Adding bass to your system is one way of making sure that you enjoy your music as you drive or just chill in your car. Finding the best car subwoofer can be hard and also installing it properly is one tricky exercise. Most people prefer DIY installations and that is why this post is meant to show you how to install a car subwoofer. Here is a video that can help you install the subwoofers in the best way possible.
Steps to Install a car subwoofer
Step #1: Find the requirements
You will need to find the tools that will enable you to install the subwoofer. There are several things you will need in order to install one. Some of these essentials are; Subwoofer box, Subwoofer speaker, Amplifier, writing kit 3-foot insulated wire and 10 gauge insulated wire for grounding, 10 gauge and 20-foot wire for power, 18-gauge, 15-foot wire, speaker wires, 4 small wood screws and basic tools.
The most cost-effective process is to acquire an amplifier installation kit from an online auctioning site or selling site. Some stereo shops have huge wires available. To ensure you acquire the correct dimension of the wire, ensure that you know the correct dimension of your car. This will ensure that you don’t come short of anything.
Step #2: Ground the connection
Find a solid metal that you can use for grounding near the amplifier. The amplifier is supposed to be grounded for the best sound quality. The best way to install your ground wire is to scrape a metal surface until there is no paint left on it.
If you are installing the sub-woofer in the trunk, there are normally some bolts from the suspensions. They can be a good place to ground the whole system. These bolts usually bolt directly to the frame making them a good place to make a grounding point.
Step #3: Set up the CD outputs to the amplifier
Take the blue wire with the white stripe that hangs on the backside of the deck. That is the remote wire. It is a 12 volts signal wire that signals the amplifier to turn on whenever the cd player is ready to play music. Take the remote wire from the amplifier kit and connect it to the blue wire with white strips.
Run the wire via the dash and along the door jam. When you have the CD player removed, plug the RCA white and red plugs into the back of the decks. If you are using stock CD players, you may need an inline converter.
You should then run all the wires to the amplifier. The remote control and the power wires should all run on the side and the factory speaker wires on the other side. This will avoid the risk of blowing the whole system in case of a short circuit on the factory wires or the amplifier wires.
Step #4 Connecting the subwoofer
Use speaker wires to connect the subwoofer to the amplifier. The gauge of the wires does not matter at this point. As long as the wire is copper, there is no huge problem with the connection. One of the most important things to note during this step is that you should wire your subwoofer with the correct impedance.
Following the instructions at this stage is very essential since this step depends on the subwoofer and varies from model to model. Doing it wrongly might lead to damage of the subwoofer. For example, if you are installing a 500-watt subwoofer then you will need to wire it to a 500-watt amplifier.
This is one of the simplest easiest steps ever. To connect the subwoofer to the amplifier, connect the negative and positive terminals of the subwoofer wire to the amplifier terminals. Run the 12-volt wire which is normally the longest in the kit. Most original wires range from 8-gauge 0 gauge.
Run it from the battery through the firewall and the amplifier. You can always wire the amplifier and the subwoofer in series or parallel. Be sure to check the installation manual for more details on this.
Step #5 Place the subwoofer in the box
There are several types of enclosures that you will need to consider before setting up your subwoofer. For example, will you need an infinite baffle, bandpass or a vented enclosure? Your subwoofer manual should list the ideal enclosure for your subwoofer. After your box is ready you can do a polypill.
Adding some polyfill is not mandatory but it ensures that your woofer cone does not vibrate or distort. This process is necessary if you do not want to go through volume calculation processes. The best polyfill would be a pillow stuffing. The next step is to fix the box. It needs to have a lot of space for the best sound quality. And it should be lined down.
Step #6: Connect the power wire to the battery
Look for a ring that connects the wires to the battery in a nice and snugly way. Connect the battery cable to the amplifier. Sometimes the battery might release some sparks and it should not worry you, it is normal.
Step #7: Turn on the amplifier
Turn on the amplifier. Note that you should not turn the volume too high. High volumes will produce clipping of the subwoofer. Let the volume of the amplifier peak. If you are a beginner, the best way to handle this stage is to play a loud nice song with a three-quarter volume setting.
The gain should be at zero. Turn the gain knob until you can hear the song isn’t getting any louder.
Wrap up
After setting your amplifier, you might still not hear the punchy bass. You might need to play around with your gain knobs and equalizer to ensure that you have enough bass going through the amplifier.
The steps explained above however should give you the best results and the amplifier should be working well. In short, those are the simple DIY steps on how to install a car amplifier. That’s all about how to install car subwoofer. Please help us share this post with friends and family.
