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08-11 Subwoofer Install Guide with Line out converter

34K views 9 replies 5 participants last post by  Rath Rides 
#1 · (Edited)
Hey guys, it's been 4 months since I got my car, and it's been 4 months since I have listened to music with bass!

The split display and head unit shot my hopes down when I got the car. I actually thought it had a factory sub because the speakers bump so much, but sadly not.

So the last few days I have been looking at how to do it and I found everything I needed on the forum to do it myself, BUT every single piece of information was on a different thread. So I will compile it here with some pictures.

The whole point of this is to
1. Keep the stock head unit
2. Avoid ripping the dash apart, since you don't have to
3. Install a Line Out Converter to the back speakers
4. Install a subwoofer CLEANLY



Alright so here we go! I did one side at a time, but the directions are exactly the same.

You will begin by removing the pieces shown below. They pull straight up or out and are held in by clips. Easy enough, don't break them!



Then, where the wires run from the back door into the car, you will push on the 4 spots on the grommet that say "press" then you will pull the whole connector out. Then disconnect it and pull it through the inside like this



Cut through the electric tape, careful of the wires and peel it back a few inches to give you enough room. You will then cut the following wires

Right side
+ (brown/white)
- (brown/blue)
Left side
+ (white/green)
- (brown/yellow)

Then take speaker wire which is usually silver on one side and copper colored on the other and attach it to the speaker wires. I attached the silver to the positive and the copper to the negative.

I solder all my connections. If you want to fool around with quick connects or whatever, go for it. But to me they are just a pain, are likely to fail and you'll have to find the cause of your problem later down the road. I find solder and heat shrink tube easy and quick if you already have the materials.

Once you are connected it will look like this



Then you will re-tape everything back up and it will look like this:



Now put the plug back through the pillar and connect it to the other connector and pop the grommet back in the door.

Then run your speaker wire back to your trunk. Run it under the back seat molding you took off, fold your seats down and run it to the side and into the trunk.

Leave your molding off, as you will be running your sub wire here using a 90% hidden method I figured out.

Alright so here is the speaker wire run to the back of the trunk. I ran it behind the panel on the side and up to the top.



I ran the wire on the back of the seat frame and connected my Line out converter and mounted it with 3M tape in the middle of the seat frame.

Then I pulled the extra cord back through the seat and tucked it to the side right by the edge of the back door where you first put it through the seat.

Then I electrical taped the wire against the back of the seat frame just so wires weren't dangling all over.



Now here is where I took my sub out of my old car (still sitting in driveway) and decided to clean up after my younger self. All my sub connections were like 14-16 gauge wire crimps on my 8 and 10 guage wires.

So I got the proper connectors, but instead of crimping them on, I stripped the wires, soldered the ends and then stuck them through and soldered them to the connectors. No pics of this, but I wanted to start fresh and have it look cleaner.

Connect your amp to your box
ground the amp, I put a screw through one of the metal pieces of the seat frame hanging down.
connect your newly mounted red and white rca
Connect your REM wire to whatever you want (I put it in #37 the power window/sunroof circuit breaker) Most other things left the amp on when car was off.

Now we will move onto the amp power cable.I found a rather simple way to do this, and like I said. It is 90% clean, meaning you see wire almost nowhere.

Start at the hood, leave enough room for your wire to connect to your battery. Luckily my wire is blue and my car is blue so it is easy to hide.



Then I ran it through the driver fender, right past the windshield, through the door (above all the hinges) and I found a little cap on the side which is connected to a cylinder that goes into the cab of the car. Sorry, no pics of it out but I popped that out, put my wire through it. Then you fish the wire down through the hole and it comes out right under the dash. Look in and towards the fender, behind all the modules and plugs down there you will see it has a hole to the fender. (I did this at night so I found it with a flashlight shining through the hole).



When you finally fish it through, it will be right there by the trunk button. You can see it pulled through in the picture above.

Once you get it down there, slide the cylinder you put over your wire, back into it's hole. It has a little flip cap on it like a container of M&M minis. I cut the cap off. Cut a part of it out, and put a piece of 3M tape on the inside of the cap. Then I popped it back on, so it stuck (once you cut it you disable its ability to click onto the cylinder) and ran my wire through the hole I cut and now it looks like this



Now run the power wire left above the trunk button between the two panels and shove it behind the rubber whether stripped that follows the front panel you took out in step 1. Then run it all the way back the same way you did your speaker wires.



Pop all your panels from step 1 back in. Fold your back seats up and move to the trunk and complete installation.

Btw, I get just as much signal and power as when I had it hooked straight to my head unit in my older car, it's just that much easier cause it's one less wire to run all the way.

It's kind of pointless to do it right off the radio and take your whole dash apart, when you can do the same thing from the middle of the car with less work.



What do you guys think? Seem easy enough without changing out a head unit?
 
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#3 ·
My amp just connects to my sub

It has
Left+
Left-
Right+
Right-
REM
Ground
12V

And the other side has the settings (bass, crossover, input level etc)

I am not into spending a ton of money on car audio, I hardly have it high enough to hear over the music. It's basically just filler so my speakers don't have to put out any bass but it gives the drums and bass more oomph

I think my amp was like $55, it's only 300w. It does what I want and I hardly have the bass up at all. It can rattle my car apart but I have no use for it.
 
#6 · (Edited)
What did you hook your REm wire to? just spent 2 hours in the cold trying to hook everything up... check everything along the way... line out in in trunk with both sets of speaker wire... but i cant get any power from my amp... lights wont come on... power cable is run with fuse and it is grounded to trunk... wehn i had power on and was grounded it the bare ground wire was getting some sparks so i know it had power... also i mounted my remote wire in to the insturment cluster but nothing... any9one have any idea?
 
#7 ·
What do you mean by the instrument cluster? I did mine a little different than A7 (I wish your guide was here a year ago!) I did it mostly the same except my amp didn't need a line out converter. I have my remote wire connected to an add a circuit fuse tap going to the fuse for the radio. I wired a switch in also.
 
#9 ·
I will try and get some pics this weekend, by the time I get off work it's dark out now.

Really want to redo mine, was a lot of trial and error sadly.

For your remote wire the easiest thing is to get one of these fuse taps:
add-a-circuit

You plug that into a fuse that will be on when the car is like the radio, I believe that is what mine it connected to. You put it in place of the original fuse, plug the fuse you took out in and you need another fuse the same amp rating for the new circuit.

If you want you can add a switch, the wire running from the add-a-circuit goes to the power terminal on the switch (prob says 12v or something) and one to ground (there's a screw on the left of the fuse box) and then other terminal back to the amp.

Also, I didn't cut or solder any of the factory wires (did cut one by accident when I wasn't paying attention) I just used wire tap-ins and from the taps ran speaker wire to a plug in adapter that came with my amp. If you can, solder it like A7x did it looks a lot cleaner.
 
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