharge the cap just hook it back up. It will spark when you hook it back up but it won't hurt anything.

 

[Hitson16]

are resistors standard, could I get on and use it on my cap?

 

[1sty]

Yes you can, thaey are basicly all the same impedance.
Call the manufacturer that made your cap and find out what impedance resistor they put with the cap. Then you can just get the same or close to it from radio Shack.

If i can find one of mine I will let you know the impedance.

 

[Hitson16]

hey thanks for all the answers, how much wire should I get, I want to make sure I have enough and I am ordering it online.
Here is what I was thinking:

20 ft. power 1 gauge power
8 ft. ground
8 ft 4 gauge power
6 meter rca (which i think = 20 ft.)
40 feet remote ground

how much speaker wire will I need to run a pair of comps up front?
I am running 2 amps and am going to add a distribution block and then the cap after the block on the sub amp, is that ok?

 

[Hitson16]

also the distribution block I want has a choice of fuses on both outputs, should I just get the biggest 300 or could a fuse be too big

 

[1sty]

Ok, first why are you running 1/0 guage cable?
Thats major overkill for your amps. Its a decent idea if you are going to add another 300/2 and a JL 500/1 in the future but otherwise not needed.

You should not use a bigger fuse then the amps need. A 80 up front is more then enough and a 50 on each amp is fine.
What distrobution block are you buying that will hold a 300 amp fuse.

You will need a few sets of RCAs and don't forget ring terminals for grounding the amps. Also you will need a fuse holder within 18" from the battery on the 1/0 power wire.

I figure a 20 ft run for each speaker your using so go off of that to estimate the wires. Where are the components crossovers going?

Yes you can wire the distroblock and cap the way you described.

Did you want another distro to recombine the grounds back to a 1/0 wire or did you want to ground the amps at the same spot with smaller wires?

 

[Hitson16]

I want to add a jl 500/1 in place of the kenwood and that would be it in terms of amplifiers. Should I use a smaller power? Also does the gauge of the ground from the amplifier match the gauge of the power it gets?

I was going to mount the crossovers under one amplifier, and then run those knuknocepts speker wires that have 4 speaker wires in one wire, to run to the comps.

The block I was looking at was at knuconcepts also, but I was looking at the jl manual and it saysl I shouldn't need fuses before the amps so I probably get one without fuses. They also have rca cables with 2 sets of ins and out, so I'll only need one set of those.

 

[1sty]

I want to add a jl 500/1 in place of the kenwood and that would be it in terms of amplifiers. Should I use a smaller power? Also does the gauge of the ground from the amplifier match the gauge of the power it gets?

You definitly need no more then 2 guage and 4 guage would be enough. To be safe run 2 guage if you like. After all you are talking to guy that has 1/0 and only has a 300/4 right now

I was going to mount the crossovers under one amplifier, and then run those knuknocepts speker wires that have 4 speaker wires in one wire, to run to the comps.

Sounds good, are you doing kickpanels, connecting the wires at the radio or running the wires into the doors?

The block I was looking at was at knuconcepts also, but I was looking at the jl manual and it saysl I shouldn't need fuses before the amps so I probably get one without fuses. They also have rca cables with 2 sets of ins and out, so I'll only need one set of those.

Aviod the 2 in 1 RCAs unless thay are for a 4 channel amp. Typicaly they do not give you enough slack to connect them between different amps.
You just need a fuse under the hood within 18" of the battery. Thats it. Anything more is just jewelry.

 

[Hitson16]

Sounds good, are you doing kickpanels, connecting the wires at the radio or running the wires into the doors?


Not doing kickpanels, but I'm not sure I understand the rest of the question.

My HU is power my rear speakers and I am going to leave that as it. On the speaker wire from the fronts that will go through the black wire tube and then down the side I assume, correct?

 

[1sty]

How did you plan to hook up the 300/2 to the front door speakers?

 

[Hitson16]

Don't I only have one option?
running the speakerwire form the jl in the back down each side up into the door and to the speaker.
How do I get the speaker wire into the door?

 

[1sty]

By drilling out the molex connectors unused pins. Then running the wires through them. Its not easy and will take some time.

 

[Hitson16]

should that already be done since I have comps installed by circuit city. They are a s*itty infinty reference, I want to change them with kicker resolution 61/2 comps, do those fit in a p5 door.

 

[1sty]

The kickers will probably fit as long as they aren't more then 2.75" deep and even then you can space them up to a 1/2". Unless you paid atleast $150 for the install there is no way they ran new wires into the doors. It takes about 4 hours to do correctly. I ran 14 guage monster cable speaker wires into mine. I have several very long write ups on it. Do a search and you should find alot of info on how to do it.

 

[Hitson16]

wouldnt theyhave to run new wire to hook up the comps, or could they have gotten around it somehow. They also had the car over night sat and all day on sun. So they worked on it for a while, and charged me alot of money, that why I want to do this myself

 

[1sty]

Typicaly when connectinig components you grab the factory wires already in the door and run an extension to the crossovers which will be mounted in the door. Then from the crossover the wire to the tweeter and mid.

When connecting and amp they will run speaker wires from the amp back to the radio and connect them into the factory wires there. Unless you specificly say or agree for them to run new wires into a door they wil not.

 

[Hitson16]

oh I see, that kinda sucks, so then I would have to run new wire to mout the crossovers anywhere but the door. Not sure what Im going to do about that yet. I was looking at the p5 door, I saw the one molex thing you were talking about. That does seem like a real pain to drill. Is it "technically" hard or just a time consuming project. How is the quality of the factory speaker wire, and is it bad for crossovers to be in the door? Maybe I'll put them inside the door panels on the inside and drill a hole to snake the wires into the door.