Dave,


In an ideal hifi setup, the distance from each channel, to the listeners ears, should be equal. It has to do with imaging.

Sit in your drivers seat. From where your head is, the distance to the front left and right speakers in the bottom of the door is very close to being equal.

The distance from the rear left and right speakers to your head? Not so much. The left driver is 6 inches behind your head. The right speaker is 2 feet. A factor of 4.



Do you see how your thought process is completely contrary to what a hifi install is trying to achieve?

On a sedan where the rear channels are behind the rear seats, the actual distance to the drivers (or front passengers) ears, is nearly identical. This is why large drivers like 6x9's work well when mounted in the rear - another factor is the sound is actually reflected off of the rear window in most cases, again leading to the correct imaging.

 

I vote this be made into a sticky.

Maybe it'll keep noobs from asking every 10 seconds how to install. This has all measurements of nav chubby, front speakers etc.. and brands of speakers to use, it is full of all the info noobs constantly ask.

Even has the answer of how to hook up Bose and non Bose. But Bose depends if you want to keep factory amp or not, if you do you need the PAC if not you rip your car apart and run new speaker wires and use Metra harness.


Definitely needs to be a sticky in audio/video

 

Hey guys, I just got around to wiring up my metra harness to my aftermarket stereo harness, though im not sure I wired it up correctly....

My main concern are the blue wires and black wires:

1.Blue wires: As you can see in the pic, I have 3 blue wires wired together - There's two wires coming from the metra harness: One is solid blue which is the antenna power and the other is a blue w/ white stripe that says nothing on it....... Im getting an Alpine amp later this week and I know its supposed to be wired to the blue wires as well. So will there then be 4 wires together? If not, which blue wire is NOT supposed to be in there?

2.Black wires: Again, 3 of them are wired together. The metra harness has 2 black wires: one for amplifier ground and the other is chassis ground. Are they wired properly? Or are they supposed to be grounded somewhere?

3.The "steering wheel remote" blue with yellow stripe wire supplied from the stereo's harness goes where???? It looks like the previous owner of this stereo didnt use it as its capped off..... Am I supposed to use this wire? and where does it go?

4. Do I even need to have the speaker wires connected if I will be using aftermarket amplifier and speakers?

 

1.Blue wires: since the Z has no power antenna just cap this wire off. The blue/white is the remote amp lead, so connect this (via some extra wire of similar gauge) to the "remote in" on your amp. Keep in mind this wire has +12V when the radio is ON, thus its a "hot" wire, so put a fuse in it to be safe (maybe its fused already at the radio?).

2.Black wires: putting them all together should be OK but if you get noise in your system then running separate grounds to solid metal might fix it.

3.The "steering wheel remote" cap it off.

4. Do I even need to have the speaker wires connected if I will be using aftermarket amplifier and speakers? - No, the output from your amp will go into the harness, this way you don't have to run wires thru the door jams to power your speakers. Do NOT connect the radio to these wires if you are using an amp. Cap off the wires coming from the radio individually.

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks JMII!

I took out the power antenna. (I dont understand why they would add that wire in the harness)

Black wires: As you can see in this pic, I removed the second Metra harness completely. The only remaining wire was the black w/white stripe which is the amplifier ground..... I assume that is the wire for the factory amp so I disconnected it and now theres no use for the second Metra harness... Now I only have the 2 black wires connected (chassis ground)...Is this right?


This is all of what's remaining: Reds, oranges, yellows, and blacks.....the blue with white stripe goes to aftermarket amp...

All good?

 

I dont understand why they would add that wire in the harness

Since Metra makes adapters for all kinds of vehicles and models of which many are similar they might need that antenna wire for a different Nissan vehicle. In fact if you checked I'd bet you find the pin for that wire is actually missing on the vehicle side of the adapter, thus connecting to it would do nothing anyway.

As someone above mentioned that wire should only send +12V when the radio (AM/FM) is on, other then that it should be dead. My '89 Prelude Si worked that way, when you turned on the CD player the antenna would go back down since the "radio" part of the head unit was technically off.

The only remaining wire was the black w/white stripe which is the amplifier ground..... I assume that is the wire for the factory amp so I disconnected it and now theres no use for the second Metra harness... Now I only have the 2 black wires connected (chassis ground)...Is this right?

Seems like a safe bet... and if something doesn't work then you'll know you really did need that wire

This is all of what's remaining: Reds, oranges, yellows, and blacks.....the blue with white stripe goes to aftermarket amp...

Yep, blue/white is remote turn on, it tells your aftermarket amp when to come on.

The other wires for the various speakers (left/right +/-) should be wired up to your aftermarket amp to power your door speakers. Cap off the speaker wires coming from the radio because (I assume) you are running stereo RCA interconnects to send the sound from the radio to the new amp.

 

OK JMII, I think I see what youre saying about the speaker wires.... My plan is to wire my speakers through the door jamb to the amp...then the amp sends RCA to the stereo. Thats all I need right? And all harness's speaker wires just get capped off

And I read in another thread that I have to connect the antenna power wire even though there's no power to antenna. I will try both methods when I come around to installing everything and let everyone know.

 

Using the wiring harness just saves you the pain of running wire from the amp thru the jam and into the doors. The factory wiring is already there, so unless you are running bi-amped components you might as well use it and save yourself some labor.

The speaker wires you are capping off are the ones coming from the radio because you are not using the radio to power any speakers... the power is coming from the amp. The stereo RCAs are sending the signal to the amp, then the output goes to the speakers.

 

The reason im running new wires is because someone told me that if im feeding my speakers more than 50 watts each, then I should upgrade to thicker wiring... I will be giving each type-R speaker 150 watts....they are components..not sure if theyre bi-amped.... Is it really worth it to get thicker wire?

 

Short answer: no

Long answer: http://www.bcae1.com/wire.htm (read the section on Resistance in Speaker Wire, most of page deals with amplifier power wiring not speakers)

 

Updated OP and givin a bump.

All wiring worked out fine. Audio has been great. Thanks for all your help!