I recently bought some component speakers to replace the door 6x9s and dash 5-1/4 speakers in my 2002 Caravan. I'm having troubles figuring out how to run new speaker wire to the door speakers. I see there's a wire harness where the door meets the door frame (for removing the door, I guess?). I could probably either use or replace the speaker wire from the speaker to the harness, but I'm not sure how to get the wire from the crossover to the harness on the door frame side.
Has anyone done this or did you come up with another solution? I'm also looking for tips on where and how to mount the crossover. Looking under the dash, I'll probably just strap it to something on each side, but again, if you came up with a good spot / solution, I'd appreciate any tips.
That would be ideal of course, but because these are component speakers, it complicates things a bit. Instead of speaker wire going directly from the deck to the speakers, the wire will first go to the component crossover, where it is then split and separate wires go to the tweeter in the dash and the 6" woofer in the door.
Maybe I just don't understand.. but if you take a speaker out (disconnect the terminals) and install a speaker in the same place, then reconnect the terminals from the old speaker what difference does it make?
are you running bigger gauge wire for the components? due to a amp upgard then
u will need to piggybac wires the best you can in the boot to the bbot are remove the factory wires and replace with your new ones, if not then use the factory wires on both side of the door and jamb like were it goes thru th ekick panel t the door jamb boots and hook up your crossover there but the factory only tells you which one is positive in th e factory manual so you will need to get tahat figured out or you will be wasting your time i hope you got a new head unit>
Component speakers are different than your typical full range speakers in that they are separated into two speakers (tweeter and woofer) each getting specific frequencies from the crossover. The deck speaker wires go to the crossover first. Here's a diagram that shows a typical wiring for component configuration:
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The black rectangle represents the crossover.
Whereas your typical two or three way full range speakers have the tweeter as part of the woofer speaker. In this case, the wires from the deck go straight to the speaker.
The wire isn't being upgraded due to a bigger gauge, I just thought it would be better to run new wire since in the Caravan, the dash speakers are running in parallel with the door speakers. The new components would definitely not support this type of wiring, not to mention they need to be directly wired to the crossover.
I do have an after market deck in - the pci bus you mention, would I only need to worry about that with a factory deck? I'm not sure what it is.
Michael wrote in news:8g71b2hni1njcjpeehqbtiqcj2jps8p2u4@
4ax.com:
Your best bet is to replace the 6x9 with the woofer and just add the tweeter to the door close to ear level. You can either leave the dash speaker intact (bad option) or simply disconnect it (much better option).
Ditch the original 6x9 and connect the crossover to the wire that used to be connected to the 6x9. (just lay the crossover in the bottom of the door). Be sure to hook plus to plus and minus to minus.
Mount the tweeter on the door close to ear level and run the wire down behind the door panel to the crossover, which is already sitting in the bottom of the door.
Unless you want to reroute the wire from the crossover to the tweeter back through the door into the passenger compartment and up to the dash (big PITA), the tweeter in the door is the way to go.
Thanks for the suggestions. I guess I had originally set out to put the tweeter in the dash location to prevent any permanent scaring of the interior of the van (in case I choose to take the speakers with me when it's time for a new vehicle).
Also, I was figuring I'd place the crossover under the dash which would have easy access to the tweeter, but then it makes it challenging to get wire to the woofer, unless I can find the factory speaker wire heading to the door, and just connect it to the crossover instead.
One thing I'm not sure of is how the factory dash / door speakers are wired in parallel. Do they split right at the factory harness? Is it spliced somewhere along the way? I guess if it was spliced anywhere after the crossover placement, it wouldn't really matter since it wouldn't be connecting to anything any way. The tweeters are pre-wired and would just connect directly to the crossover.
Hmmm... more to think about. Thanks for your time.
Michael wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
Might not be worth it unless you're looking to sell the van within a year or two. If you really want to though, you could simply put back the stock pieces and stick a "button" or some kind of "attractive screw" where the hole for the component tweeter was. This also eliminates resplicing the wiring under the dash when you put the OEM speakers back.
You can do that, but then you'd have to find the wires leading to the door speakers and tap into that, which is a big PITA. If you sell the vehicle and take your components with you, you then have to resplice the wires back, leaving a bit of a mess.
My guess is that all speakers run full range, as I doubt that DC would spend the money on true crossovers in an OEM system. My '03 Dakota with the Infinity Premium Sound (which wasn't too 'premium' btw) is that way - the woofer in the door ran full range and the tweeter in the sail panel simply had a filter on it to cut off the low frequencies. So in essence, the wiring to both the woofer and the tweeter carried the entire full range.
I would guess that the van's wiring simply runs the dash and door speakers full range right to the head unit (or amps as the case may be). If both the dash and door speakers are 'front' when you use the head unit's fader, this is most likely the case. To find out for sure, you'll probably need the wiring diagrams for your vehicle. I obtained mine from the dealer - he simply copied the few appropriate pages from his shop manual for me.
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