Reserved for future use.

 

I'll Add to this. Something that you can also do, is get some 10 foot, 3/4 inch foam weather striping(costs 3 dollars at Walmart!) and go around all of the wires and put it on anything that might rattle. It helps out alot with little rattles you will get when the bass hits. Due to its low price its a no brainer!

 

Awesome idea! Thanks for that pointer!

 

@combatmedic - when you installed your front sets, how did you hook in your tweeter? did you run new wiring or dig out the wire behind the dash and break it up?

 

Well i didnt want to run new wires to them. To much of a PITA...screw that. So....*takes a deep breath*
Alright so in the foot well you will have to remove some trim in order to find this. Find the speaker wiring coming inside of the car from the door(easier said the done really). But if you find one that you know is it, youve found the other due to it being right next to it. Sooo pull them out as much as you can to get some slack on them. Cut them. Leave an inch for each so you have some working room. Strip 1/2 inch of the 1 inch of wire. SOOO now you have your wiring needed.

But you could always take off the front panel and hook up the crossovers up behind the stereo and everything. Would most likely be easier. I have a REALLY hard time taking off the front panel to the stereo with out screwing it more and more eveytime i do it.

Now Attach 3 feet of wiring to both(depending on where your putting the cross overs or if you even have cross overs).... 18G will do... The wiring coming fromt he car is the main power and the cords coming from the door is for your the speaker cross over. Thread the tweeter speaker wiring through and hook it up to the cross over and your done!

If you dont have cross overs a quick splice connector will work just as good for non oem tweeters if you have an AM head unit.


LOL....do you even have a new head unit?!!!? If you dont have a new HU then all you have to do is cut the wiring that is up there already for the OEM tweeters and hook up the tweets to that. Use a needle to pry up the tweeter grill on the edge Or a skinny nail works as well.

I need more information.

 

Excellent photos. Great info on removing door panels. In most DIY's the first picture shows everything already taken apart. Can't wait for the rears and sub.

 

Well done Taiguy! I want so badly to replace the audio mess in my outback. Its threads like these that make it possible for a guy like me to do so! Looking forward to the rest of the install.

 

So the silicone has cured and it's made a nice seal between the speaker basket and the mounting basket.

Since I plan on using the stock wiring in the doors and the stock connectors, I could sacrifice the included hookup wire that came with the Polks.

As far as wiring goes, there was a question in another thread that somebody asked which wire was positive and which was negative. I looked at the wire colors going into the stock harness in the door. There doesn't seem to be any sort of common ground color . It really doesn't matter which wire is positive and which is negative so long as we're consistent with hooking them up. If we hooked it up "backwards" it'd just be 180 degrees out of phase with anything was "regular".

There's the connector. I'm calling the pin that's next to the groove (bottom of pic) the positive pin moving forward. I can't imagine subaru (or any other company for that matter) not being consistent with their own connectors.

That's one of the speakers hooked up to the stock connector.

Left to Left and Right to Right.

Updated the first post to include a photo of the door slit where you start prying the door trim panel off.

 

I decided to do my first test and put all 4 speakers back into the car. Only the front doors have raammat applied. The back doors still need to get covered (it takes me about an hour per door).

All 4 speaker baskets fit perfectly. Not surprising since they were the original baskets that were chopped to accommodate new speakers.

I hooked the battery back up. Oh and something I noticed the last time. After reconnecting the battery and trying to start the engine, the engine won't start! On the 2nd try it starts up effortlessly though. This has happened both times. I made sure the negative lead was clamped on tight to the battery post as well. Can somebody else please verify this behavior as well?

After turning on the car and tuning the radio to a local station I found out only one speaker was playing. The driver door speaker is the only one producing sound at all. No good. :gasp:

To start ruling out speaker issue, I swapped the working speaker (speaker A) out for one (speaker B) that wasn't producing sound. Speaker B works in Speaker A's spot (driver door), so it doesn't seem to be a speaker or wiring (on the basket) issue.

What in the world???

Does the stock radio kill sound to doors that aren't hooked up? I guess I could try plugging the door panel controls back in to one of the other doors (without mounting it) and see what happens.

This is a bit disheartening indeed. I don't want to go through and put everything back together on faith that it'll work and find out it's still bunk. Aside from disconnecting the door's as shown in the above post I don't recall disconnecting anything else....

 

I hooked the battery back up. Oh and something I noticed the last time. After reconnecting the battery and trying to start the engine, the engine won't start! On the 2nd try it starts up effortlessly though. This has happened both times. I made sure the negative lead was clamped on tight to the battery post as well. Can somebody else please verify this behavior as well?

This is normal. Unplugging the battery resets the engine's computer and you have to let it crank a bit for the computer to figure out where the engine is on the firing cycle. Throttle response and shifting will be off a bit until the computer re-learns as well.

 

ok, so after some troubleshooting it looks like I have one dead speaker.

3 of them work and I've swapped them around. the speaker I had mounted in my front passenger door looks like it has a bum connection somewhere in the coil. The other working speakers measure a DC resistance of 3.2 ohms. I've got an open circuit on the busted one.

Jesus. Of course I find out after I glue the **** thing in. Time to cut it out and get a replacement.

 

Dam man...Ya need some help with anything? all i need it beer.

 

Taiguy,

Where were those pictures when I did my stereo!?! I just winged the whole thing. New HU and speakers. Your basket idea was about the time I smacked my face with my palm and yelled "Doh!". That was smarter than me just re-drilling the doors (which I now have to watch for rust). Anyway, I never had a problem with the car not starting after I hooked the battery up. And I did it many times. Always acted just fine.

 

have a replacement set on the way. Guess I should get started and start taking apart the dash and floor trim while I wait. Only trying to contain my mess a bit since I don't have a proper garage and the girlfriend doesn't appreciate me putting my car inside the living room.

Will go ahead and test the connections on all of the speakers as well.

 

So the replacement speaker is sitting in the basket letting the silicone cure. FYI, this stuff comes in 10oz tubes at walmart for ~$4, more than enough for this project. I ended up getting a 3oz tube for $3. Had the fight the value ***** in myself and save the extra dollar.

Decided to get the wiring harness connected. Below is the harness that I ordered from AutoToys. It doesn't have all the wires that SVXdc has on his harness but I'll figure the rest out later . On the package it says it's mean for Nissans. For those who have never installed a car audio head unit, these wiring harness plugs into the car's harness (what was attached to the factory radio).

Here's the other end that needs to be connected to the harness. This is the harness end that connects to the Pioneer AVH-P4300DVD. In the photo below I ended up separating the clump of wires into speaker vs non-speaker wires. Pretty easy. Find wires that are the same color (each pair will have with a black stripe down it).

Next you have to do some color matching! From one harness to the next match the same color wires. Green to Green. Green/Black to Green/Black. Purple to Purple. You get the drill. There are several different ways to join wires. I prefer soldering. Soldering is one of those skills that I believe all functional adults should be capable of. If you don't know how, google it and watch some youtube videos.

To make this easy for myself I stripped the wire ends and then bent the ends so they hooked into each other.

After soldering, there's a nice strong joint.

FYI. As I stated earlier, all wires that go to speakers come in pairs (one with a black strip, the grounding wire). The red wire is the accessory wire that turns the radio on after the car is turned on (or to accessory). The yellow and black wires are power and ground. The blue/white wire is a remote turn on wire. This is going to go to the antenna amplifier and the power amp in the back (so in this case I already know I'll have to undo the electrical tape and join a 3rd wire). The light purple goes to the reverse gear wire; I'll have to find this in the car. The light green wire goes to the parking brake; which I plan on bypassing with a relay. The orange wire is for illumination; I've never seen it used for a practical purpose although it's supposed to dim the display when your headlights come on.

You can see I have almost all the wires soldered and wrapped in electrical tape. For the ground wire, one harness terminated with a fork. I decided I should probably keep that just because having another grounding option is always good. I ended up splicing the other harness's ground wire into it so we've got a Y going on.

Pretty much everything done.

Aside from that I could also mount the new radio to its mounting bracket. Easily done.

 

great write up

as an FYI here is a great how too guide on connecting wires (a little late now though)

Connection options, splicing wires and how to do it right, and WRONG!

 

love the writeup! keep it coming! lots of pics are a :29:

 

taiguy! your killing me, this is by far the best car stereo thread ive seen, amazing pictures and great documentation, but I need more updates! I cant wait to see more!

 

just got back from brunch. plan on doing a bunch today

 

So a lot done today!

I covered the door panels with some extra closed cell foam to further reduce road noise.

I trimmed the speaker ports to gain a bit of clearance for the woofer. Turns out it wasn't enough, but I'll get back to that.

Putting the doors back on isn't too tough. Make sure you hook the top lip in first! The entire door panel will "sit" into the groove at the top and then you just push all the plastic trim pins in.

Here's the front passenger door. Before putting the panel back on.

View of the interior

Again, you want to have the top of the door panel "sit" first. There will be a gap at the bottom.

Be careful with the internal connectors. It seemed convenient enough to push them into one of the many holes in the inner panel. This is a no-no as I found out. My window wouldn't go all the way down because it was getting jammed up on the plastic connector for the door controls.

After straightening that out I tested the speakers with the stock radio. Things sounded better however, I noticed I was getting rattling from the front doors. Bugger. Seems like the surrounds were contacting the speaker grill. I took off the passenger door panel again and did some more shaving with the Dremel. Still rattling a bit. It looks like I could've cut a bit more from the mounting bracket and been ok. I still had a good 2-3" of clearance between the speaker magnet and the window.

I'm going to wait until I get my new headunit in and configured to cross the low frequencies out to the sub. Hopefully that minimizes cone excursion enough. We'll see.

 

The next step was taking the old radio out. I tried using the factory directions for removing the radio.... No go. I was just making marks on my dash trying to pry those clips out. I remembered member 'nikbrewer' and his suggestion of pushing from the back after taking out the console. It works! Wonderfully!

Start by removing the rubber mat in the bottom console pocket.

This is the mat/tray after you take it out. Nice bit of insulation there subaru.

Next step is taking the shifter knob off. I have an automatic so I can't just unscrew it. Pop the plastic chrome trim piece off. You can just pull down and it'll come off.

Next slide the retaining clip forward and it'll come off easily as well.

Pull up on the shifter and it comes out.

As others have stated, there is a fair amount of grease on the bottom. Don't put it on fabric. I rested mine on one of the all weather mats.

Start prying the center console off at one of the corners, it should pop off pretty easily. Get the next corner as well.

On the bottom we've got 3 plugs (at least for mine). It has 2 plugs for the heated seats. White is for the driver side. Brown is for the passenger. The small connector in the middle is for illuminating the shift letters.

Set that aside and let's start removing the side panels from the console. You have to unscrew two screws per side.

After taking those two screws out you can pop the side panels off. I started from the back and made my way to the front.

You can see all the plastic clips (the yellow ones). The on the very end (skinny side, toward front of car) can be a bit stubborn. Make sure you grasp at the base of the clip and just push out.

ta-da!

 

Like I said earlier. Easiest way to remove the front console trim (radio piece) is to push from behind. It literally just pops out in one piece. No need to pry from various corners.

Remove the center console top piece and the 2 side pieces. Stick an arm up behind the middle pocket and push. You'll feel the spongy insulation on the back. A little force and it all comes out.

Here's what I was referring to. I pushed on the back of this.

Set that aside and take a look at the factory radio. Mounted like most double DIN setups with 2 screws on each side.

Use a #2 phillips head to remove the screws.

After you've taken out all 4 screws, you can simply slide the radio forward. It's still connected in the back, so don't yank too hard.

Disconnect all of the connectors. The big one with all the colorful wires is obviously the main radio harness. The small black one I can only guess is a dedicated ground wire (will test later with a multimeter). Not sure what the 3rd one is with the red, white, and gray wires.

Backside of the stock radio

The radio is still tethered by one other cable. The antenna cable. It's a long pigtail for sure. Pop the clip off at the bottom. It's easiest to reach this from the side console panel (remember we removed this one?) on the driver side.

The connector has a small pin on the back. Just yank it out.

No more radio!

Test fitting the new head unit and mounting bracket. I'm a bit worried it won't sit flush with the rest of the trim. Guess I'll find out later.

The top tab lines up perfectly

The bottom tab wasn't a perfect fit though. Will see how much I have to muscle it to get it to screw down later.

 

Disconnect all of the connectors. ... The small black one I can only guess is a dedicated ground wire

Yes, it's a redundant chassis ground (the radio harness has a ground wire too).

Not sure what the 3rd one is with the red, white, and gray wires.

There is also a Black/Red. Those are from the 3.5mm aux jack in the armrest center console. In models with the harman/kardon amp, there will be one more wire for the amp remote turn-on.

A tip on the antenna plugs: Do not pull the wires! Those gray connectors are fragile. Several people have accidentally ripped the little coax wire out of the crimped terminals. Only hold the plastic connectors. There is a latch release button on one side of the car's plug.

 

Im going to have to say your going to little sparingly with the noise dampeners to actually do any type of noise suppression. Im sure it will help with rattling of coarse but i dont think it would cut down on the road noise one bit.

Just sayin...

Looking good!

Im going to be finally putting in a sub soo...cant figure out if i want to go BIG...or small....
Sooo here what im thinking about.
8 inch kicker solo classic(needs .33 cu sqft box)....OR a 15 inch kicker solo classic(needs 1.25 cu sqft box)....

Like i said....big or small....I just cant figure it out. Whats funny is that its going to cost the same to go with either one!!
Amp for the 15 inch is $164 900W rms kenwood.
Amp for 8 inch is $134 400w rms kicker.

Ok so it might be $120(bigger speaker wiring and a capacitor) more for a 15, not much of a difference though...I just cant choose which one i want...if i knew...I would have it in right now!!!

 

Im going to be finally putting in a sub soo...cant figure out if i want to go BIG...or small....
Sooo here what im thinking about.
8 inch kicker solo classic(needs .33 cu sqft box)....OR a 15 inch kicker solo classic(needs 1.25 cu sqft box)....

Like i said....big or small....I just cant figure it out. Whats funny is that its going to cost the same to go with either one!!
Amp for the 15 inch is $164 900W rms kenwood.
Amp for 8 inch is $134 400w rms kicker.

Actually, as I found out from the local auto tech guys that I got my set up from, the smaller the woofer the larger the amp needs to be. I guess the larger the woofer is the more efficient the magnet is so the less power you need to drive it.

In that sense, the 15 inch wouldn't even be that much more than the 8 inch (if you switched amps), but really?!? A 15? Where are you going to put it? It's going to eat up your cargo space!

In any case, the smallest I would go with is a 10. The OBWs are pretty massive and I doubt you'd notice too much difference with an 8.

 

Let's get started with the amp power wire.

Start by disconnecting the ground wire from the battery. I know I know. I'm supposed to do this before mucking with the radio. Luckily most everything inside is properly insulated. Engine bay, not so much. It's a 10mm socket that loosens the bolt.

Earlier I had located a very convenient grommet on the top of the firewall just to the right of the big one where the wire bundle is going through. it's shaped like a pill (not a circle).

Pry the rubber cap off and put it somewhere.

I'm using 8 gauge wire but 4 would easily fit as well. My power needs aren't huge and I'm cool with 300 watts going to the back. Start threading it through, and point it to the right (or the drivers side).

It will pop out directly under the steering wheel next to the brake pedal.

You can see the steering column.

Start removing the plastic trim retainers around the carpet. You can just remove the ones on the left. I removed the ones on the right as well and didn't need to in the end. Unscrew and then pry off.

The side trim came up really easily. Just pull with your fingers.

Pop the front side piece off afterwards. I freakin hate the pink trim clips. I mean seriously. They suck. Most of them don't even come out properly.

Here's that piece from the backside. You can see where those pink trim clips were supposed to be attached.

I started popping the carpet piece up. It's stapled down to a black plastic piece.

In the end I said **** it and just ripped the carpet up from the staples. Much easier than trying to get the black plastic piece to come up. Snake the power wire down under the carpet and around the side.

 

Move to the back seats. We need to get these up and out if we're going to run the wire under them. There's no lever or strap to pull. There are two metal loops/hooks that are in plastic grommets. Put a hand on either side of a hook and then yank up. It'll pop. Have faith.

This is where it came out of.

With the seat out of the way let's turn our attention to the side trim piece. Just pull on it. Pay attention to the white trim clip though. Mine wouldn't come out easily so I just slide it out.

There's the trim panel

We need to get the power wire under this to the back.

To get more room to work with we need to remove the center pillar lower trim panel. Remove the weather stripping layer. I only removed half, just so I coudl get to the center column more easily.

There's two trim clips on the bottom (left and right), and two more at the top.

Yea... I said F U to the staples holding the carpet down.

With the staples out and the center pillar trim off you can easily route the amp wire to the back.

And it makes it out the backend. yay.

Now to get it to the cargo area.

I cleared out all the junk in the cargo area first. The foam pieces that seem like they're attached to the frame. They're just trim clipped in. Just yank up on them and they'll pop out.

Here's looking from back to front. Going to snake the wire through that gap.

The amp wire is now through to the back!

 

The 15 Needs a 1.25 sq ft sealed box...not very big...at all. Im going to make a 18x19x9 box for it out of birch.... With the solo classic thats all you need!

The box will be completely/easily removable if i needed more space. I have a roof rack if needed. The kid in me wants the 15 and the old person(im 26)in me wants the 8 inch.

But...i just cant figure out if thats what i want or not...

 

the 15 needs a 1.25 sq ft sealed box...not very big...at all. Im going to make a 18x19x9 box for it out of birch.... With the solo classic thats all you need!

The box will be completely/easily removable if i needed more space. I have a roof rack if needed. The kid in me wants the 15 and the old person(im 26)in me wants the 8 inch.

But...i just cant figure out if thats what i want or not...

go big

 

taiguy your walk through is really turning out great!

 

We're going to end up lifting up the entire center console so we can route the signal, trigger, and camera wires through the middle.

Get started by popping off the covers on both sides of the rear of the center console. Inside you'll find a big screw. You need to use a Phillips #3 for it. You'll end up stripping/slipping with a #2.

The rear carpet also has black trim clips holding the carpet in place. These are different from the white and pink ones we've seen so far. These don't have a bulb on the end. Just pop them up.

You can see the wires running around

Let's move forward again and gather up all the wires we need to run out back (hah a pun). You can see here the RCA cables that will feed into the sub amp. I threaded them through the center console and up to where the new head unit will be.

Here is the RCA cable going to the back of the car. The center connector is the auxiliary 12v power port in the center console. The connector to the right is the auxiliary input for audio.

The RCA cable is plenty long and snakes back. However, we want it under the carpet.

I finally got to removing the connectors for the heated seats and what not since I have to lift up the center console.

After lifting up the console you can see where the rca cable is.

After some futzing around I managed to get the rca cables under the carpet. It's kind of tight down there. They put plenty of carpet padding which makes it a bit tough to snake things through.

I did some ziptie-ing of the signal, remote, and camera wires.

To make it easier, I taped the remote (blue) wire and the camera (black) wire to the RCA cable that had already been snaked through under the carpet. This way I could just pull on the RCA and it would bring the other two with it. :29:

Huzzah!

You can tuck the cables under the mounting bracket

All sealed up again!