Gauge of Speaker Wire

[sandm]

I used the existing wire to pull a string through the tower. let it fall down into the inside, drill the holes larger for the bigger wire, then use a hook, or a small strand of stiff electrical wire to fish out the string to run the wiring.
you only have to worry about the wire at the pivot going up, the part going back down into the hull, the wire will feed real easy down that part. when you pull the factory molex plug off, that hole is big enough to support 2 wires with no bigger hole..

I, too, am using the factory roswell speaker cans in the bar that hangs down. I ditched the plug that they use and just ran the wiring out the tower and into the speaker bar, using grommets and wire loom to make it look "factory".

[KG's Supra24]

sandm, i am prob going to pick your brain until you tell me to stop so feel free to at anytime. I am essentially doing the same install as you. Yes there is one minor difference and lets not say it outloud because we all know how its perceived.

Question: I am looking at my setup, which i dont have a pic of, but my wire runs from the tower hole and above the roswell, opposed to around it, like yours ...

[/QUOTE]

Where you not able to bend the 12 awg like that or did you attempt? If i need to post a pic of mine i will try to do so tonight.

[KG's Supra24]

Here is what mine looks like ....

[sandm]

I did not attempt to bend it above the bar. it looked much cleaner and more of a "factory" install the way I did it, again imo.. btw, mine was ran initally just like yours. hole in one end and plug on the other end. factory wire was ran above the speaker/light "bar" and plugged in just like yours.

once you pull that plug out, you should have a hole big enough for a grommet and 2 12gauge wires. I used this stuff:
http://www.knukonceptz.com/productDe...prodID=KAR12SS

I did have to drill the hole much bigger in the tower at the top tho. string was a little hard to fish out of that spot, but amazing what a shopvac can do. pull a piece thru with your old wiring, then just stuff it in the hole up top while you drill, then use a vac to suck it back out again. I ran the speaker wire one at a time. run the first speaker wire with a string again for the second wire. at the bend going into the cabin, you can just run it down the leg from the bend and it will drop down thru the hull into the amp cavity. so will all the metal shavings from drilling the hole out bigger tho. be prepared to vacuum that several times as each time you "disturb" the speaker wire, you will get a few more metal shavings

good luck and ask away. that's what we are all here for...

[KG's Supra24]

When y'all mentioned 12 gauge, were you strictly referring to towers or is that for in boats as well?

[sandm]

probably hear a lot of different opinions on this, and ultimately length of run makes a difference on this one, but I went ahead and used the same 12gauge wire thoughout the entire install. I bought a spool and used it. there are some high quality 14 and 16gauge wires that I doubt most would be able to discern the difference, but the cost is quite minimal and doesn't require you to measure out each different gauge. buy one kind and go for it...

I did use a larger cable for the sub tho. not probably needed, but never hurts

[KG's Supra24]

I pulled out the stock speakers earlier ... they were using 24 gauge to the tower!!

[sandm]

wow. that's amazing.. you will be more than impressed with this upgrade once you are done..

not sure on the tower speakers you are running, but one word of advice if they are hlcd's with separate outboard crossovers: make sure you mount the crossover boards well and whatever you use, remember there are signal traces on the backs of the circuitboards. make sure that they can't ground out to the cans at all... some of the traces might have solder "knobbies" on the backside that will rub through foam mounting tape.
I ran into this issue with my bullets. ended up using several layers of foam tape to mount them to the fronts of the cans.

be sure and loosely fill the cans with poly fiberfil as well. they are real "tinny" sounding.

[sandm]

oh ya.. pics please

[KG's Supra24]

Thanks for the advice on the crossovers. I'll have to look up poly fiberfill, ha. I was planning to line the bottom of the cans with dynomat.

I will def post some pics. Hoping this will turn into an informative thread, along with the others that seem to be going on right now one budget system/installs. I was looking for something similar (step by step and considerations) last year but all i could find were full blown systems.