jungle

I bought a 00 a couple of months ago with a stock head unit and shortly after I upgraded to a Pioneer MVH-S501BS. I knew that eventually I would like to get an amp and component speakers and possibly a sub. Today I decided to make more room in the trunk and take out the spare tire and to my surprise there was an Alpine MRV-T707 to the left of it tucked in there. When I hooked up my head unit there was only the blue rectangle and the black circular plug to plug in which means the amp is not connected to my HU, right? It looks like theres a bundle of cables wrapped in black coming out of the of the amp and going through a hole on the left towards the front of the car. Where does that hole lead to? I looked for that black bundle behind the HU and couldn't find it.

Edit: Oh and please dont tell me my HU and this amp aren't compatible

1st pic is behind the head unit and the rest are of the face of the amp and left of it

oth

an amp needs the following connections:

• heavy-gauge power wire hooked directly to the battery (+12v) - likely the red one
• heavy-gauge chassis ground attached to the body somewhere - likely the blue one, though ideally these should be the same gauge
• input wires - depending on the amp, they could be low-level (RCA's) or high-level (speaker wires), coming from the headunit
• output (speaker) wires, either heading into the doors directly to the speakers, or hooking to the car's headunit harness thus using the factory wiring to get into the doors
• possibly a turn-on wire, though some amps auto-sense a signal and turn themselves on

These wires would usually be run through one or both of the sills below the door(s).
You appear to have two pairs of speaker wire added to the factory harness. I suspect these sent the signal from the OEM headunit back to the amp as the OEM headunit doesn't
RCA outputs.
From here, there are two possibilities:

1. The amp was being used in two-channel mode, to drive the door speakers
2. The amp was being used in mono mode to drive a subwoofer, no longer present.

A clue would be in the position of the "input mode" switch, which appears to me to be in the middle "stereo" position, but it's a little hard to tell in the picture.
If true, I'd guess the amp is already hooked up and functioning normally, even with your new headunit. Does it get warm? Does your music get loud?

jungle

Thanks for coming through with such an informative post. There is a cable connected to the red terminal which has a fuse in it and taking it out prevented me from hearing sound. I also checked the temp like you said and it does get a bit warmer than the rest of the metal in the trunk during loud sessions. I took off a door panel and sure enough there was aftermarket speakers in there and they do bump really good. I was hesitant before thinking if they are stock I shouldnt go too loud and blow them. I was driving top down on the highway yesterday bumping full blast and it sounds pretty damn good lol. Im stoked.

I took my car to two car stereo stores before I saw your post. First one the owner told me that amp is ONLY for subs and wouldnt work with my component speakers . He told me to remove the fuse next to the battery saying that wasnt doing anything. He goes "yea man so since your amp can only do subs I have a few inside I can give you a deal on" ... what a scumbag. I didnt believe him so I took the car to the second store and the dude basically said everything you did and confirmed that I'm all set up.

These speakers are pretty old and have tweeters in the center. I might want to replace them with component speakers with separate tweeters at some point so I can aim the tweeters at the seats. Since its all set up I would just have to mess around with a couple of connections right?

Thanks

oth

Moving from the coaxial speakers you have to a component set with separate tweeters has a few issues:
1) mounting the crossovers - theres's a spot in the door, so this isn't a challenge for most speakers
2) mounting the woofers - they likely won't fit in the stock speaker baskets, so you'll need to substitute a spacer. If you already have aftermarket speakers this
may already have been done.
3) mounting the tweeter - this is the big challenge. Later cars came with a separate tweeter, so one approach is to source door panels, or just the tweeter pods,
from a later car. Alternately you can use the supplied mounting cup, but this will involve cutting your door panels.
The good news as that you shouldn't need to rewire, other than the wiring between the crossover and the woofer + tweeter which is easy.

jungle

This is what my speakers look like. I will probably hold off on any upgrades and go to some meets to see what people's setups are like and if its worth upgrading further.

Thanks for your help