How to run door speakers off amp? | Ford Explorer Forums

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How to run door speakers off amp?

Explorer94GV

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Springdale, Arkansas
Year, Model & Trim Level
94' XLT 97' XLT AWD V8
im wondering in all the threads that talk about running your speakers off headunit someone always says they run it off an amp instead. how is this done. is rewiring the 4 doors a pain in the ass or is it worth it? i have a 94 X and in the back doors they had another blank 5x7 slots so i threw another pair of cerwin vegas in there and am going to run that off a fosgate 100.2 amp. my hu is a alpine cva-1003 and it say its running them at 45x4 doubt it though. could i just buy a 4 channel amp wire it like i did my other two i threw in back doors and just leave the cheap factory wire in the doors? right now i feel my front doors sound too weak cause i really like loud music and rich deep bass. thxs for the help im listening :)
 



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To run the speakers off an amp you will need a set of RCA cables to run from your HU pre-amp outputs to the amp. The amp speaker outputs will then run back up to the HU, where you will have to cut the HU speaker outputs and splice in the amp speaker outputs to the wires that run to the speakers.

I'd say if you are sticking around a 40Wx4-ch amp the factory wiring should be fine. Any more and you should re-wire. (A true 40W RMS can be every bit as loud as you can stand it and still be pretty clear.)

Yes, re-wiring is a pain in the ass.
 






rewiring the front wasnt that bad, but the rear was a real pain.
 






so if i took the 2 wiring harness out of the factory amp and get no sound than my aftermarket speakers are still hooked up to factory amp. if i take the wiring harness out and still get sound is it wired to my hu? does the factory amp control anything else besides the speakers?
 






Just at note, you can save some wiring by running the speaker outputs from the amp back to the outputs from the stock amp rather than all the way up to the headunit. This is good because it saves a lot of distance that the signal has to travel and also the wiring running from the headunit to the stock amp is very thin, so its not ideal. I didn't even splice into the wiring, just tinned the ends of my speaker wire an snuggly plugged them into the harness that leaves the stock amp. Somewhere on here there is a diagram of the wire colors. And no the factory amp doesn't control anything else, you can just unplug the power harness so it doesn 't draw any power.
 






ok i can see that the bottom wiring harness is for the speaker + and - wire. what i dont know is what the top wiring harness is for this has a lot of wires too. where whould i connect these wires and are these even needed when i put in the new amp? thxs for all the help people
 






The top wires are the signal wires coming from the headunit. If you ran wires from the amp to the headunit to tap in there the wires you tapped into would be those that come into the top of the amp, and they would actually go through the factory amp, so definitely you want to splice in back in the speaker wires. Those other signal wires will not be needed, if you're headunit isn't in yet don't even hook up the speaker connections in the headunit harness.
 






ok i see thxs!
 






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