mWags

I got slowed down in this upgrade, haven't been feeling well, but I'll be working on this again over the long weekend. At the moment the back of the rear seat is pulled out and I'm going to mount the amp to the rear wall of the cab.

Now for the question... I have a 4 channel amp which will power the front component speakers and the sub. I'd like to leave the oem speakers in the back doors attached for some rear fill if I & when I want it. With that said something has me wondering. If I tap into the rear speaker wires (not cut) them I'm going to have a signal going from the HU to the rear speakers and to the line in on my amp (high level input). When I fade the sound from back to front will that effect the signal feeding the amp? In other words, say I fade all the way to the front will that stop any signal or lower the volume of the sub? Common sense tells me it would effect the signal to the amp and subsequently the sound of the sub. But, I'm just not sure...

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. If it does effect the signal then I'll just cut the speaker wire to the rear speakers and not hook them up.

Thanks...

GATORB8

Yes, the fader will affect it.

Does the instruction manual tell you exactly what the 2 Channel mode does? It may allow you to use just a front signal for both sets of channels.

If not, try splitting your front signal to both sets of speaker inputs.

mWags

The Amp has two sets of high level inputs. Could I just split the signal from the front speakers and feed both front and rear speaker level inputs with it on the amp? Seems like that would do the trick.... That would save running another set of speaker wires to the rear as well for the second input.

Here's what the inputs look like:

GATORB8

That should do the trick.

Durand4

i'd go with a jl sub. they are a lot cleaner of a sound

mWags

Okay, finally got the install mostly done and I've got, I hope, a small problem. At very low / no volume I hear a whine. Not overly loud but you can hear it. My setup is: factory head unit -> high level input on the amp -> back to sub / component speakers in the door. Here's what I've done so far:

I've had the ground attached to the back of the cab with a self tapping screw. I removed the paint down to the metal first. Then, I tried attaching the ground to the cab with one of the bolts that's used to hold those straps on towards the top of the cab. Attached the same way, bare metal to ground cable. Thirdly I simply place it under the seat bolt without grinding down the paint, etc. Whine is always there although somewhat worse under the half *****ed seat bolt move. Meaning I didn't really pull the whole metal piece up on the seat bolt and sand the paint under it etc. Anyway...

Then, I unplugged the inputs (high level inputs which is part of the amp) from the amp. The whine disappeared.

The whine is only there when the engine is on. Engine is off but in accessory mode on the inginition music plays fine and at low volume no whine.

So, I "think" my ground from my amp is okay from what I've read. I believe tomorrow I'll pull the head unit and see if unplugging the antenna, if that's possible and removing / moving the ground to the head unit will help. However, I'm certainly open to suggestions.

Another thing, I ran the power cable down the passenger's side and the speaker wire down the drivers side, for inputs and back to the speakers again, down the driver's side.

Any ideas would be appreciated. As far as the system goes it sounds great. I'm very pleased.

07screwon37s

Did you connect the high level converter behind the radio and run rca's to the amp? If you did, did you run the rca's beside the power wire? Sometime the alternator whine can bleed onto the rca's. You could try moving the rca's away from the power wire and see if it gets any better.

07screwon37s

Sorry, I just noticed you said you used the high level inputs on the amp and not a converter. I need to start reading better...lol. Anyway same principle here. The stock speaker wires running from the HU to the rear where you tapped into might have the power wire running right next them and still bleeding. It sounds like its getting into your inputs somehow and the amp is just amplifying the whine also. You could try moving the power wire away a little or go the converter route and run some shielded rca's back to the amp.

mWags

Hey, thanks for responding. The high level converter is part of the amp itself. No RCA cables at all. I've used speaker wire for both the input and output from the amp. I've tried to manage how close the wires come to the power / ground cable. I guess I could try to move the wires around some as it gets closer to the amp.

Edit: Did'nt see 07screwon37s second post. I've moved the wires around a bit with no effect at the amp. I'll look for other likely / suspicious spots. I hope this doesn't turn into a bear to deal with... Thanks.

mWags

Okay guys heres what I've done today so far...

1. Ran a 10 gauge wire (biggest I had of any length) from the ground under the hood of the truck back to the ground on the amp. I figured this would be a good test. Well, if anything it made things worse. I guess because I was using 10 gauge wire for the test and the power wire is 4 gauge. So, then I put things back the way they were.

2. I moved the speaker wires as far as possible from the power in cable. also checked under the dash and it all looks okay. There is one place under the dash it's close but it's as far away as I can get it.

3. I removed the bass out speker wire and whine or maybe high pitch noise is still there. Replaced them.

4. Removed the output speaker wires from the front components from the amp. Whine or high pitched sound is gone. Replaced them.

I'm about to back out the screws on the MDF a little bit to see if the screws got all the way through the MDF and are grounded to the cab. We'll see. Edit: Didn't work.

If getting a LOC is the way to go and would fix it I'd do that but I'd rather not if there is another option. I imagine shielded RCAs and LOC would cost a few bucks. Anyway, I could do this if I had to. Any other ideas?