to begin run down to wally world and buy the much needed adaptors for the sterio, 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.

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 wirewall 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 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 reccomend 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 other side, 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.

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

then you can 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. you can find this out by turning your amp meter to ohms (shown here)



then you can touch the leads of the speakers to test this. 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 devided 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 like 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...

Matt

 

Nice detailed post that would definetly help a newbie. Great job

 

np, i was bored at work...

 

Good instructions. It should help anyone on their first install

 

Good to see you get paid for a job well done.. lol

On edit: Just wanted to point out one thing.. when installing the in-line fuse make sure it's pretty close to the battery, you don't want it back with the amp.

 

What if a newbie has DVC or even QVC speakers?? lol j/k, just giving you a hard time .

 

We should post a huge amp install thread and get a mod to make it a sticky!

 

yes yes i hear u...

or a new section of the forums!! YES YES!

Matt

 

Hmm.. what if we could get sub-directories under Audio/Video? Where it would be like this:

• Audio Video
  • Component & Fullrange Speakers
  • Subwoofers
  • Amplifiers and Equilizers
  • Headunits & In-dash DVD players
  • VGA and non-VGA monitors
  • Wiring

Or maybe wiring would be included under whichever sub-directory it pertained to?

 

We'll I'm glad you're working hard at work!

installing an amp is pretty easy, I watched my buddies do it twice, then after that I could do it easily. The hardest part is taking out the CD player and hooking up the remote wire, but thats easy!

 

Yes, we need some sub-directories

 

pardon the pun eh?

Matt

 

yep i think that fordboy_52's post would make it easy for almost anybody to install an amp now the tricky part figuring out a good place to put it...

Don

 

To put the amp?

Anyways, I'll do a write up sometime for multiple subs and speakers with ohm differences and all that good stuff, then link to this and maybe we can get a sticky. Matt.. what pun??

 

a sub form for subs,,,, yes yes

Matt