to begin buy the much needed adaptors for the stereo, the wireing harnesses as well if needed. Then pick up an amp kit, the bigger the better as i always use 2 guage wire for my main lead. you can buy these elsewhere, but please support our generous sponsors
then get to your truck and first things first... pull the neg off you battery for safety, no need in shorting something out. then install the main power lead through the firewall or under the truck on the frame-rail (i suggest inside so it doesnt get torn off but either way will work) and make sure to use an inline fuse (AS CLOSE TO THE BATTERY AS POSSIBLE!!!) and then on the firewall (or hole in the floor) use an existing rubber grommet or install a new one so that nothing will rub on the firewall or floor hole and short out, again, metal on wires is bad bad!
now your wire should be from yourr battery to your amp location. i would recommend pulling the fuse from the amp lead just so when u plug everything in you can put the fuse in last to protect curcuits.
THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART!!!
always run phono's on the opposite side as anything with power running through it (example, the main power lead, cd changer controls, anything!) not doing so can result in interference in the sound. now this being said you can put your phono's (rca's) from the head unit to the amp and at the same time run the amp remote wire to the amp on the same side (the remote usually carries around 5 miliamps), usually under the carpet or the floor liner. connect the remote to the remote ant (usually blue) wire on the head unit.
next install a ground wire on the amp, the shorter the better! also make it a pretty decent size gauge wire. the best place is usually the seat mounts as they are right there. REMEMBER: do not ground more than one device at the same place, as you risk ground modulation, which is bad. I suggest grounding amps and or caps at 2 diff locations about a foot from one another.
then you can connect everything up to the amp and double check everything to make sure its all connected correctly then install the amp lead fuse
STOP! i know when you bought your amp you prolly though, hey my speakers are 350 watts rms or say 500 peak. your amp needs to be a 350 watt amp right? WRONG, most amps are measured at peak performance. to find your rms take the amps peak times 0.707 (350 times 0.707 = 247) so your amps rms is 247. this works in most situations. some companies under rate their amps, so do a little research before hand.
now the fun part. connect the speakers... here is where it is tricky, if you have a multi-meter you can check the speakers to see what range they are running. most speakers run at 4 ohms but some run different. you need to match these to your amp. if your amp is 4 ohm, try to run ur speakers at that. read the underside of your amp as most will tell you what they are at a certain resistance. Most amps will have a higher output at lower resistance, but this might be too much power for your speakers so read and match things as best that you can. you can test your subs turning your amp meter to ohms (shown in attachment)
then you can touch the leads of the speakers. if you are running two speakers on one channel you can wire them up then test the two wires
if you need you can wire them in series to bring the resistance up (speaker one plus speaker 2 = the new total) so say you have an 8 ohm amp and 4 ohm speakers, use series... or 2 ohm speakers and a 4 ohm amp...
next is parallel.... if you need to bring the resistance down... the formula for this is (speaker one times speaker 2) all divided by (speaker one plus speaker 2) giving you a new resistance... here is how to wire this feature up...
now you can use any of these for running 4 speakers on a two channel amp.. but remember when you are running more than one speaker on one channel that you amp may overheat.. so make sure to use pretty good size wire going to your speakers...
i hope this helps, please message me with any questions.
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