Wire rear speakers from scratch?

[joejitsumd]

Okay, I could use some help and guidance from guys that know about car stereo/amp installs. I have a 2001 boxster with the door speakers. I swapped out the front dash speakers for Alpine speakers and I just changed out the head unit to a Kenwood BT755HD. The head unit on the back has 6 RCA outs (front, rear, SW), of which the front/rears RCAs are going into a 4 channel alpine amp in the front trunk (installed by the previous owner).

I have the rear storage compartment and I just installed two Kicker ks35 speakers on each side of the storage compartment, but I haven't done any wiring whatsoever to bring the rear speakers sound. I have Wayne's book which talks about using an aftermarket speaker kit and plugging it directly into the head unit, but I am not using any special connectors and I no longer have the factory head unit. I notice when I use my fader that the door speakers seem to be wired to the rear channel. What I want to know is how do I wire these rear speakers so they can be involved in the system? I'm not expecting dramatic improvement but I have already bought the speakers and want to use them. Can I wire the rear speakers directly to the rear speaker wires on the kenwood radio harness? (Even though my RCA rear speaker lines already go to the amp). Do I have to find a way to splice the rear speakers into the outputs from my 4 channel amp? If so, are there any resources that could explain how to do this. This is my first venture into car audio so I'm reasonably green on the subject.

[joejitsumd]

Hello, is this thing on? Hot mic, hot mic...

[KevinH1990]

I'm not a car audio expert, but I have upgraded the system on my 2000 Boxster, so here are my thoughts based on that experience.

If it were my car, I would first wire the rear speakers to the head unit because that will be relatively inexpensive and give you a pretty good idea of how they would sound before investing in more costly options.

If you have a little more money and can invest some time in working on the car, the better option would be to use the amp. In a Boxster that comes from the factory with the door speakers, the door speakers are a low-range unit. They are not subwoofers by any stretch of the imagination, but they are not full range. It is possible that the previous owner put full-range units in the doors. It might be better for you to install sub units in the doors and run them off the sub wiring in your amp. Then you could wire the rear speakers to the rear-speaker wiring from your amp.

Unfortunately, it doesn't so like you know exactly what the previous owner did, so you might have to resort to some "trial and error" to sort this out.

Here's a guide with a lot of useful information: http://images.wikia.com/boxster/images/b/b6/Boxster_speakers_update_article.pdf

Good luck.

[joejitsumd]

thanks for the reply. I spent some time yesterday and wired the rear speakers directly to the head unit just to see if it would work and it did. They don't sound great by any means but it gives a little more surround to the sound and makes the system sound better. I think for now I'm done. A little under $300 total and I went from the "worst sounding system ever" to "good." I'm satisfied.