Im new to all this. I made a custom box for my xB and am just waiting for my amp to come to install it. I was just wondering how I would go about connecting the power wire to the battery. Do i need to get a new battery terminal or is there some way to connect it to the existing terminal. Any help would be great and pics would be terrific. Thanks Again.

 

What size amp are you running? And what else do you plan on adding down the road? That will make a difference on wire size and connection methods.

 

I believe you just need to run the power wire right to the positive terminal on the battery. The power wire should have a crimped/soldered terminal piece that goes underneath the regular battery terminal. If you are buying all the wires and crimping/soldering them yourself, as opposed to buying a prepackaged amp kit, then that is what you'll need to buy to connect the wire to the battery. Otherwise, something like a kit from Rockford Fosgate, Streetwires or Monster will be all you need. They sell kits with patch cords, grommets for the firewall, and everything... and they sell just the power wires w/fuse in a kit as well. Look around.

Most kits also tell you the approximate amp watt rating they are capable of handling. This is mainly a "how big of a fuse do I need" issue, so I'd compare those. But if you are adding amps later on for your cabin speakers (as was hinted at in the previous post) then you might want to spend a little more now and go for a bigger fuse/gauge combo. Otherwise, bigger is not bad, just unnecessary.

 

Thanks that answered my question. I was planning on just buying the kit because it seemed to have everything, but just wasn't sure about the connection. I will be running a 4-guage wire to an Audiobahn A8000T mono amp, running 2-12" Audiobahn Special Edition Subs.

 

THere is a nut on top of the pos terminal. connec the wire there. Think its a 12 mm socket. then trim the red plastic to recover the terminal. real easy to do. you can even run the wire thru the rubber grommet on the fire wall. so no drilling either. again, really easy.

 

Make sure you buy the correct amp kit for your amp.

 

I just did this last night on someone's recommendation here... cut a slit in the rubber cap of the existing firewall grommet if you are going to use it. This lets you stick the wire right on through.

DO NOT pull it aside and shove the wire in the gap. Apparently your wire will get chafed by nice bare, grounded metal... the grommet's there for a reason.

 

You can also buy battery terminal ends for top post style batteries that have an extra connection for your amp cable. Very clean, and creates a lot more contact area for your connection.

 

Reading through the thread, I have a few points I'd like to get to...


There’s no way I can advocate solder to make connections. the name of the game in a car is "preserve the value of the vehicle", not "make the best connection that’s humanly possible". there’s a reason that the vast VAST majority of high end shops out there use t-taps rather than solder, and its not entirely speed! Its far more important to have a high resale value on the car five years from now than a connection that will last forty years rather than twenty years! if your taps are falling off after two weeks, its not a sign you need to solder, its a sign you should be working harder on making a solid tap!

cables themselves. there is no way I can advocate buying kimber cables over radioshack gold series every time. noise floor in a car is ridiculous as it is, but even with the car off, in a quiet neighborhood, I get ZERO noise in my own car. I don t have kimber, I have el-cheapo!

now, I can definitely see instances when high end cabling would be needed. I was routing some RCA's in my car in a previous install right across the fuel pump. got some noise! throw in a higher shielded cable, and everything was fine. does that mean I needed to buy $70 rca cables to get from the radio to the rear seats? no way!

as for the connections, its all about long term reliability, and nothing else. are you gonna unplug your RCA's three times a day? will they be tweaked this way and that, will there be pressure on them by a trim piece, or when stuff gets thrown into your car? you’d be a fool to buy radioshack cabling! My own amplifiers are in their own designated areas, foreign objects cant access them, and I don’t tug on the cables. why should I buy cables with burly and bulky ends?

as to those cables themselves, I was doing a mustang a couple years ago. we had two cables in the car, monster and audiopipe. the monster turned out to be noisy as heck! they were routed in the SAME spot, and the monster cable induced more noise than the audiopipe! haws that for high end! so sometimes, a cheaper cable can really be the better one from a noise perspective!

as for the head durability problem, another friend and a ford ranger, with knu top end rca cabling. Every time we unplug the cables, the heads start to unscrew! talk about annoying! if he bought the uber UBER cheap cables from radioshack, he wouldn’t have problems with the heads coming unscrewed! not that I am advocating the ultra cheaps in this case, I think he would have had a great deal of problems with noise and connection reliability with kids crawling around the back of the truck to have radioshack rca back there, but when you are paying triple digit numbers JUST for rca cables, there is NO reason I should have to threadlock the heads on!

so what IS better? radioshack? monster? kimber? audiopipe? well, I think its gotta be application based with a heavy emphasis on budget. It definitely surpasses the help a one sentence tip could give on the matter, unless that tip said "when in doubt, let your budget do the talking"!

 

Good post Riccoche.

Just a heads up though, no photos allowed in signature files.