travesty

A little background. I installed the standalone kicker sub/amp combo in my '17 Screw Lariat, non-Sony when I bought it last year. I activated it with FORSCAN and it worked great but I wanted more. So I installed Kicker door speakers and they worked great but I still wanted more. So this past weekend I installed a Pioneer BM8604 amp using the FOR-CK11 harness adapter. The amp has speaker level sensing for power-on so I didn't need to run a remote wire for it.
Everything sounds fantastic but the subwoofer isn't working now. I don't know where to start diagnosing the problem. Any ideas? I'm thinking maybe it's not receiving a turn-on signal but I have no idea how to determine if that is the case. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Kanadian-kaos

Your problem is the FOR-CK11 harness.

It has speaker wires for the front and rear. Chances are, you spliced the amplifier into both the front and rear channel high level speaker outputs on the harness? I am not sure if the subwoofer gets its signal from the front or rear channels, but now, there is no signal going to the rear at all.

Or the factory wiring harness has wires for a subwoofer output which you activated with Forscan, and the FOR-CK11 harness does not have the wires for the subwoofer.

Either way. You interrupted the signal at the harness.

Kanadian-kaos

Or I may be completely wrong. Is there a separate harness on the back of the stock HU that outputs a sub signal only?

Did you blow a fuse?

travesty

Thanks but I'm not sure I'm following the logic. The FOR-CK11 sends the FL, FR, RR and RL speaker lines (both + and - for all four) to the amp. The amp puts out to the same eight wires which go right back into the factory harness. all of the remaining wire in the factory connector are fed straight across with no interruption AFAIK. I could be wrong but it seems to me that all the speaker wires are still getting signal. As for the rest of it.....I have no idea.

Kanadian-kaos

Ya, I see that on my FOR-CK11 now. Where does the subwoofer get its signal from? You either interrupted the signal or blew a fuse. You can undo the harness at the speaker kicker end, and put a voltmeter to the +/- signal leads to see if there is a signal there. Did you check the Forscan settings to make sure the subwoofer was still enabled and the settings didn't reset maybe when you unplugged the HU?

travesty

Good idea. There were some things reset when I plugged everything back in. I'll hook forscan back up and check that first.

HushCarAudio

Double check that POS harness too. A few folks noticed the incorrect labeling on the wires on their harness as well. You'll need to reference the correct wires to ensure you are sending the correct signal lines.

travesty

Yes, I caught that on mine too. The labeling on the wire jacket was wrong on two of them. The colors are correct, the labeling is wrong.

I hooked up FORSCAN and everything was activated so I jumped back there with a multi-meter and lo and behold the sub IS working. It's just either getting completely drowned out by the door speakers OR its operating at a really low level. I can't decided which, or both.

travesty

So, after more research it seems that the input level is really low to the sub. Maybe this Kicker VSS Sub set up just doesn't care for more power going to the speaker lines.
Can I bypass the factory speaker line inputs for the sub and replace them with the non-amplified output straight from the amp?
Does anyone know if the little kicker amp for the sub has a low pass filter built in it? There are no adjustments on the little amp at all and I'm worried that it might not like a full range signal as input.

Also I am getting a pretty distinct pop as the amp turns on when I open the door. I did not do a dedicated remote turn on wire as it has speaker level sensing. Is this the culprit or something else? Thanks for the help guys.

Wyo11Scab

iTrader: (1)

I just hate speaker level sensing. Run a dedicated wire to the fuse box. Jump a wire from a speaker to the line in and see if you get more volume from the sub.