[bluejunior]

same here, the MOMO's and the RFp2's and alpines were all heavily clearanced (btw for those looking for such things every yeare form late spring to early summer a lot of the online warehouse retailers get new models in and heavily clearance the old ones, crutchfield especially gets GREAT DEALS that time of year...my subs/box wer 190 off) i literally bought the last THA475 speaker amp, and the visonik sub amp is a piece of crap. my head unit, the most high-end part of the system (retail 550) was free cuz its internal amp is fried, all the controls inputs and preamp outputs work but it cant drive speakers on its own at all, it shuts down into protection if you turn its internal amp on lol

[bluejunior]

i know but i have a habit of blowing speakers and amps cuz i push em too hard. and crutchfield has a habit of sending me new ones for free. and mine was a cheap clarion HU and one set of polk db's, then worked up from there. I do use the discount sites when shopping for others im well aware of discoutn warehouse sites, craigs list and ebay being great otions to save money, they're just not as easy to work with you break the stuff lol. I understand i cost myself money. its a concious choice. though i am aware it is somewhat illogical i feel much more comfortable in the transction this way. and the system as it is sounds great. i cant max it in the car cuz my ears cant take it (despite lack of true bass due to my cheap amp, it actually blends quite well) and thats all i need.

[kboyts]

Originally Posted by alexrule123

Trust me I am not made of money, I got 90% of my stuff from Craigslist or from deals I found online. My friend got the $800 jls for $400 because they were the floor model at sound advice. The cdts I picked up for $170. I paid $250 for my w6 which retails for over $560. I paid $150 for my 500/1...etc etc. It just took me around 3 or so years to get the system i have now. Trust me I know about trying to save money. The only thing I paid retail on were the focals.

edit: I am not trying to bash your knowledge but I am trying to say in my own round about way that you can get better quality for around the same price as the speakers you are talking about. Also just to give you some info on my background with car audio.. I started with a $50 Jensen from walmart and a lightning Audio amp I got from ebay and at the time I thought it was the coolest setup ever.

LOL I still remember my first "system" A jensen 17 wattx2 RMS amp wired into my fusebox, running two "thump" brand 10's in truck boxes with piezo horns . The subs had a bright green foam surround and I was running them full range with no crossover. Thought it was awesome until I started talking to people with real systems then made it a mission to get rid of the garbage I had bought and build it right.

Then progressed to 2 8' internally amplified bass tubes and blaupunkt 6.5's, that was a little better. THat set of blau's was the best set of coaxs Ive owned, I abused them for many years in many different vehicles when I was young.

Then Finally I got a used pair of Orion Cobalt 12's and a 150 x2 (RMS) sherwood amp. That system last me quite a few years and sounded great. They were Orions budget model but as any one whos been around stereo's for a few years can tell you. They sure dont make em like they used too

[Zamboni One XJ]

bluejunior
Registered User
2001 XJ Cherokee

i know but i have a habit of blowing speakers and amps cuz i push em too hard. and crutchfield has a habit of sending me new ones for free.

If you system was set up properly and tuned, you wouldn't be blowing up speakers and amps. I competed with the same set of speakers and subs for three years, never once did they tear up or even make that smell subs make when they are hot. I competed in the 0-600 watt class, box was tuned to 49hz. It sounded great for daily driving and I was consistantly in the low 140dB range, depending on the mic, in my XJ. We also had a comp car set up in the unlimited class. We never blow amps, but the subs were right at the cusp of there operating limits. But they were comp subs, we rebuilt the voice coils ourselves. They care was Black betty. We competed in USAC. It had 25 1000w amps and 15 dry cell batterys and two ho alts pushing 25000watts through 4 15 crossfire subs. The loudest she hit was 174.2 at world finals. Only good enough for fourth place. My point is, you should be smoking equipment as often as it sounds like you are. If I am off, I apologize. I am not trying to be harsh or anything, I am just an audionut, such as yourself.

I have blown my share of equipment. My rookie years had plenty of installing and uninstalling, redoing and what nots. I learned from those experiences. Crutchfield will catch up with you. They just won't sell you anything more. Maybe in this economy they might be happy someone is buying. I say support you local audio shop. Hang out there, get to know the staff. Pick there brains and eventually you may end up with a job. Thats the path I took anyway. Sounds like you have a great background, take sometime and fine tune your equipment.

[rettags]

Can you go into some more detail about mounting rear door speakers? I'd like to add some here, but am curious about wiring them up. I'm installing Alpine Type R coaxial in the roof, their components in the front doors and 2 10" Type R's woofers in the cargo area. If I were to add rear door speakers (5 1/4") can I piggy back the wiring from the roof speakers? Keep in mind these are just going to be running off the power from the deck, only the subs have their own amp.

PS - Good thread. Lot of useful info, especially for people like me who don't deal much with audio!!

[kboyts]

Originally Posted by rettags

Can you go into some more detail about mounting rear door speakers? I'd like to add some here, but am curious about wiring them up. I'm installing Alpine Type R coaxial in the roof, their components in the front doors and 2 10" Type R's woofers in the cargo area. If I were to add rear door speakers (5 1/4") can I piggy back the wiring from the roof speakers? Keep in mind these are just going to be running off the power from the deck, only the subs have their own amp.

PS - Good thread. Lot of useful info, especially for people like me who don't deal much with audio!!

If you plan to piggy back them like that I would recommend wiring them in series like this-


That will put them at a higher impedance and they wont get as much power as your fronts, but you typically want the rear speakers only for fill and would have them attenuated down from the fronts anyways.

If you ran them wired in parallel they would be running at 2 Ohms (assuming they are all 4 ohm speakers) . This will cause you headunit amp to strain and possibly overheat/fry. Most headunits arent built near as strong as an aftermarket amp and dont like low impedance setups. Plus even if it didnt overheat, youd be pushing more power to your rear speakers which would ruin any imaging you might be able to get from the Jeep.

[rettags]

Originally Posted by kboyts

If you plan to piggy back them like that I would recommend wiring them in series like this-


That will put them at a higher impedance and they wont get as much power as your fronts, but you typically want the rear speakers only for fill and would have them attenuated down from the fronts anyways.

If you ran them wired in parallel they would be running at 2 Ohms (assuming they are all 4 ohm speakers) . This will cause you headunit amp to strain and possibly overheat/fry. Most headunits arent built near as strong as an aftermarket amp and dont like low impedance setups. Plus even if it didnt overheat, youd be pushing more power to your rear speakers which would ruin any imaging you might be able to get from the Jeep.

Thanks for the info. So to make sure I have this correct:

1. Run the positive wire from harness to (+) of roof speaker, then from roof speaker to (+) of door speaker.
2. Run negative wire from harness to (-) of roof speaker, then from roof speaker to (-) of door speaker.

Do you know what gauge wire I should be using for this, should I go with 12 gauge?

[kboyts]

Originally Posted by rettags

Thanks for the info. So to make sure I have this correct:

1. Run the positive wire from harness to (+) of roof speaker, then from roof speaker to (+) of door speaker.
2. Run negative wire from harness to (-) of roof speaker, then from roof speaker to (-) of door speaker.

Do you know what gauge wire I should be using for this, should I go with 12 gauge?

like this -
Radio harness + to roof speaker +
roof speaker - to door speaker +
door speaker - to radio harness -

Then repeat for the other side. This will put your rear door speaker on the same channel as the rear roof speaker on that side. So you can still use the F/R fader, and Balance controls will still handle L/R.

12 gauge would be fine for what your doing. You could probably get away with 14 if you wanted but bigger is always better when it comes to wiring, plus it leaves room for improvement should you decide you want to power them with an amp down the road.

[slvrathlon]

My entire setup is JL and I love it. Super clean, sounds perfect in the cabin, and it's LOUD. All speakers and Sub. The sub is a 10w3. My HU is Pioneer.

Pics (Don't mind the dog toy):

[rettags]

Originally Posted by kboyts

like this -
Radio harness + to roof speaker +
roof speaker - to door speaker +
door speaker - to radio harness -

Then repeat for the other side. This will put your rear door speaker on the same channel as the rear roof speaker on that side. So you can still use the F/R fader, and Balance controls will still handle L/R.

12 gauge would be fine for what your doing. You could probably get away with 14 if you wanted but bigger is always better when it comes to wiring, plus it leaves room for improvement should you decide you want to power them with an amp down the road.

Nice, thanks for clearing it up, and for giving me a new project for the weekend !

[rigRoller]

Great thread. I very recently got into car audio, with my first project being a new stereo and Sony speakers to replace the stock speakers. What I thought was a faulty speaker turned out to be bad speaker wiring to the front passenger door. Is this something I could do myself? Any links would be greatly appreciated, I'd much rather fix this myself than take it somewhere.

[rideboarder589]

my girlfriend has a 91 wrangler ( i have a cherokee---the better of the two) and when i ordered her speakers the internet guides told me her half doors took 5 1/4...well they dont...they take 4 in just like the sound bar...how should i go about fitting the 5 1/4 since i cant return them?

[bluejunior]

Originally Posted by rideboarder589

my girlfriend has a 91 wrangler ( i have a cherokee---the better of the two) and when i ordered her speakers the internet guides told me her half doors took 5 1/4...well they dont...they take 4 in just like the sound bar...how should i go about fitting the 5 1/4 since i cant return them?

the difference between stock fours and aftermarket 5 1/4 speakers isnt huge, it should be very easy to just cut away the edge of the factory speaker hole till your new speaker fits. most likely the basket (the three to four metal bars that surround the woofer cone and connect the magnet to the frame holding the surroun) is what's too big. Hold the speaker up to the hole, mark where the basket hits the hole and keeps itself from going in. take good dykes or tin snips, or a hack saw blade, depending on what you have around, cut a slit on each side of where the basket is hiting, bend those tabs back, and now the speaker should be able to slide in nicely. Take a power drill and a hardened steel (NOT carbide) bit, drill AT LEAST two holes for mounting screws to hold in the new speaker, and then put your door panel on (dont forget to hook the speaker up somewhere in there, did that once)

[bluejunior]

If you system was set up properly and tuned, you wouldn't be blowing up speakers and amps. I competed with the same set of speakers and subs for three years, never once did they tear up or even make that smell subs make when they are hot. I competed in the 0-600 watt class, box was tuned to 49hz

my blowing amps and speakers, well, i blew one amp, and its ground circuit shorted internally so when i turned it on....lets just say it let the magic smoke out. I upgrade components in my system one at a time. So when i bought 75W rms front component speakers, the next thing i bout was a 75W four channel speaker amp. problem of course being, i was still running 45W rear speakers. And i blew two infinty basslink subs and those are powered subs supposedly custom made for their amp. I also managed to blow infinity 75W RMS speakers on a 200hz low-pass filter (the lower frequencies holding much of the wattage) with what was supposed to be a 75W RMS amp....interestingly enough, the 45W polk coax speakers survided that same song...and the rear gain was turned up higher. go figure.

[bluejunior]

Originally Posted by rettags

Nice, thanks for clearing it up, and for giving me a new project for the weekend !

this configuration is called in series, it INCREASES the resistance your amp experiences, that way the amp in your head unit is given a lower load than it can handle. However if both your rear and your front speakers are 4-ohm (almost all aftermarkets other than infintity and JBL are, but it should say on the box) then you should wire them in PARALLELtwo four ohm speakers wired in parallel grant a 2ohm load to the head unit, which wont blow it, but WILL get more power from it than wiring them in series (which grants an 8ohm resistance). to wire in parallel (once again only wire in parallel if both sets are 4 ohm) to wire in paralle simply tap the wires to the orginal speaker.

To run in parallel tap the positive lead to the roof speaker, and connect it to the positive lead on the door speaker. Then tap the negative lead to the roof speaker, and run that to the negative lead on the door speaker.

IMPORTANT NOTEs ON XJ REAR DOOR SPEAKERS:

1)it is VERY possible that the tweeter on the coax speaker will press against the inside of your door panel slightly, this certainly doesn't ruin anything, and the panel still closes just fine on the three sets ive done like that.

2) i have only attempted the install on '00 and '01 cherokees

3)at high volumes ESPECIALLY without bass blockers the woofer's surround has a good chance of extending far enough to make contact with the door panel, it doesnt kill the speaker, but it does muffle the sound a bit and reduce the speakers life, this happens most often where the door panel curves down to meet the door itself, mount the speaker as far towards the center of the door as possible to avoid this. consider bass blockers for the deepest of sounds.....well deepest for small round speakers....80hz or 100hz to reduce this impact as well

4) in the '00 and '01s that ive worked on, the hole accepts without modification (other than screw holes) 5 1/4 and 6 1/2 speakers, as well as
4x6 ovals if you have them sitting around, up to 2 3/8" deep. This depth may be different for older XJ's but to the best of my knowedge there was no significant change, just be sure to take a tabe measure out there before you by the speakers!