fastbird02

iTrader: (4)

Has anyone clipped the harness at the amp and ran a 4 or 5 channel amp and just used the existing wires for the speakers but run a new hott remote and ground? Im thinking this because running front speaker wires seems like it would be a huge PITA. What do you all think?

Thanks
Bruce

SparkyJJO

iTrader: (11)

I sort of did on my old car. I stuffed wires in the plug to make connections, and taped it all up.

Not ideal I'm sure but I wanted it reversible.

Surely there is a socket and pins we can buy to connect to the plug but I couldn't find one.

loyolacub68

iTrader: (16)

It's not a huge PITA, I thought it was pretty easy. I'd just run the new wiring.

WhiteBird00

iTrader: (4)

You're going to have to run wires anyway because the Monsoon amp gets speaker-level input and you'll want pre-amp level (RCA) with your aftermarket amp.

strokerrace

iTrader: (8)

Overall not worth the trouble, just run new speaker wires its like 10 minutes extra a side fishing them through the door accordian and hooking them up.

fucter

iTrader: (5)

Walmart has the connector, supposedly. So no clipping needed

fastbird02

iTrader: (4)

So if i get the connector from walmart, how would the speaker level input vs rca effect me? In my mind i am just re using the factory speaker wires. Unless there are filters on the lines?

I mean what would be the difference besides better, thicker wire?

WhiteBird00

iTrader: (4)

If you are not familiar with pre-amp (RCA) wiring versus speaker wiring then perhaps it would be better to have someone else do this installation (in which case the whole question of re-using the factory wiring goes away because no professional would do that).

RCA wiring is coaxial - the positive signal runs down the center wire while the negative is in the braided sheith wire around it. It is designed for use with low-level audio signal between an audio source and the amplifier because the sheithing provides protection from electrical interference in the low voltage audio signal.

Speaker wire is much the same as ordinary power wire - the positive and negative signal are on physically separate insulated wires. They have no inherent protection from electrical interference but that isn't as much of a problem with the higher power speaker-level signal they carry.

fastbird02

iTrader: (4)

what i was thinking is that by clipping the harness at the connector basically what i have is pre-run speaker wire? or is there something special about the factory ran wires? i get the whole rca vs speaker wire thing, i was only thinking speaker wire is speaker wire(obviously there is better quality ) am i wrong?

WhiteBird00

iTrader: (4)

The question is what do you gain by doing that? Unless you mount your new amp in the same location as the Monsoon amp, you're going to have to do some wiring anyway. And you only get to re-use the wires between the amp location and the speakers. You can't use the wiring from the head unit to the amp, the power and ground are too small unless you get a tiny amp and there is no remote turn-on wire in the Monsoon harness.

Why not just do it right and run your own wiring? It really doesn't take very long and it will make any future troubleshooting much easier.