Ok everyone, so I have experience with wiring stereos and speakers, but not amps, so here are a few questions.

1. I am putting the amp either under the back seat or in the trunk of my 98 blazer 4 door. Where is the best place to string the audio and power wires through the car to the back, and what tools do i need?

2. I see that I need three power wires to the amp: battery, remote, and ground. What is remote? and can I take those wires from the ones that go to the stereo or should i get power from somewhere else?

3. I also want to bolt my sub down in the trunk to prevent theft. any recommendations?

Thanks.

albrightc

 

For the power wire, you definitely want to run it straight from the battery. Use a thicker gauge wire such as 8ga, 4ga or 1/0ga depending on how many watts you are pushing. You want to fuse the wire very close to the battery equal to the total of all fuses on your amp. They sell amp kits with the power, ground, and an inline fuse ready for you. There is a hole in the firewall on the passenger side where you can run your power wire through, then you can run it either through the middle of the car or along/under the plastic pieces by the doors, or even under the carpet if you have that type of dedication to cleanliness.

I run my audio cables under the the center console, and my remote wire as well. There should be a (usually) blue wire in the back of the radio, you connect the remote to that. When the radio turns on, it supplies 12V to that wire in order to tell the amp to turn on.

You want to ground your amp using the same ga wire as your power cable, and you generally want it under 3 feet in length, the shorter the better. I took off the plastic flaps behind the back seats, cuts out the carpet around the bolts they were attached to, scraped off the paint and grounded my amps there. You want your ground to be as good as possible, and you want it to connect to bare metal. The bolt I described and the ones under the seats holding the seats down are good locations, just make sure you scrape off the paint so you are grounding to bare metal, then tighten it well.

If you are going to bolt your box down, I recommend making your holes from under the vehicle so you don't accidentally hit anything important such as a fuel line.

Also, how powerful is your amp?

 

The amp is 300W RMS @ 4-ohms impedance. Its an alpine MRP-M500, if you care to look up some specs, its on Bestbuy.com

So you ran your audio and remote cable trough the middle of the car? I don't necessarily want to rip up any carpet...is it terribly difficult to do?

Also, I am gonna want an RCA audio cable from the stereo to the amp, right? and then normal speaker wire from the amp to the sub?

Thanks for the help man,

albrightc

 

I ran my cables (two amps, 4ga and 8ga cables for power, three sets of RCA for sub, front and rear, a remote line and 4channels of speaker wire from one of the amps to the speakers) down the sides of the blazer. I put them underneath the plastic along edges of the carpet near the base of the doors. There are some thin plastic supports inside of the trim to help strengthen it and I had to cut some of them down but it's simple to do and leaves plenty of room for wiring.

You are correct about needing an RCA line from the stereo to the amp and then speaker wire from amp to sub.

 

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by audio cable, but yes my remote wire and RCAs are running down the middle. I didn't pull up the carpet, I just ran them under the center console and then under the seats in the back. You can cover them up with a floor mat if you'd prefer that.

For power and ground you'll be just fine with 4ga wire.

 

alright great thanks for all of your help everybody.

 

do I need special drill bits to get through the trunk of my vehicle?

 

make sure you don't run the RCA cable next to the 12v power. it would be best to run them on opposite sides of the vehicle. this is because the power wire can give off some interference noise that the RCA will pick up and amplify through your subs. just giving a heads up

 

Definitely metal ones.

 

i think i will try and utilize the bolts that hold down the hooks in the floor of the trunk to anchor it down...also, where is the best place to run my battery wire through the firewall to the interior? I want to run it and the remote wire down the right side of the car.