I don't have a lot of background in car stereo installs, so I am not certain as to what I can use from all of this... From what I can gather the previous owner had an amp mounted behind the passenger seat? And it looks like he had the wiring for S-Pods? What in the world could that Cat5 cable be for? Can anyone help me out? I have an Alpine MRX-F30 on the way which I will be using to power the front speakers first (a set of components TBD), with a good chance that I put a single sub in a darkside box in the near future... I also have a Sony DSXS310BTX head unit on the way which is going to replace the JVC that the previous owner had installed (as well as pulling out the Rockford Fosgate speakers/tweeters he has in the doors that sound terrible...

Any help anyone can give me is hugely appreciated!












drivers side



spare tire well

 

the first 3 pics are of the fuse holder for the power wire
5th are speaker wire, most likely for sub
6th is power and ground
7th is the right speaker wire
8th is the RCA cable
9th is a phone cable for some type of controller(typically bass)
10th is the remote wire
11th is the left speaker wire
12th is some kind of controller
13th is another set of speaker wire, probably the same as the 5th pic

 

Thanks for your help, am I correct in assuming that the amp was installed behind the passenger seat?

 

You are correct. I would make sure to tape off/cap off the ends of the raw wires (and maybe remove the fuse from the fuse holder under the hood). I'd worry mainly about the red wire (power coming from the battery), and the remote wire (gets power when the radio/car is switched on).

 

Cool, will do. I'm planning on installing the amp I purchased in either the spare tire well or above the fuel tank... Should/can I re-use the wires that have already been run or do it all from scratch? Also, Ragnarok, you mentioned the left/right speaker wire from the respective photos... Am I correct in thinking those are for S-Pods? Or are those the wires that are run into the doors to amplify the speakers? Sorry if I sound lost, my only experience is in building home theater setups, those wires are a lot easier for me to trace. Alternatively, it also occurs to me that the amp was used solely for the sub he had mounted? Also, am I correct in believing the RCA cables are from the headunit?

Thanks so much again for all the help!

 

Double check everything with a multimeter before connecting any new hardware to wiring you did not install yourself. I've seen some nasty surprises on a few cars where audio equipment has been hastily removed.

 

judging from the connector ends of the speaker wire, looks like they were for speaker pods. unless you can trace the other end of the wire to see where it goes. as for the RCA cable its hard to say if its sourced from the head unit, if it was only used for a sub theres a possibility that theres a Hi Lo converter(converts speaker wire signal to RCA) you can most certainly reuse the same wire just make sure theyre working correctly, personally i would rerun the RCA cable. right now it looks like its running parallel to the power wire which would induce signal noise into the RCA cable. the main difference between home audio and car audio setup is the power source and the remote wire to turn on the amp

Input to Amp
Power - 12V source (red 8 gauge wire)
Ground - Negative (brown 8 gauge wire)
Remote - Turn On Signal from Head Unit (blue wire)
RCA - Signal Source

 

that does make sense as I do notice a faint whine when I have the headunit on, I figured it was due to some power interference somewhere. Thanks again for your help

 

Given the way that wiring looks I would ripe all of that out and rewire it. Never trust someone elses wiring job unless you know them and the work they perform is quality work.

Just ripe it out and redo it.

 

ripe it all out!