Aftermarket Amp Wiring

**98BlackMambaWS6** · 06-11-2011, 12:06 PM

Guys I have a 98 Trans Am and I am completely rewiring the audio in the car and replacing everything.

I am going to replace the Monsoon amp in the trunk with a new JL.

I need some help though, does anyone know any factory spots in the firewall where I can bring in the power? I going to running 8AWG power wire.

I'd prefer not to drill cause you never know whats on the other side, and help would be great...

**az gt eater** · 06-11-2011, 12:46 PM

Mine was already wired, and i pulled new through. It goes under the carpet on the pass side, then snakes through the body panels and pops out next to the PCM. Wire hide mod will hide the amp wire too. If you havent done the wire hod mide, seriously consider leaving some extra wire on the engine compartment so that when you do do the wire hide mod, then there will be enough to get to the battery. That's why i had to rerun my wire, the one that was in there didn't reach.

Where are you gonna put the amp? I ask, cause i bolted mine to the underside of the trunk divider. I ended up having to put a 1" by 1" alum angle to brace it up. Works great, you can fold the divider over, and you have all your trunk space, and with it resting closed, you can't see it. Easy to disconnect and remove too.

How about a capacitor? I ruined an alternator before I put one in. Hits harder with it in, too.

**98BlackMambaWS6** · 06-11-2011, 05:17 PM

Originally Posted by az gt eater

Mine was already wired, and i pulled new through. It goes under the carpet on the pass side, then snakes through the body panels and pops out next to the PCM. Wire hide mod will hide the amp wire too. If you havent done the wire hod mide, seriously consider leaving some extra wire on the engine compartment so that when you do do the wire hide mod, then there will be enough to get to the battery. That's why i had to rerun my wire, the one that was in there didn't reach.

Where are you gonna put the amp? I ask, cause i bolted mine to the underside of the trunk divider. I ended up having to put a 1" by 1" alum angle to brace it up. Works great, you can fold the divider over, and you have all your trunk space, and with it resting closed, you can't see it. Easy to disconnect and remove too.

How about a capacitor? I ruined an alternator before I put one in. Hits harder with it in, too.

I'm not familiar with the "wire hide mod"....I'll have to look for that. If I understand what you wrote more or less you snaked the wire through the passenger door fender into the engine compartment. Did the power wire go to the auxiliary power (driver side) or straight to the battery (pas side)? I was looking today and saw no way to get through the firewall without drilling...

I'm going to put the amp where the stock monsoon was, the JL amp I got is nearly the exact same size, so it will go back in the passenger rear wheel well....I'm going with a 400W amp so I wasn't thinking of putting in a capacitor...I'm running all new speakers no subwoofer so I think it will be ok. If anything I think I would rather upgrade the alternator than put in a capacitor as you know there is no room in these cars..

**az gt eater** · 06-11-2011, 05:24 PM

There's room. The only thing that draws down on our cars is an amp. You will prob be all right. If you were doing flat out race car with electric water pump, and bigger fuel pump, etc, you would need a bigger alt. You should be fine. As far as snaking through the fender, i just pulled what was there. You could prob get a wire hanger through there. Check out the wire hide mod. It is a 20$ drill bit and an hour. Looks so much nicer. Too bad you weren't closer. I like doing stereo work.

**Sas** · 06-12-2011, 06:12 AM

See if you can run it in the body panel where the hood and door meet. That's what I did for mine. There should be just enough room to hide it there without having to go through the firewall.

**peterlawl84** · 06-15-2011, 01:33 PM

You can run it thru the hole that the wires for the PCM pass thru the firewall. Just remove the PCM on the passenger side and you will see it there.

**az gt eater** · 06-15-2011, 03:33 PM

Hey op, i think its time for an update. How's it going over there? what have you accomplished? Update, my man!

**98BlackMambaWS6** · 06-15-2011, 05:56 PM

Originally Posted by az gt eater

Hey op, i think its time for an update. How's it going over there? what have you accomplished? Update, my man!

I'm amazed how long this is taking me....to date I have installed the door and tweeters speakers, rear speakers, and hatch speakers and tweeters....I've rewired the entire car. At this point I'm waiting for my Pioneer deck and a double din kit from doubledmods. I will be running the amplifier power, remote wire, and rca's this weekend. I'm going to put my new amp where the stock monsoon was, so I'm sure that will require some work to make it fit. Also, while I have the doors open I'm going to replace the passenger door motor and install the AutoTrix Passenger window fix....Plus I have to fix my antenna it goes up and down when it wants too....

Oh yeah I got to the replace the oxygen sensor on my daily driver, which gets me to work so I can pay for my trans am addiction

slow and steady....

**az gt eater** · 06-16-2011, 07:33 PM

It's gonna sound sweet!

**KMdef9** · 06-17-2011, 05:45 AM

Might be alittle late but; http://www.ls1.com/forums/showthread.php?t=139760

Also, I would seriously consider 4AWG directly to the battery. Good for future additional amps and will cover almost anything you want to run. I wouldn't run multiple amps off of 8 gauge (unless they were 2 100 watters).

**98BlackMambaWS6** · 06-17-2011, 07:16 PM

Originally Posted by KMdef9

Might be alittle late but; http://www.ls1.com/forums/showthread.php?t=139760

Also, I would seriously consider 4AWG directly to the battery. Good for future additional amps and will cover almost anything you want to run. I wouldn't run multiple amps off of 8 gauge (unless they were 2 100 watters).

Thanks for the link, I'm going to try to poke through the firewall this weekend depending on the weather....With respect to the 4 vs 8 AWG I'm having that thought right now....I think I already bought the 4AWG (its at my parents house)....hey what are your thoughts I got a 400W 4 channel (75W RMS per channel) amp for the system. I was going to run the door and sail panels speakers to the amp and then the hatch speakers to the deck (14W RMS)...I don' t think it makes sense to go with a 6 channel amp or second amp to drive the hatch speakers....In reality I shouldn't have replace the hatch speakers, but they're in so what are you gonna do.....I think it will sound fine...I'm afraid if I wire the sail and hatch speakers to the amp, I will ruin the amp...

**KMdef9** · 06-18-2011, 04:33 PM

Originally Posted by 98BlackMambaWS6

Thanks for the link, I'm going to try to poke through the firewall this weekend depending on the weather....With respect to the 4 vs 8 AWG I'm having that thought right now....I think I already bought the 4AWG (its at my parents house)....hey what are your thoughts I got a 400W 4 channel (75W RMS per channel) amp for the system. I was going to run the door and sail panels speakers to the amp and then the hatch speakers to the deck (14W RMS)...I don' t think it makes sense to go with a 6 channel amp or second amp to drive the hatch speakers....In reality I shouldn't have replace the hatch speakers, but they're in so what are you gonna do.....I think it will sound fine...I'm afraid if I wire the sail and hatch speakers to the amp, I will ruin the amp...

It can't ruin the amp, you just could under drive the speakers, not getting the full potential out of them.

The sail speakers are subs, so I would put them on a different amp if you decided to isolate a pair. I would run components on the front doors and if you want to get really fancy, components in the rear as well. So a 4 channel for the doors and rear hatch, and a 2 channel for the sail speakers on the sub output of the HU. This way, at least for most HU's, you can fine tune your setup. Realize that's 3 sets of RCAs now.

It all comes down to what you think sounds good, what $$$ you have to work with and what products your working with (namely the capabilities of the HU).

**98BlackMambaWS6** · 06-18-2011, 05:51 PM

Originally Posted by KMdef9

It can't ruin the amp, you just could under drive the speakers, not getting the full potential out of them.

The sail speakers are subs, so I would put them on a different amp if you decided to isolate a pair. I would run components on the front doors and if you want to get really fancy, components in the rear as well. So a 4 channel for the doors and rear hatch, and a 2 channel for the sail speakers on the sub output of the HU. This way, at least for most HU's, you can fine tune your setup. Realize that's 3 sets of RCAs now.

It all comes down to what you think sounds good, what $$$ you have to work with and what products your working with (namely the capabilities of the HU).

My deck is going to have 3 RCA's so thats not a problem....my amp has 4 channels....I guess im confused about wiring the hatch speakers...The 4" speaker is four ohms and tweeter is 4 ohms...There is no crossover (the tweeter has an inline high pass filter)...I was under the impression I could more or less twist the wires of the tweeter and speaker together and give them each side a channel (right & left). I dont really want to go to second amp if I dont need to, I want everything to look stock.....The head unit is a pioneer so I think I'm going to run all the hatch speakers to the HU and the doors and sail to the amp...alot of people say they often leave the hatch speakers out anyway...I bought and installed them before realizing exactly what I wanted to do...now I'm trying to make the best of it....

**98BlackMambaWS6** · 06-18-2011, 05:54 PM

Hey how many channel amp would I need to run an entire replacement monsoon system off of....2 channels for the front....2 for the sail...2 or 4 for the tweeter / speaker combo in the hatch????

**KMdef9** · 06-18-2011, 09:21 PM

You can do the tweeter idea if it has the the high pass filter, otherwise they'd pop so fast you wouldn't know.

Your fronts are you doors, the high/mids frequencies. Your rears are your hatch, just mids I believe. The sails are suppose to be the bass, the lows, which are undirectional.

While replacing the whole system, you can do whatever you want. You can have a amp for each set of speakers if you want. You can hide the amps in the rear hatch if you want, to keep it looking stock. I would consider running 2 amps, a 4 channel with the 2 channel. As long as the 4 channel has the 2 inputs and your HU has all front, rear and sub outputs. Honestly when revamping the whole system, your options are nearly limitless.

But that would be my setup, IMO.

As long as you leave all of your speaker wires in the same location, you change your setup to try several different things. But I would run a separate wire for the tweeter in the front doors in the event you choose to run crossovers, and you can splice them together right at the amp if it has the high pass filter.

**az gt eater** · 06-19-2011, 08:49 PM

YOu need to have crossovers. How else are you going to utilize the upper range of the those tweets? Pretty soon you will be to the point where you are considering installing another set of tweets in the pillar a arms in the window heater vents. When your knee blocks that sound. Also, if you have a hu that can time correct, you will want to reconsider the whole setup. You are either gonna want to eliminate the trunk speakers, or have them on the same channel and amp as the sails. I have mine on the same channel as the sails, cause i couldn't bring myself to eliminate them after i bought them, and installed them. But, 60 by four powers them pretty good from the HU.

**az gt eater** · 06-19-2011, 08:52 PM

You can loop the wires to the back trunk speakers to slow down the sound, and even it out. You probably need to leave about 20' of looped up wire to those speakers to slow them down. That would even them out, cause they would always be behind the sail speakers. Easier to tune.

**krese** · 06-20-2011, 05:43 AM

disconnect the hatch speakers... i will be PLENTY loud with the rest.

**krese** · 06-20-2011, 05:46 AM

oh and about the capacitor thing... i used to run a 1000w MTX thunder amp in my 95 formula pushing 2 JL audio 12 W0s and it hit over 140db for years with no cap. alt and battery had 0 issues.

caps don't really help all that much unless you have multiple amps and multiple batteries.

**KMdef9** · 06-20-2011, 03:56 PM

Originally Posted by krese

caps don't really help all that much unless you have multiple amps and multiple batteries.

I have to disagree.

Caps can help on any system, especially ones that the full charging system isn't in tip top. Or on lower rated alternators.

A good system has 1 cap per amp, unless it's a 14 farad cap running a couple of 100 w amps.

Caps don't do anything for multiple batteries, higher rated alternators do. As they require twice the charging of a normal setup, which stock alternators aren't designed to do, regardless of draw.