OK, so I have the Monsoon system with the external amp and sub. I just replaced the sub with a Stealthbox, and I have an Alpine PDX-5 I'm going to install...somewhere. However, I wanted to reuse existing factory speaker wires, only...I guess they all go to the harness that goes to that factory external amp, rather than the harness that goes to the head unit. Anyone know if maybe those factory speaker wires are still in the head unit harness after all? I know I don't want to run wires through the door. Where can I pick them up?

jds

 

maybe install it,,,where the existing amp/wires are. then cut,splice adapt all those wires to the new amp, which on average will sound no different than the beautiful,smashing,crisp,clean,and trouble free monsoon. frankly i cannot imagine needing more power for music.
now if youre making a thump-thump machine,all you need is a 1000 watt low freq amp and 2 wires.imho

 

yeah, what he said

 

Umm, well, the JL Stealthbox that I put in there in place of the stock sub takes the whole area, so there's no more room for the amp. I'm not making a thump machine by any means, however I found the stock amp/sub combo to be a bit muddy and "mid-bassey" for my tastes. And my new head unit allows some tweaking of the sub...but not if I use the stock sub/amp because there are no distinct sub outputs from the stock head. Not knocking the Monsoon system, it's one of the better-sounding stock systems I've heard, however once I started changing things to add capability (e.g. Bluetooth and MP3 player connectivity via the new head unit) the inherent limitations in the stock system start revealing themselves. Trust me...when I'm done, it will not sound the same as the stock setup!

 

no arguement on connectivity,i dont know where their heads were,way back.
you could find ext jacks 20 years ago, and ive talked about a 79 buck,beautiful walmart radio,remote,remove faceplate,ext jack,AND,usb,AND,sd card slot. the remote will run my mp3 plugged in the usb port!!

so theres lots of room front end improvement. i would prob do a new one if it "plugged in"and had the cd stacker,and usb

 

 

previous drawing is low level 4 ch to the power amp,,??,,the point?

 

** And never mind, I found it! All wired up and working properly **

Funny, I couldn't really read this very well, but I had what I thought was the speaker wiring diagram and hooked up my amp outputs to that. Oddly enough, I got no sound, and so I compared it to this and it's the same. Lol not speakers! I don't suppose you have the speaker wire colors?

 

I actually just replaced all my speakers and amped them today so I guess you're in luck!

The easiest thing to do is do NOT use the factory wire for the back doors, its extremely easy to get the boots off and run speaker through them into the door.

The front doors are what frustrated the **** out of me, took me the last three days to finish, and nearly drove me insane.

At first I was going to use the factory wire, but couldn't find the right wires so I said screw it, I'll just run speaker wire. So then I went to get to the boot in the door, and our doors just suck, and don't open far enough.

Eventually when I got to the boot I was in for a nice surprise, it may look like a boot, but its not, its just a plug with a rubber sleeve over it, so you couldn't run speaker wire into the door if you wanted to without drilling holes, adding grommets, sealing them from water, etc, and that would require removing the doors.

I got extremely frustrated so I sat down, cracked open a hefeweizen and started thinking. I do this stuff for a living so I figured I should be able to get it figured out. I looked all over, and every wiring diagram I found for the factory standard and monsoon system had the wire colors wrong. I had some wires colored for the standard system, some for the monsoon, so I don't know, maybe the color list I found was for the plug directly at the amp but I wasn't about to pull about my 300lb sub box and batteries, and yank the side panel to find out.

I ended up making a pop tester and went to work. A pop tester is basically a D or C battery with wire taped to two ends, and if you touch both ends to both speaker wires it makes the speaker "pop" or produce static so you can find the right wires. I dicked around behind the head unit for a bit, didn't get anywhere and eventually moved to the drivers side kick panel.

One word of caution about a pop tester, I've never had it happen yet, but you do run the risk of shorting something if you're trying to pop test something that isn't a speaker wire, so you should be fairly sure before you try at. At least in our trucks, and most other vehicles, the speaker wires will be twisted together. Make sure if you strip something and pop test it you cover it back up with electrical tape if you're not going to use it so you don't short anything!

I have the monsoon system, and on the drivers side kick panel I found the speaker wires for both front doors. The driver side door is grey and tan, and the passenger door is dark green, and light green. This is on an 08 Alpha with monsoon. So after I found them, I got the nice surprise that the factory tweeters and not wired in with the speakers because apparently the crossovers are at the amp.

I ended up having to say screw the factory tweeter wire so I grabbed a coat hanger, made a loop at one end, stuck the speaker wire in, and jammed it down in there until it came out near the pedals. I also did the same for the passenger tweeters, and ran the wire behind the radio to the driver side.

In the end I cut the wire for the front speakers, used some crimp caps to connect them to normal speaker wire, and ran the speaker wire to the back. Then I took the tweeter wire I ran down from the pillar, stripped a spot in the middle of the speaker wire I added, poked a hold in the middle of the exposed bare wire, stuck the tweeter wire through, wrapped it around and electrical taped it.

I put these in the front and rear doors: Polk Audio - Mobile Monitor Series - Mobile / Marine Speakers

and I put a really awesome pair of 28mm Cadence tweeters in the pillars that they don't sell or make anymore. Don't worry about wiring the tweeters in lowering your ohm's, that's bull**** and it won't happen if done right. Everything tested fine 4ohm's at the amp, that's what the crossover is for. Of course that's if you're doing coaxial s and running tweeters instead of getting a component system. I figured I was going to have problems, and I didn't want to deal with finding a spot for the massive component crossovers, and I had these awesome Cadence ones laying around so I used them.

The crossover mounted in the pillar no problem with only slight modification, and it's well out of the way so I don't get hit in the face with a crossover if the airbag deploys. The tweeters were a tight fit, but I cut out the stock white plastic mount with a hole saw and hot glued the tweeters in place and the crossover. Hot glue is more than enough, they're not going anywhere. You can cut out the white plastic mount without going through the part that shows, so my truck still looks completely stock where the tweeters are, you would never know I replaced them.

Whew, that was a lot of typing, hope this helps, pm me if you have problems or post here, I'm even willing to help over the phone and walk you through this.

Look's like I'm becoming the resident audio expert on these damn trucks......

It was a huge pain in the ***, and very frustrating but it all paid off when I got in, rolled the windows up, and fired up the system. Everything is so clear and vibrant now the difference is amazing, and the system gets so loud I can't even stand near the truck with the doors open, and not a hint of distortion. Time to go win some trophies!

 

its late and im too sleepy to spend time,now, but my main concern on auto wiring is twisted wires and tape.
i trust only soldered wires.u can shake and tug all day and they stay connected. i like good shrink tubing properly installed.crimp on connectors is a red flag for future intermittents, a short cut. and if u ever strip wire for testing,do the strips a few inches apart so they cant touch even when the tape "crawls"off!.
if u cut insulation without removing any it will/can move back and cover the "wound"by itself. later

oops, the wiring can be found in the service manual,,i down loadeed for $12 and forget the site now. u can find in net with search..nite