Car Audio/Alarms/UConnect/NavigationThis section is for topics related to the LX audio/video and navigation systems, alarms, upgrades, modifications, etc.
Well, it’s time to catch up on some updates, folks… and PICTURES of course. So here we go….
I think I left off after making the amp board for the driver’s side of the backseat. Just needed to mount the amp and the capacitor. I was shocked to find out how small this amp is…
Now it’s time to run cables. And I have a ton of them. Let’s start with power… As I mentioned earlier, I used the JL Audio battery terminals – they are great. They have three ports and will take about any size wire. And all of my cables are Stinger – which I’ve also been very pleased with the quality.
So here is the negative side of the battery. From left to right, you see a clear 4 gauge going to the inverter. Then a blue 14 gauge going to the volt meter (yep, it’s wired up now). Then a clear 0 gauge going to a distribution block. Then finally a 0 gauge replacing the factory chassis ground. Also, in the fuse box I added a jumper that you can see – it’s running a turn on lead for the volt meter and I wired the rear camera’s reverse lead to this so that I had camera access at all times – more on the cam in a bit…
Don’t know if I mentioned this, but you might have noticed I didn’t run my remote turn on for my amp out of the rear fuse box. I ended up running the remote turn on direct from the headunit (or technically the harness). Reason why is because I noticed the Clarion had an option for “amp delete” – which I wrongly assumed would kill the remote turn on wire lead. Instead, it just kills the internal amp of the headunit, which only my 3.5’s are hooked to. So it was a waste of time and space running yet another wire to the front, but oh well. Thought I’d mention it in case somebody is thinking the same thing I was.
Anyways, here’s the positive side of the battery. Kind of a tight squeeze on this side. From left to right… first is the stock power cable, which I showed earlier how I modified. The JL battery terminals have a post and ring terminal attachment which I used (it’s under the blue electrical tape because I was a bit concerned about how close that metal connection was to the body of the car there – the battery is in there tightly, but it’s some piece of mind). After the stock cable is a blue 4 gauge going to a fuse in route to the amp. Next is a blue 14 gauge going over to the volt meter. And finally another blue 4 gauge heading to the circuit breaker in route to the inverter which I showed earlier…
Here you can see how they are routed. The clear 0 gauge ground goes to a distribution block, and then a pair of clear 4 gauge run to the capacitor and to the amp. The blue 4 gauge power runs through a 60 amp fuse, then on to the capacitor. These all run up the side along with the factory Sirius/nav wires that are there.
And here are the power/ground cables wired to the cap and amp…
Ok, what next… how about the Sirius antenna. I wasn’t happy to find out that it really needed to be on the outside of the car (while the nav antenna MUST be mounted on the inside). I ended up deciding that the best place was right behind the factory Sirius antenna. And actually it doesn’t look as bad as I thought it would. It’s very small – here’s the Sirius antenna on the left and the Clarion nav antenna on the right…
So the plan is to run the wire down the channel around the window…
And then I popped the plug and wire through a small slit at the base of the rubber boot going into the trunk. Resealed the rubber with super glue, then covered with silicone, then reinstalled boot and secured the wire…
Now here is hands down my worst execution of the project so far. I tried to find some black silicone, as I wanted to run the wire around that channel with a bit of silicone. What I ended up with was some black silicone-like stuff and I absolutely butchered the “caulking” job. The stuff I got was just too difficult to work with, so the install is pretty sloppy. Good thing is that it dries into basically a rubber, so when I get some time I’m going to have to peel it off and reinstall the wire much cleaner…
So that sucked. But next up is the rear cam. And what do you know – this thing was a pain as well. The plan was to mount it just above the license plate. The problem is that the mount that comes with it does not completely allow you to point it at a 90 degree angle because the cord is in the way. As you can see…
So out comes the Dremel again! Grinded down the mount until the cord would fit, then sanded it down and repainted it black…
Ran the wire up through the hole where the license plate light is and was surprised to find no good way into the trunk. Maybe I was missing something. But then I figured that I might as well run it into the same rubber boot that the Sirius cable is going in – they are going to the same place afterall. I ended up using the Dremel to make a small relief in the rear fascia to run the wire up. And yep, I had to cut, glue, and silicone the boot again…
Next up, how about some speakers?! Well, the rear deck speakers were easy as cake. First up, pull all of the speakers. At first I couldn’t decide if I was going to leave the sub in or not. I’m not going to be using it, but I figured it might be providing some support for the rear deck. But then I was also thinking that the big hole there could be a bit of a “port” from the trunk once I add the sub back there. Who knows. In the end, I pulled it.
And I couldn’t believe how small this sub is. Tiny little free air sub really does bang quite a bit for being a stock sub… here’s what it looks like…
Might have posted these earlier when I ran into my front door issues, but here are the stock 6x9s next to the new JL’s…
So I haven’t used any sound deadening. Honestly, I was impatient and started installing stuff. But I’ll go back and add it where it’s needed once I get the sub installed. But I certainly wasn’t going to mount the rear 6x9’s metal-to-metal on the rear deck. So a nice strip of speaker foam and they get a nice air tight install…
I ended up running 14 gauge speaker wire across to the driver’s side, then down and over to the amp… My main challenge this whole time is getting the wires secured properly, while still retaining my fold down rear seat. And while I was at it, I ran a 12 gauge speaker wire over to where my sub will be – so that’s just plug and play now…
And anybody know why Chrysler stuffed these little pieces of foam in black plastic back in the corners? Look in the back top corner. They’re just stuffed in there. I left them in there for now, but not sure what their purpose is…
Ok, so now onto the front speakers. As I said earlier, I installed the front dash 3.5’s months ago, but I did pull them again and run 14 gauge speaker wire directly to the headunit…
But the real pain in the ass came from the front door 6x9’s – as you may have read earlier. The first challenge was running the speaker wire into the car. I wanted to run 14 gauge wire direct from the door speakers back to the amp. I found some good info in a few threads, but nobody posted a single picture of it! So for anybody trying to get from the car to inside the door panel, here’s how I did it when installing the new 6x9’s…
Let’s start with passenger side. First I pulled the door panel, the speaker and the speaker door mount…
As for the rubber boot going into the car, you only need to worry about where it attaches to the car, not the door. So with a panel removal tool, or carefully with a screwdriver, you just need to carefully work the rubber boot off of the white plastic clip attached to the car…
From here you can actually run your wire, but unfortunately you can’t get the rubber boot back on the white plastic clip without removing, so off it comes. There are two push tabs on the rear side and two push tabs on the front side of the clip – towards the top and bottom. The ones on the front side are difficult to get to since you have to push in towards the car but the door is in the way. Best way I found is to use a flat head screwdriver attachment on a socket – so that you can get it in there and push inward to release the push tabs. Here is the clip coming out as well as a closer look at the tab locations…
Time to run the speaker wire. Here’s a picture from inside the door looking up at the wires heading out into the rubber boot…
And here is a pic of something I’m very proud of… I ran the 14 gauge wire into the door and I wanted to keep it away from the window going up and down. So notice the zip tie up there. I can’t explain how lucky I got – one handed and blind when sticking my hand up there! I probably couldn’t zip tie two cables together again one handed even if they were on my lap, let alone doing it blind. Patting myself on the back for this one.
And if you noticed in the first pic of the white plastic plug above – there is a nice conduit to run the wire above the wire bundle already going into the car – almost as if it was made to run speaker wire. So, I just ran the speaker wire through the boot, then the plug, then into the car. And note – for the passenger side when you run the wire into the hole where the clip goes, angle it down and towards the rear of the car and you will be able to find it in a little opening under where the side trim panel was. Then I just ran the wire to the back under the side trim pieces…
Once that’s done, the rubber boot just slips back around the white plastic clip and the clip pops back into its original location
And I can’t find pics, but I ended up running the front door speaker wire up the sides of the backseat and into a hole in the metal seat support. This allowed for the speaker wire not to get pinched anywhere. Next time I have the rear seat out I’ll take some pics – but you will find the hole I’m talking about if you take off the far side pieces of the back of the rear seat.
Now as for the driver’s side, there is much less room to get the wires through. And what compounds this is that I have some other wires already coming through that area – one set is hooked to my halos and one set is hooked to my engine bay LED’s – these wires run to some monitor lights that I have mounted on my A-pillar pod, so that I know when these lights are on and off. You can kind of see it below the Trinity here…
I did have these wires just running through the door seal, but the wires have gotten pinched so badly that they sometimes don’t work. So it was time to take these wires through the rubber boot as well while I was doing the door speaker anyways.
The boot obviously comes off the same way. But to gain access to the hole from the inside of the car, the best way I found is to first remove the plastic trim piece on the inside and door sill. There is a thick black plastic cover that is held to the side wall with two push pins – remove these and you will find a hole to the interior of the fender panel that is covered by a sticker-like sealant patch – this peels back easily and then you have an area to feed your wire down.
The rest is the same as the passenger side once you get the wire through. Now in my case, I also ran my LED monitor light wires actually through a small slit in the boot and into the engine bay – and of course a good superglue and silicone job. And while I was running these wires, I tapped in another lead off of my engine bay lights and ran it alongside my speaker wire to the trunk for future use (I can add some blue LEDs to the trunk now that will operate off of my remote along with my blue engine bay LEDs – another project for another time though).
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At this point, all the speaker wire has been run and the only thing that is missing is speakers! If you were reading earlier, you probably saw that I ran into a problem with the size of the magnets on the back of the JL speakers and they would not fit in my doors. My first solution was to get out the pliers and hammers and reshape the bottom of the door opening to give me some clearance…
This gave me enough room for the terminals to attach, but I was still running into the track mount for the window. So the only option was spacers – even though I only needed a little bit. After some serious hunting, I found some 1/4” spacers that worked perfect! I added speaker foam to the back of the speakers, then another layer of speaker foam to the back of the spacers… which made a nice air tight mounting option.
Then it was just popping them in the doors…
I was a bit concerned about having to cut up my door panels since the tweeters on these three-ways stuck out a bit, not to mention the spacers I added. In the end, I’m extremely happy I didn’t have to cut anything – they just barely fit in there. As a matter of fact I can even feel a little bit of bowing on the plastic door panel – so it’s pressed against the speaker. I ended up adding some of the speaker foam to the front of the tweeters on the speakers for protection as well as an attempt to eliminate any vibrations…
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Next up, a pretty cool little device. It’s a Cobra SL3. It detects speed cameras, red light cameras, speed traps, etc. I got it awhile ago when I got my radar detector – a Cobra XRS 9990. The original plan was to mount it up by my rearview mirror alongside the radar detector. However, I don’t have much room left up there. My radar is on the right and my driving camera is on the left – they are both hooked up to the mirror with an Invisicord…
Not to mention, the Cobra SL3 gets GPS info, so mounting it up there wasn’t an option. I’m a freak about having wires hanging around so the device has just sat on a shelf, since I planned to use the center dash speaker location for the headunit’s nav antenna. When I read that the headunit GPS should be mounted further away from the headunit, it opened up that center speaker location once again. So here’s what I did…
I first needed to find some power and a way to hide the cord. The cord that comes with the device is a standard cigarette lighter plug. I ran the cord down the opening for the center dash speaker and down behind the headunit – and brought it out at the bottom of the bezel where the ashtray is. Here you can see the SL3 plug as well as the white plug that attaches to the stock cigarette lighter in the ashtray when it’s attached…
Since that line is only hot on ignition, it was a good source for the device. So I just cut them both, tapped them together and reinstalled the white plug for the stock cigarette lighter…
Added a little wire holder so that I don’t drop the cord down behind the dash once everything is buttoned up – I’ll need to update the SL3 database from time to time, so it has to remain removable… nothing worse than dropping a wire down there…
Now I needed to mount the device. I took a Dremel to the stock dash speaker grill and cut out an opening so that the SL3 would sit flush – as well as a little slot for the power wire to come through…
I added some Velcro to the edges and popped it in place. Nice clean flush mount, no visible wires, and powers on/off on its own…
Now here’s the funny thing. AFTER I installed this, I found out that my Clarion headunit has some sort of built in red light and speed camera warning!! Haha. But to be honest, I haven’t really looked into it yet. I know it hasn’t warned me yet, so I’m not sure if it’s something I just need to simply turn on, or if it requires activation and a fee or what. But at this point, who cares – this little Cobra device works like a charm!!! I had no idea how many red light cameras I pass everyday until I installed this. Pretty cool little thing – and yet another gadget device on my dashboard… sigh
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Ok, so what’s next? Oh yeah – I FINALLY installed my BT park lockout while I was waiting on parts one day. The console was out and the pink thingy was staring at me, so it finally had to go…
Next up – PS2 controllers. Simply needed a place for them. They kinda fit in the rear doors, but would bounce out sometimes when the door is closed firmly. I figured they could just as easy get knocked out by somebody exiting the car and end up in a parking lot somewhere. So I ended up mounting them just behind the rear console on the raised part. This serves a couple of purposes – one is that I have a billion cables running right there and this will prevent somebody from stepping there or something. And it also secures them in the car while still being easily accessible. I bolted some Velcro straps to the carpet…
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Up next – external microphone and nav antenna. Well, the Clarion has a built in mic in the headunit, but some reviews I read recommended buying the external mic for better sound clarity. Since I have quite a clusterjob on my driver’s side A-pillar with my pods, I ran the mic wire over to the passenger side, up the A-pillar and then across the front of the headliner over to the top driver’s side corner. It came with a few mounting options and one allowed me to tuck it away nicely so that it’s barely visible. And no visible wires of course. While the pillar was off it made it easy to run the nav antenna over to the passenger side and behind the dash board – and some double sided tape was used to mount it to the dash…
And by the way, when I took off the passenger A-pillar a bolt fell out into my lap. It dropped right from the curved edge of the headliner you see below. Does anybody know where this bolt came from? I’m wondering if its from my sunroof. I do have a bit of a sunroof rattle sometimes, but my understanding is that the rattle is from loose rivets – a TSB that the previous owner of my car never took care of obviously. But again, I think that problem is rivets, not bolts. Don’t know where this one came from…
Well, that’s enough for now. I do have some more updates, and I will post them as soon as I get some more time. I hope this info can somehow help somebody who might be planning a similar install. Feel free to ask questions if you have any.
I do however want to post one more thing in the hopes that I can make some sort of progress on my VES plan. As I described earlier, I simply want to use the VES as a slave monitor. My Clarion has a standard A/V out and it has dual zone capabilities so I can control the back VES from the front headunit. And I have described how I am using an A/V switch to split the signal into the headunit between my iPhone and the PS2 (which is working fine, but the mounting is an entirely different challenge for another time). Using the same VES output mod that has already been discussed, I am fairly confident that I can tap the video wire going from the VES DVD player going to the VES screen. The problem is: how to I send the audio signal into the VES so that the IR headphones work??
My original thought was that the audio was just one of those other wires. What I have found out is that there are some audio wires – but they are audio OUTPUT from the VES heading up to the stock headunit… so that’s not what I’m looking for. I’m trying to get a signal into the IR transmitter of the VES. I essentially could just plug the Clarion’s A/V output into the rear rca jacks of the VES and get what I want (which is actually how I’m currently setup until I figure this out – remember, I hate visible cables!!!).
So my thinking was this – why don’t I just take the VES unit apart and remove those rca jacks from sticking out of the back. That way I could cover the holes in the back panel with something clever and I would have those rca jacks on the inside of the center console to plug into. Great idea, huh? Well, nope.
Here’s what I found when I took the VES apart. The front face is basically like a single din detachable face. Those rca jacks aren’t mounted there with cables running back into the console. Instead, the entire face is only about 1/2" deep, including the rca jacks! Yep, they are simply the female heads of the rca’s, apparently tapped right into a circuit board which attaches with a multi pin plug. Take a look…
Here is the main wire harness going from the VES DVD to the VES screen – the grey wire with the black base is the video cable that I would tap…
And here’s all you have once you pop off the VES “detachable face”…
Here’s the “detachable face” – note the three solder bundles in the center, these are on the backside of the three rca jacks…
So the IR output transmitter and the A/V input are both a part of that “detachable” face. I’m not sure if the audio signal is processed right there on that circuit board and out to the IR transmitter, or if it goes into the VES casing through that multi pin plug as well. But what I do assume is that if you want to jump audio into the IR transmitter, without having wires hanging around plugged into those rca jacks, then you somehow need to tap into those solder points on that circuit board. Which is out of my expertise. So I’m stuck.
Again, someone on LXF said that they got audio to the VES’s IR transmitter internally, without plugging into the rear rca jacks. But I haven’t heard back from him as to how he did it. I am definitely open to suggestions – need some help with this one.
Also, my high pass crossovers arrived yesterday...
And holy $#!t does it sound good now!!!!!!!!!!!! Man what a difference.
Actually a bit surprised at what 150 Hz is - actually a relatively low mid bass. But more surprising is that these little 3.5's handle it perfectly. I can crank them without any distortion.
I have my gains only about 50% going to the 6x9's and it's a freaking orchestra in my car. Can't wait for the sub!!!!!!!
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I ran the 14 gauge wire into the door and I wanted to keep it away from the window going up and down. So notice the zip tie up there. I can’t explain how lucky I got – one handed and blind when sticking my hand up there! I probably couldn’t zip tie two cables together again one handed even if they were on my lap, let alone doing it blind. Patting myself on the back for this one. 
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