nightowl

this is what i got

its the 10" one


it will be installed thursday

JJB

what kind of Protege do you have? and where are you planning to mount it?

I'm thinkining a small sub somewhere in my P5 that could go in and out as need be would be a welcome addition some day.

nightowl

i got the protege 5, i'm loving this car more everyday

hihoslva

I, too, need to maintain the usefulness of the hatch, so here's my plan for the install:

I've got a shallow hatch-style box with a Kenwood 12". Since I'm not changing the stock head unit, I'll be using speaker-level inputs on my amp. I plan to mount the amp directly to the back of the sub box (I'm not going to be "thumping" too too loud, so vibration shouldn't be a problem. Car amps are made to take some shaking anyway)

Next, I'll make a custom wiring harness, probably going to the junkyard and just getting any old stereo wiring harness, but one from a popular car. That way I'll get the factory portion (male?)out of an old car, and I can buy the stereo portion (female?) at any stereo shop. All of the wires from the car (power lead, remote 12V, speaker inputs, ground, etc.) will have one end of the harness, and the other end will have the corresponding wires going to the amp.

The sub box (with amp mounted to the back) will be strapped into the hatch of the car (not sure where or how just yet, but a coupla' brackets are no big deal).

All I will have to do to remove the sub is unstrap it and disconnect the wiring harness - should work well. My only concern right now is being able to modify the harness to accept thicker gauge wires (for the power and ground), but I'm sure it's do-able.

Will try to post pics when I get it done.

mazdaspeedwest

I hate to burst your bubble man, but you will never get an 10awg wire into an OEM stereo harness. While it's a great idea, you can do it for much cheaper. All you need is a 4 wire male/female plug. Can find these almost anywhere, used for hooking up trailer lights. (black plug, w/green, yellow, brown and black wires) these will feed from your speaker wires.

Power and ground, should be a minimum of 10awg wire and should also be the same guage for both power and ground. Easiest way is to use distribution blocks, simply unscrew the allen wrench nuts and pull out the wires. The ground wire from the amp should also be as short as possible.

Another idea is to find THICK guage wire plugs (both male and female) you might get away with the main ignition harness plugs at the steering collum (they are about 12awg, so that may be acceptable) look for Toyotas, they have an inline male/female plug right there at the steering collum. Cut them so you get as much length of wire as possible to work with. You may even be able to use the other wires for the speaker leads and forget about the trailer light plugs i mentioned above, there should be atleast 6 wires in the plugs. The power wire should run all the way up to the battery with a 30amp fuse inline atleast 18" from the battery.

Sorry, keep thinking of **** here.....if you have a hard time finding both male AND female plugs, i have a TON of alarm harnesses, that plug into many main ignition harnesses (as most main harnesses plug directly into the ignition and/or fuse box) i can sell you you for dirt cheap.

JJB

OK, I agree with the need for the fuse at the batterty as you do not need something that can provide a whole boat load of amps dumping into a wire that qill quickly get hot, melt the insulation, be a fire hazard, etc... but why do you want it to be 18" or more from the battery. I would have assumed that you really want to minimize the length of unfused heavy cable.

thanks.

hihoslva

I have already prepared for the fact that a factory stereo harness will not fit 10 gauge wire. Kinda realized it after my post. But the theory is the same - I'll have the whole thing hooked up by way of harnesses, so disassembly is a snap. I've already mounted the amp to the sub box and ran the speaker wire from the amp to the sub. The harness set up will be a work in progress, and I don't do ANYTHING if I don't think it'll work correctly. If 10Ag wire won't fit into whatever harness I try first, that harness goes out the window and the search continues. Thanks for the heads-up, though.

In order to use one harness for everything, I need a block of 8. Power, ground, remote, positive and negative, right and left speaker (for input to amp) and a speaker ground (not sure about this, but the amp says to hook it up this way - ground the speaker inputs.)

Any thick blocks for a bank of eight?

MAD323

mabye the easyest way would be to use 2 plugs
one for power and ground (big wires)
and another for the speaker inputs (smaller wires)

nightowl

here is a pic of it

its god damn loud!....after they installed it i had to stop and turn down the volume on the sub it self, its at its lowest seting right now!