How to pull Front door speaker wire...

Okay, kids. So pulling wire isn't a cake-walk, but it IS something that can be done. Tonight I went out with my usual assortment of tools, and my digicam.

(note: this is reccomended for systems pushing upwards of 50w to your doors. Many have run more without problem, but I for one felt a bit uneasy pushing 75w, so I figured out how to do this.)

First off you should remove your door panels, and speakers. If you need help here, check the how-to forum for lock shortening. The kick-panel relative to where you're working should also be removed.

With the door and kick-panels removed, you then need to locate the Molex plug. This is the point where the bunch of wires inside your door enter the body of your car. There's a rubber boot that surrounds it, this needs to be pried up.



Now you'll have access to the white plastic plug itself. It is secured to the car with 4 little tabs in the 1, 5, 7, adn 11 o'clock positions. 1 and 5, for the record are on the back-side fo your opening, and int he cramped space of the doorjam, quite hard to reach. I've heared of some ppl using zip-ties wrapped around. I, personally managed to just use a coathanger to depress the rearward-one while I pressed and pryed up fornt with a screwdriver. Did the top half first, then the bottom 2.



Once the plug is out of the car, locate the green tab on top of it. this must be pulled upward until it stops in order to "unlock" the clip and allow you to seperate the 2 halves.



THis is what you have to work with (this one is the body-side one, note that it has quite short wires that reach to it, so it's only possible to get it barely outside and angled where you can get at it. The top lefthand side of this piece is where I cut. (didn't have my dremel on me, so I had at it with the x-acto knife) You can see the 4 holes forming the shape of a square that are un-occupied.



Here's the other piece. THis one comes from the door. Lots of room to work onthis one. Mirror it to matchup with the other one, and you can see my cutting location is going to be on the top-right this time. Now, on THIS half of the clip there is an exra wire so I left it in place, and only made an "L" over here.



Enough visualizing. This is the wire side of the door-plug. Note the bottom rightside of it where I've cutout my "L"



I really didn't document the cutting and locations very well. The cutting took me alot of time mostly because, as I said, no dremel tool on hand, and an x-acto will only cut halfway through one clip, so you've got to flip it and go from the back side too.. It's all fairly straightforward, though. just find somewhere on the clip where you'll have room to fit whatever wire you wish to run, and make the room for it to pass through By whatever means you've got that won't chew into any interlocking shapes, or hit any of the other wires.

Okay, so assume the plastic's cut and ready to go. Feed the wire through to the door-side it will go inside the RUbber boot, and the "snake" that runs to the door. Get a hadn inside the door, and Feel around in there, just beyond and above the end of the window track is where the wire enters the door. Yours will show up here, too. Hey guesswhat? Your head won't fit inside the door, but my camera will. I thought it was cool to get to see the unseeable. The black vertical rubber strip under my hand is the front window track, and there's our rubber boot, and My wires coming through it.


Sorry for the fuzzy pic, but here's the 2 pieces of the molex, and now I've threaded the wire(s) through the cabin-side one. I should note that I'm running 2 sets of wire one 14awg, and one 18, because I've always had strange ideas of speaker-illumination. Might turn out lame, but at least I'll be able to try... When threading from one to the other, make sure you flatten out the wire (get rid of any twists) before you go pulling it through the other side.



Okay, here's another case of camera can see, but I can't. For refrence, the black strip ont he bottom right corner is the weatherseal at the front of the door frame. The camera was sitting on the floor where a passenger's right foot would possibly be looking straight up. That wire you just pulled through the cabin-side connecter now has to go in the cabin. feed some through and then get into position where you can look/feel for it from the inside while feeding from the out. That white plastic piece is where the wire will hopefully come out. it is approx 6" above the bottom of the dash-panel and as you can see the metal bracket doesn't allow much hand-room.



Make sure to leave more than enough extra wire in either direction, but now, you can now re-connet the molex, hopefully your wire's fed through without a problem. I should also note, that life is MUCH easier if you put the rubber boot back on the molex BEFORE clipping it back into your doorframe.



YAY! I've got 14g wire for my kappas to get plenty of juice directly from my under-seat amp now without the clutter and thin wire of going through the factory harness. I've also got some extra wire for whatever I may want to do. Led's, window control for an alarm, or perhaps i'll have a practical application like a Tweeter with an interior-mounted crossover.



Stuff I used:
Bent coathanger, for depresssing back-side molex clips and "hooking" wire,

a couple different flathead screwdrivers for assorted prying and clip depressing

Phillips head for removing screws securing the door panel and speaker

my little mini leatherman and an x-acto knife set for clutting out holes (You probobally better use a drill or dremel or something)

A petzyl LED headlamp (Words can't describe how much easier these little things make it) Small enough to be out of the way, and just enough light to see what you're doing RIGHT where you need it.

14G wire (I used about 15' and there's about an extra foot worth int he door, and way more than enough to reach under my seat to my amp. 18g wire for my stupid led speaker light deal. I'll get some pics up of that if it turns out with some semblance of non-lameness.

Nice write-up Poseur. Thank you. This should be a sticky!
Where were you a week ago? It must of taken you forever to cut the plug with an Exacto-Knife!? Small phillips screwdrivers spun can drill thru small places like that too, then trim out with a blade?! As I read this I have to point out the note towards the end. Make sure you get the rubber grommet on the molex clip before re-installing back in the car frame. It is a major pain in the arse to get it on there when clipped back on the car.

Yea, Yay for being un-prepared, eH? Oh well. I've been pretty busy lately. wasn't gonna let something lame like having no dremel stop me. Tried teh screwdriver thing, but I was starting to warp the sides of the plug, and I didn't really want much of that nothing like good ol' slow and steady. Still only took me about an hour and a half to do my pass side door. Didn't button it all back up, though as I've got some E_dead that's supposed to be getting here today, and I wanted to put some of that on while it was off. Might do the flush-lock thing while I'm at it, too.

Anyway, I do hope this helps some ppl out. There's some good write ups elsewhere on this site, but it's always nice to atleast be able to see what you're up against. I assure you that every little step presents just enough of a challange to be really annoying if you're out of patience on the day.

I will keep bumping this so that 1st makes sure he stickies it. Thank you so much for doing this. I was within hours of deciding to do kickpods, due to my frustration with trying to fit 6.5" comps into the front doors. I think I have enough room there to make a spacer/baffle that'll work great, though. Now I can run 140W to my new comps, and hopefully not screw everything up! You da' man!

The spacer/baffle thing should be a very real possibility. I'm considering it myself. I lined it out, and if you do a 6.5" it's really tight trying to get a mid and a tweet within the outlined oval, but you could easily make a 5.25" + tweeter plate. Something worth consideration, but for now I figured I'll just keep it simple. Listened to the Kappa 5x7's run off of an eclipse amp at my local shop, (friend works there it's nice) and as much as I generally don't got for coaxes, they DO sound really good, it's nice that they have an external crossover and seperate inputs. I might have to get ahold of some sharper xovers eventually. But then again, there's alot of nice 5.25" seperates out there now, too. and with 2sets of wires I can keep the xovers inside.... Might make a good project sometime later on down the road, but for now I've got a whole bunch of stuff to be installing, and there's something to be said for the simplicity of putting an oval peg in an oval hole as it were.

On a side note: I did check all of the wires going to each sideof the plug, and all of the colors match up on either side. (door side's wire colors are the same as their corresponding body-side wires) There were a couple of wires on either side that had no match on the other, but I left them all in place just in case. At least I'll have something to refrence should there ever be any need to attach them to something.

Any idea if good 16awg wire will hold 140W? I'd really hate to have to get all new wire, after shelling out so much for what I've got...

Anyone?

Yeah, nice write up man, I wish this was available at the time I did my install so I could've ran new wiring . Maybe Ill do it some other time.

Craig you should definately make this a stickie, but please don't put it in the how to section, it will just get lost there.

poseur u need to cut ur nails !!

poseur thanks for this guide, its really helpful. I couldn't figure out how to get those damn connectors out (my lighting in the garage doesnt reach inside there) and I was stuck in my new install on the final step of wiring the speakers. I seriously got one of them taken out in 15 seconds. It was easy with a medium-small tipped flathead. this is great you just made my day!

(goes back to installing)

GJ, thanks for taking the incentive to help us all out!!

(2thumbs)

I'm not toosure of exact power handling capacity, but I got like 30feet of 14g from my stereoshop friend who ran it all through the computer forlike $3, so I'd imagine it couldn't be any more than $0.40 a foot for non-hookups. You could always jsut run 14 through the doors and do the rest later if you wish. Form the size of everything I'd reccomend no larger than 14, though I tried to get some 12 to go and it really wasn't happening. And I knew from the start that the twisted stuff I was using elsewhere wasn't gonna cut it. Though I guess if you pull the extra non-matched wire out and tape it off somewhere that'd give you some more room to play with.

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MSPC> I was wondering if the nails comment was gonna come up... At least they're fairly clean for being elbow-deep in my door and dash, eH? And, for the record, after looking at the pics I went and trimmed 'em anyway *L*

Hey Pos,

I'm counting the wires to make sure I can just drop that extra wire on the door side. It seems pretty useless, and I have some 16ga Karma Kable (twisted pair, one jacket) to run through there. I'm pretty sure it's not connected to anything on the other side, though.

Ugh...back to work!

stuck.

I haven't read through it yet but once the beer leaves the brain I will

For now, back to south park.....CRAB PEOPLE...CRAB PEOPLE

Wow great job. the only thing I can remeber doing differently was using a drill bit to drill out th eplug where I wanted to run the wire insted of using a exacto knife. Also I pulled the car side plug back through to the inside of the car and worked with it form there instead of pulling it out a little bit. Either way is fine. Ones just easier to work on but mpore time consuming to do.

Pay close attention to how he said to put the rubber boot back on!!!! If you don't put it over the clip first you will never get that damn thing back around the molex clonnectors.

Never? I would never say never... I spent close to 1.5 hours trying to get the stupid freaking rubber grommet plug back together to the dismay of my lovely wife and 2 kids who think I am nutz for even attempting it. They had to listen to my banter about how stupid I was to start trying this feat. Great part is once I got the passenger side figured out the drivers side went much smoother. Same with the rear. Getting the nerve up to dremel out the plug was my 1st major obstacle... It was easier when customers would bring in their brand new cars but when it is your own... things seem to stress me out more.

should i move this to the how to section? excellent write up, i will be running some wires soon!

Copy a link perhaps but I would rather it stay here.

This is excellent information, I am really tempted to replace my wires from my amps in the trunk to the door speakers now. Presently the speaker wires run to the wiring harness in the dash, and then to the doors.

[threadjack, my appologies]

Realistically, how much power do you have to be pushing to your speakers RMS before changing the wire makes a serious difference?

This would be good to include at the top of the thread too, ie... this could only be worth your time if your pushing xxwatts rms...

Right now, the speaker wires to the doors is the only piece of my stereo that is stock, and my JL Audio 300/4 pushes 75W RMS to all four doors.

[/threadjack]

I suggest it at over 50 watts rms at 12 volts. I have stretched it much higher though

check out www.mobileaudio.com on the subject. They tell you the actual power loss expected based on the smaller wires impedance under a cerain power flow.

Dammit. so I get my new 4way amp in, wired up (though not pretty yet) and fire it up for a spin around the block... sounds good, really good. I'm going through different music to se ehow it sounds. then one disc comes on really hard to start and "POP fuzz fuzz fuzz" hooray for all the power I've got to blow 100w Kappa's with now. Yes I should've rolled it on, and yes I did have the crossover a bit low (50hz seeingas I've yet to get my sub hooked up) But it was playing soo nicely and sounding soo damn good with the other music that I didn't think about it. *sigh* I'm pretty sure my friend's shop'll take care of it, infinity seems to be pretty good about warrantee anyway. BUt seeing as it was their last set of 6x8's I'll at least have to wait longer and now that i've got all my toys finally that's the last thing I want to be doing....
I should note that I'm not expecting something for nothing. I blew the thing yes, however it was only one speaker that went, and even though it was loud, it was by no means anywhere near full power on either end. The amp was about as low as it can go, and the h/u was at approx 2/3 volume. It also happened to be the speaker that they'd had sitting in the display case for half a year, no idea if that's detrimental to a speaker, but it couldn't be preferable.

Oh, on a side note, the speaker-light thing's actually kinda cool. Just did it with 2led's per side, so it's kinda a blue oval glow. very subtle I tried to take pics, but my digi wan't happy with lowlight noflash...