Run New Speaker Wires or Not ???
01-10-2017, 10:35 AM
#11
Let the Fun Begin
I agree with what Kevinpmac says...for most amp upgrades the stock wiring is efficient enough and doesn't warrant the extra work. Even in my situation stock wiring would have been good...Im running 150 watts to my mid-bass and 75watts to my tweeters. I upgraded due to possibly changing to 300watts to each midbass.
I also have OCD...so it gave me something to tinker with ;-)
I also have OCD...so it gave me something to tinker with ;-)
01-10-2017, 05:59 PM
#12
MECP - Advanced
I would say it depends on the amp and the year of the truck. A high wattage amp or if you have one of the 09-13 truck like mine the door wiring can get brittle and break inside the boots in the doors. In that case you're just better off running new wires.
01-14-2017, 03:29 PM
#13
Iraq Lobster!
www.bcae1.com has a very useful calculator for this under their wire section. They have a lot of other goodness on the site too.
A 20' run of 18 awg wire will drop about 7w through the run. you'll lose about .5dB in output (they say <1dB is inaudible). This is assuming 60w, 20 feet, 4ohm speaker and 18awg wire.
Moving up to 14awg wire, all other variables the same, you lose about 3w and .22dB.
If the stock wire is 20awg, you'll lose about 10w. If it's longer than 20' (and it might be, given twists and turns) you'll lose more power. If there are several connections along the way, you'll lose power there.
If you're running wire for amps and RCAs, you might as well run wire for speakers. There's no need to drop a lot of money on fancy wire. Just get some good copper 14awg wire and you'll be all set.
Browse around on that site and look at their calculators. It can save some headache when figuring out what wire to use for speakers, power, etc.
A 20' run of 18 awg wire will drop about 7w through the run. you'll lose about .5dB in output (they say <1dB is inaudible). This is assuming 60w, 20 feet, 4ohm speaker and 18awg wire.
Moving up to 14awg wire, all other variables the same, you lose about 3w and .22dB.
If the stock wire is 20awg, you'll lose about 10w. If it's longer than 20' (and it might be, given twists and turns) you'll lose more power. If there are several connections along the way, you'll lose power there.
If you're running wire for amps and RCAs, you might as well run wire for speakers. There's no need to drop a lot of money on fancy wire. Just get some good copper 14awg wire and you'll be all set.
Browse around on that site and look at their calculators. It can save some headache when figuring out what wire to use for speakers, power, etc.
02-07-2017, 01:31 PM
#14
Senior Member
The problem with that is the amperage rating of the different sized wires....
If the larger wire is carrying amperage close to its max rating it will flow into the smaller wire which its not rated for and heat up, melt or even catch fire.....
Plain and simple its a bad idea.
The bigger the difference in wire rating the more the risk...
simple as that, doesn't matter if its a speaker, amp or any electrical component.
the reason people are getting away with this is they are luckily not exceeding the smaller sized wire rating....
If the larger wire is carrying amperage close to its max rating it will flow into the smaller wire which its not rated for and heat up, melt or even catch fire.....
Plain and simple its a bad idea.
The bigger the difference in wire rating the more the risk...
simple as that, doesn't matter if its a speaker, amp or any electrical component.
the reason people are getting away with this is they are luckily not exceeding the smaller sized wire rating....
You're not wrong necessarily but the amount of current we're talking about is very small. That 60-80 watts is nowhere even remotely close enough to cause the 18-20 gauge OEM wire to melt. Maybe if we were running several thousand watts going to a sub but not from a front stage amp. Again, the stock wiring would work fine with your amp going the entire run so it definitely would be ok just running the last foot or so.
I just want to chime in here from past experiance. It is true, the oem is good enough to supply most speakers, but splicing is never a good idea, that splice adds another spot for more resistance, usually more than the smaller wire it's self. As for these wires not carrying enough current to melt, I speak from some terrible experiance. Years ago, I was installing a system and found an awesome deal on a used 4ch amp, pushing 100w rms per ch.
All was good, ran fine for a couple months and then one evening, on my way home from work, I lost all sound...about 2 min later, i smell burning plastic. I pull over and notice smoke coming from the speaker grills in the back, I run to the trunk and pull the main fuse for my amps and pop off the plastic trim covering the rear speakers, the wire insulation was melted! so here I sit on the side of the road, pulling off my door panels to inspect things. Same thing up front, melted insulation on the wires, except for the short length of 14ga I ran up to the crossover from the factory wire, the larger wire was unharmed. So I tossed everything in the trunk and head home with a half tore apart car... and no music.
After pulling everything out, the speakers were still ok, but the amp was toast, my buddy who worked at the local stereo shop got their service guy to check out my amp, turns out it shorted out inside, and was sending high current through the speaker channels, overheating the wires, if I had of left it for much longer it probably would have actually caught fire.
so my point here is simply that there can be a lot of current through these wires so going oversize is actually a good thing.
02-07-2017, 06:08 PM
#15
Mass Effect
I just want to chime in here from past experiance. It is true, the oem is good enough to supply most speakers, but splicing is never a good idea, that splice adds another spot for more resistance, usually more than the smaller wire it's self. As for these wires not carrying enough current to melt, I speak from some terrible experiance. Years ago, I was installing a system and found an awesome deal on a used 4ch amp, pushing 100w rms per ch.
All was good, ran fine for a couple months and then one evening, on my way home from work, I lost all sound...about 2 min later, i smell burning plastic. I pull over and notice smoke coming from the speaker grills in the back, I run to the trunk and pull the main fuse for my amps and pop off the plastic trim covering the rear speakers, the wire insulation was melted! so here I sit on the side of the road, pulling off my door panels to inspect things. Same thing up front, melted insulation on the wires, except for the short length of 14ga I ran up to the crossover from the factory wire, the larger wire was unharmed. So I tossed everything in the trunk and head home with a half tore apart car... and no music.
After pulling everything out, the speakers were still ok, but the amp was toast, my buddy who worked at the local stereo shop got their service guy to check out my amp, turns out it shorted out inside, and was sending high current through the speaker channels, overheating the wires, if I had of left it for much longer it probably would have actually caught fire.
so my point here is simply that there can be a lot of current through these wires so going oversize is actually a good thing.
All was good, ran fine for a couple months and then one evening, on my way home from work, I lost all sound...about 2 min later, i smell burning plastic. I pull over and notice smoke coming from the speaker grills in the back, I run to the trunk and pull the main fuse for my amps and pop off the plastic trim covering the rear speakers, the wire insulation was melted! so here I sit on the side of the road, pulling off my door panels to inspect things. Same thing up front, melted insulation on the wires, except for the short length of 14ga I ran up to the crossover from the factory wire, the larger wire was unharmed. So I tossed everything in the trunk and head home with a half tore apart car... and no music.
After pulling everything out, the speakers were still ok, but the amp was toast, my buddy who worked at the local stereo shop got their service guy to check out my amp, turns out it shorted out inside, and was sending high current through the speaker channels, overheating the wires, if I had of left it for much longer it probably would have actually caught fire.
so my point here is simply that there can be a lot of current through these wires so going oversize is actually a good thing.
The moral of the story is to not spend money on cheap flea market amps and buy quality components. If you can run a single strand of wire from the amp to the speakers, obviously that is ideal. If it's a huge pain in the ***** like it is for our F150's, it's perfectly fine to tap into the factory wires.
02-08-2017, 06:27 PM
#16
Senior Member
Running a cheap, defective amp was the problem, not the gauge of the wire unless it was 22 gauge or something. The stock wires are 18 gauge which is fine for well over 100+ watts. Running 16 gauge from the amp to the doors then tapping into the 18 gauge wire for 2 feet isn't going to hurt anything. If a flea market amp is shorting out and sending enough current to melt wires, it would've melted the 16 gauge too.
The moral of the story is to not spend money on cheap flea market amps and buy quality components. If you can run a single strand of wire from the amp to the speakers, obviously that is ideal. If it's a huge pain in the ***** like it is for our F150's, it's perfectly fine to tap into the factory wires.
The moral of the story is to not spend money on cheap flea market amps and buy quality components. If you can run a single strand of wire from the amp to the speakers, obviously that is ideal. If it's a huge pain in the ***** like it is for our F150's, it's perfectly fine to tap into the factory wires.
So next time, before you speculate on things, get the facts first.
But yes ideally a single run of wire is best, and I myself will go through whatever I have to to run a single run, never will I tap into factory audio wires, for me, it's larger GA and oxygen free copper, and gold/platinum plated terminals. Do it once, do it right, and I never have issues with my audio anymore.
02-08-2017, 10:08 PM
#17
Mass Effect
I didn't say anything about a cheap flea market amp, I said I got an awesome deal on a used amp, for your information, it was a high end Alpine, like $600+ at the time, I got it much much cheaper as it was a demo unit from the demo car the stereo shop used at shows. the wires in question were 18 or 20 ga, stock wiring, nothing too tiny. it just didn't stand a chance when the amp shorted, my point here was the oem stuff did melt, but the larger wires I installed from the oem speaker connector up to the crossover did survive.
So next time, before you speculate on things, get the facts first.
But yes ideally a single run of wire is best, and I myself will go through whatever I have to to run a single run, never will I tap into factory audio wires, for me, it's larger GA and oxygen free copper, and gold/platinum plated terminals. Do it once, do it right, and I never have issues with my audio anymore.
02-12-2017, 11:33 AM
#18
I really want to run new speaker wires so I can amp my tweeters and mids separately. But those molex in doors have me hesitant. Anyone found a easy way to run the wires? Drilling is all I have seen.
02-12-2017, 09:06 PM
#20
Mass Effect
You can use the stock wires for the mid then run the tweeter wires separately. They won't be hard to run at all. Just drop them down thru the A pillars and you're good to go.
