Running speaker wire to front door speakers

[njs2247]

Curious to find out the process to run new speaker wire to the front doors in these new trucks. Will I have to drill a hole on the factory harnesses on door jam and door? Or is there space available to run the wire straight through the boot? I would use factory wiring, but I am tapping the signal from rear door speakers, to LC2i, to amp then new wire to the front door speakers. I am doing it this way so I won't have loud door chimes. I plan on mounting a small speaker under dash connected to factory front door wiring to keep my chimes.

Edited March 31, 2016 by njs2247

[crewl1]

If you have a Bose setup the rear doors may have high pass signal only.

There are additional hole and empty rubber plug on the jamb side of the front doors but you will have to get into the boot by poking through the edge where there is room.

Why not just use into the existing speaker wires?

[njs2247]

Thanks for the info. I am not using existing wiring for the fronts because I do not want loud chimes. I have the non-Bose 8" screen setup.

[crewl1]

Right but I just figured you could cut the wires before they exit the car and after they go through the harness to the door and solder your new set to the ends. Just so you don't have to do additional wiring routing.

[njs2247]

That would work, but I really don't want to start cutting up the factory wiring. Plus, I'd rather have 14 gauge wire running to my components than the 22 gauge factory wiring. I guess I like to make it hard on myself lol.

[njs2247]

Crewl1, I looked at it today and you might be right about just splicing into factory wiring for the front speakers. I see no way to get to the factory harness on the door jam from inside the truck!!! It's totally different than previous models. There's actually metal framing between harness and the inside of truck where your left foot would sit. I can barely even see the harness from inside the truck.

[Strykers_Inc]

You can get the molex-type plugs out. I have run 12 Ga cable into my doors. Honestly it's more trouble than it is worth, and if you don't have small hands it's a real PITA. Once I had the passenger door done, I couldn't stop And had to do the other door. Needless to say my rear doors are using existing wire. My buddy Kyle's truck is using existing wire with no issues. Unless you are trying to push an ungodly amount of power into those door speakers, existing wire is fine. I have 8-inch drivers as part of a three-way system in the doors and wanted to ensure I had clean cable going in there.

 

First and foremost, diconnect the negative terminal on your battery and wrap it in a towel or plastic so there is no way to connect to anything....I am overly safe.

 

If you look in the door jam at the boot, push down on the top of the boot and away from the truck and the boot will open up exposing the molex. There is a majenta handle on it that when pulled on will disconnect the molex. You have two options from there. Drill out the inner and outer molex plugs where there are no connections making sure that the holes are drilled perfectly clean. This has to be perfect because if not, the plugs will not connect back together properly and lock. The second option is to cut the inner and outer plugs and solder your own wires in place circumventing the molex. Option two sounds difficult, but it's really not, it's just time consuming and a PITA because wire colors are duplicated. Also in option two you will have to dremel out the inner molex and route it back into place in order to reattach the boot. I know this because I had to take the time and do option two, and I will never do that again. I put a lot of time and detail into getting it right and it's way more than needs to be done. Like I said, once I got one door done, I kinda had to get the opposite door done to be symmetrical. My rear doors only have 6.5's so I am using existing wiring.

 

Honestly, as I have learned, anything more than the factory wiring is overkill.

 

To tap the factory wiring after the Bose amp, just expose some of the wire and solder in an attaching wire from your own amp. Make sure to unplug that wire from the Bose amp though. Be careful when playing around that bose amp, disconnecting all the plugs can really screw with it. The Bose amp requires a load on it in order to work correctly and it has been documented that some people have tapped it in such a way as to zero it out because the amp no longer seen a load enough for it to actually turn on. The easiest way to tell is if your 8-inch screen acts as if it is on but with a black screen....reverse camera still works.

 

If you need some help, I am here, just PM me or post on my build and I will get a notice.

 

Click & Vote for my Phoenix Gold Audio Build please!

http://woobox.com/tw8dew/gallery/fl5HEuZNnk0

[njs2247]

Thanks for taking the time to explain all that Stryker. I kinda knew it was going to be a PITA after seeing where the molex plugs were inside the truck and you just confirmed it for me. Unfortunately I do not have the Bose system, so I would need to tap into the factory wiring at the kick panels. Which presents another problem because I need to find out where to tap into after the wiring has split going to dash and door speakers. I'm wanting to leave the dash speakers for factory chimes and therefore unamped. When I get more time I'll have to thoroughly inspect the wiring at the kick panels and see what I come up with.

[AZ_SS]

Thanks for taking the time to explain all that Stryker. I kinda knew it was going to be a PITA after seeing where the molex plugs were inside the truck and you just confirmed it for me. Unfortunately I do not have the Bose system, so I would need to tap into the factory wiring at the kick panels. Which presents another problem because I need to find out where to tap into after the wiring has split going to dash and door speakers. I'm wanting to leave the dash speakers for factory chimes and therefore unamped. When I get more time I'll have to thoroughly inspect the wiring at the kick panels and see what I come up with.

 

I am about to pull the trigger on single 10 in a custom box and an amp for the factory speakers and am really concerned about the chimes as well. I am interested to see how yours turns out.

[Bradford]

Sorry to revive an old thread but how did this turn out? Working on my front speakers right now and also trying to find where the signal splits in order to install a crossover for components. Any help?

[Maxsuperdog]

20 hours ago, Bradford said:

Sorry to revive an old thread but how did this turn out? Working on my front speakers right now and also trying to find where the signal splits in order to install a crossover for components. Any help?

There is a space either above or below the molex to run new wire.

It can be a PITA!!. 

Run a coat hanger from inside the door into the footwell and tape the new speaker wire to it and pull it thru.

[Goinovr]

Hey all...I know this is an old one but I am doing this right now so I made a quick video of what I am doing to run the wire. Hopefully it helps. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. Getting the boots back on is the hardest part. At least for me. I did my back doors the same way and doing my passenger side once this side is back together.

 

 

[Goinovr]

Fyi...for the passenger side you'll want to remove the lower half of the glove box to make feeding the wire in from the door easier.

Edited February 25, 2021 by Goinovr

[Zori Marfazelian]

On 2/23/2021 at 12:12 PM, Goinovr said:

Fyi...for the passenger side you'll want to remove the lower half of the glove box to make feeding the wire in from the door easier.

How did you get the speaker wire into the truck? Im having this issue. The part of the harness that goes into the truck is very hard to get to from the inside

[Goinovr]

6 hours ago, Zori Marfazelian said:

How did you get the speaker wire into the truck? Im having this issue. The part of the harness that goes into the truck is very hard to get to from the inside

The boot is a 2 piece system where it meets the cab. There's the boot which is wrapped around a plastic retainer with a clip at the top. If you pull the boot back a little you can use a flat head screw driver to push down on that clip and the boot will pop off. No need to access anything from the inside. You can then access the pink lever clip that pulls down and unclips the harness. Then just pull the door side of the boot out, run your guide wire through the boot, attach to speaker wire and pull through. I run my speaker wire down the bottom of the boot because there is just enough room to go through the cab between the clip finger and the harness. If you run it through the top it makes the upper clip hard to get back in (or out). 

 

 

Let me see if I can get a quick vid. 

 

Here we go...

 

Edited March 2, 2021 by Goinovr