all right, thats all the tag words I can think of. I finally figured it out. After lots of searching, lots of wire testing, and an otherwise royal PITA, I finally hooked up a subwoofer and amp to augment my infinity stereo. Here is what I did.

1. I did not use a PAC harness, I used a regular old LOC (line converter) from best buy for 20 bucks. Despite what I had read here and other places, there is NOT left and right door speaker wires in the passenger kick panel. The onyl speaker wires there are for the passenger front and rear door. The rear door speakers looked like faded colors for what is actually for the left door speaker. The rear doors will not work in our set up, for some reason, they are WAY underpowered, and that channel was very muted. SOOOOO

2. I had to pull the glove box out and reach like a contortionist up and get to the amp. The front plug has the speaker wire outputs. The dark green and light blue wire is for the drivers negative, and DG/yellow is the positive. I attached to these wires at the plug. Then, just to the right of the plug (maybe 4 inches) is the wire loom that goes down the passenger side. I attached to the grey/yellow (positive) and gy/light blue for the negative to the pass door. The LOC is zip tied up and out of the way of the glove box.

3. For the AMP turn on, there is NO remote power wire anywhere in the system. I do not know how the CANBUS system activates all the power sources, but NO wire at the radio or amp will turn on an additional amp. I attached to the drivers side cigarette lighter power wire. It is pink in color. In order to gain access to the back of the dash cover, drop the cup holder, and undo two phillips screws up behind the "splash shield" on the back of the cup holder. These are the only two screws that are used to hold the radio/dash cover. Then, with some force, pull on the dash cover. It is held in by those little clip deals, whatever they are called. The drop the dash cover down to access the wires.

4. Power for the amp gets pushed through the large rubber grommet left of the brake pedal/booster unit to the battery.

5. Ground goes to the small bolt that holds the drop out tray (provided you are removing yours for the sub.

Run your RCA's and amp turn on wire, etc however you see fit keeping in mind seperation to reduce feedback.


In the 10 minutes I listened to the new set up, it is MUCH improved. Still not near the quality of a new head unit, but I can turn the bass on the stock speakers way down, and still have more than adequate bass from the sub. I have to spend some time tuning the gains on the LOC and the amp to get it right, but it is plenty loud.

Hope this helps, its really pretty straight forward, and any newb can do this now that we know the wires. Ill try and get some pics to go with the words.

 

I see a project in the near future after Christmas for me once Santa lets me open my present I helped him buy for me. Sub'ing to this so I can find it later. Sweet write up, I had been searching high and low for the same info.

 

after some time with this set up, I have to say, Im still not happy. even with a mid level 10" sub, mid level box and mid level amp, it WAY over powers the rest of the infinity system.

I see total replacement in my future, and I am not an audiophile. I just like decent sounding music.

 

If you want another way to have your amp turn on what i have always done is hooked up a constant power up to a switch and hook it up to the amps remote wire. Of course this was for systems considerably louder than a single sub set up so that if i saw a cop coming all i had to do was flip the switch and, bam, system was dead. Soon as the cop was gone flip the switch and full power.

 

Unfortunately total replacement is not an option. Growing up I had more money than brains and spent every dime on audio for the car. Boy those were the days. I'll have to wait till 4 rounds of college are paid for before I can think about that. I'm just looking for a little more low end so I can turn the bass down just a hair in the other speakers so I bought a cheap 8" powered sub that will squeeze under the drivers seat. It won't knock my socks off, but hopefully it will fit the bill. Can't set the sights too high when it was only $80.