[Turbocat9000]

Hi everyone. I just ordered a set of Kicker 3.5" speakers for the dash and just want to confirm the wiring before I start working on them.

From what I read here, the factory dash speakers are wired in parallel with the door speakers. Meaning that the +/- wires from the headunit plug into the dash speaker as part of a 4-wire plug, and the other two wires output signal to the door speakers. If I understand this right, just unplugging the dash speaker would also cause the door speaker to stop working. I also read here that the factory speakers in both locations are 4-ohm (wired in parallel for a 2-ohm load at the headunit) so it'd be best to replace them with 4-ohm speakers.

I don't want to buy the tacotunes harness, but I want do to this cleanly without hacking up the factory wiring. So my plan is:

-At the plug that goes into the dash speakers, use jumpers and t-taps to connect the two + wires to each other, and the two - wires to each other (should be wires 1-2 an 3-4 according to tacotunes). At this point the door speakers should continue to work with the factory dash speaker unplugged.

-Tap into the +/- jumpers to connect to the new dash speaker.

-I also know that there is a capacitor on the factory speaker serving as a "bass blocker" and I plan to use new ones with the new speakers also.

Can someone confirm that I have this right and my method will work? It's oddly difficult to find a picture of the factory Toyota wiring online and I'd like to do this just once.

Thanks!

 

[pjrxj]

Hi everyone. I just ordered a set of Kicker 3.5" speakers for the dash and just want to confirm the wiring before I start working on them.

From what I read here, the factory dash speakers are wired in parallel with the door speakers. Meaning that the +/- wires from the headunit plug into the dash speaker as part of a 4-wire plug, and the other two wires output signal to the door speakers. If I understand this right, just unplugging the dash speaker would also cause the door speaker to stop working. I also read here that the factory speakers in both locations are 4-ohm (wired in parallel for a 2-ohm load at the headunit) so it'd be best to replace them with 4-ohm speakers.

I don't want to buy the tacotunes harness, but I want do to this cleanly without hacking up the factory wiring. So my plan is:

-At the plug that goes into the dash speakers, use jumpers and t-taps to connect the two + wires to each other, and the two - wires to each other (should be wires 1-2 an 3-4 according to tacotunes). At this point the door speakers should continue to work with the factory dash speaker unplugged.

-Tap into the +/- jumpers to connect to the new dash speaker.

-I also know that there is a capacitor on the factory speaker serving as a "bass blocker" and I plan to use new ones with the new speakers also.

Can someone confirm that I have this right and my method will work? It's oddly difficult to find a picture of the factory Toyota wiring online and I'd like to do this just once.

Thanks!

I was going to do that myself but I broke down and bought the Tacotunes harness. I'm glad I did. It made it so much easier to install my kickers.

 

[memexe]

Hi everyone. I just ordered a set of Kicker 3.5" speakers for the dash and just want to confirm the wiring before I start working on them.

From what I read here, the factory dash speakers are wired in parallel with the door speakers. Meaning that the +/- wires from the headunit plug into the dash speaker as part of a 4-wire plug, and the other two wires output signal to the door speakers. If I understand this right, just unplugging the dash speaker would also cause the door speaker to stop working. I also read here that the factory speakers in both locations are 4-ohm (wired in parallel for a 2-ohm load at the headunit) so it'd be best to replace them with 4-ohm speakers.

I don't want to buy the tacotunes harness, but I want do to this cleanly without hacking up the factory wiring. So my plan is:

-At the plug that goes into the dash speakers, use jumpers and t-taps to connect the two + wires to each other, and the two - wires to each other (should be wires 1-2 an 3-4 according to tacotunes). At this point the door speakers should continue to work with the factory dash speaker unplugged.

-Tap into the +/- jumpers to connect to the new dash speaker.

-I also know that there is a capacitor on the factory speaker serving as a "bass blocker" and I plan to use new ones with the new speakers also.

Can someone confirm that I have this right and my method will work? It's oddly difficult to find a picture of the factory Toyota wiring online and I'd like to do this just once.

Thanks!

I did mine over the weekend - kickers in dash plus sub install.
I used the white connectors extracted from the original speakers instead of buying the Tacotunes harness. (The original speakers are still usable, but they surely are tampered with!)
I hate the "tapping into wires" method. Toyota harness seems to be aluminum, and that`s a big headache when tapping in!

I had to remove the capacitors because they reduced the signal so much on the Kickers. Plus, my LOC was reducing it further down leaving the amp with basically no signal over the RCA inputs.

All works like a charm now!

 

[Turbocat9000]

I did mine over the weekend - kickers in dash plus sub install.
I used the white connectors extracted from the original speakers instead of buying the Tacotunes harness. (The original speakers are still usable, but they surely are tampered with!)
I hate the "tapping into wires" method. Toyota harness seems to be aluminum, and that`s a big headache when doing tapping in!

I had to remove the capacitors because they reduced the signal so much on the Kickers. Plus, my LOC was reducing it further down leaving the amp with basically no signal over the RCA inputs.

All works like a charm now!

Thanks for the response. If you are tapping into the factory wires to connect to a LOC, you absolutely have to do it before the capacitors. Those are designed to block low frequencies from reaching smaller speakers. The capacitance of the capacitor will determine the cutoff frequency and it's possible that the stock ones are cutoff too high for those Kicker speakers, but you do need some sort of capacitor in-line on the positive terminal of the Kicker speakers otherwise you will get distortion and potentially damage them in short order. I have a ton of capacitors laying around and I plan to test with a few different values to figure out what works best. Capacitors are cheap through a site like Digikey or Mouser and there is a crossover calculator here if you are curious.

As for the aluminum wires, I know that splicing with copper is a bad idea but I assumed T-taps would be safe.

 

[memexe]

Thanks for the response. If you are tapping into the factory wires to connect to a LOC, you absolutely have to do it before the capacitors. Those are designed to block low frequencies from reaching smaller speakers. The capacitance of the capacitor will determine the cutoff frequency and it's possible that the stock ones are cutoff too high for those Kicker speakers, but you do need some sort of capacitor in-line on the positive terminal of the Kicker speakers otherwise you will get distortion and potentially damage them in short order. I have a ton of capacitors laying around and I plan to test with a few different values to figure out what works best. Capacitors are cheap through a site like Digikey or Mouser and there is a crossover calculator here if you are curious.



As for the aluminum wires, I know that splicing with copper is a bad idea but I assumed T-taps would be safe.

Thanks for the suggestion. I have some variable crossovers left from another installation on one of my old cars. I will put them on the kickers and try different settings on those.[emoji106]


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[Turbocat9000]

Well, I got one side done this afternoon.

The speaker grill is easily removed by popping a trim panel remover under the rounded corner and working it across the front edge, and then lifting it. Once that's off, two phillips-head screws hold the speaker in place. You will need a short screwdriver to get at these due to the angle of the windshield. Thankfully after a couple turns they can be removed by hand. With the speaker out, I fought with the clip to get it unplugged but managed to do it with the help of a small flat screwdriver.

With the speaker out, I used T-taps to tap into the factory wires as I described in my first post, following the color-codes that netrickyaz provided here. Tapping into these wires was the hardest and most time-consuming part since you need pliers to clamp these taps on and not only is there very little space to work with, the wires also do not come out very far. I opened up the sheathing a bit to give myself more wire to work with. After tapping the four wires and checking continuity with the plug to make sure the connections were good, I used jumpers to connect the two + wires together and the two - wires together (without doing this, the door speakers won't work). I then tapped into each of those little jumpers to connect to the +/- leads on the new speaker. Once I tested and made sure everything worked properly, fitting it back in was pretty easy.

Pics here: https://imgur.com/a/6sL1Ff6

The factory speaker is 4-ohm and had a 5.6uf capacitor on it, which (if my math is right) is around a 7000 Hz high pass filter. The optimal frequency for a high-pass filter depends on speaker size and how it's installed among other factors like the frequency range of the speaker and the size/location of the other speakers in your vehicle. That being said, 7000 Hz seems really high to me for a 2-3" speaker as I commonly see smaller tweeters high-passed much lower than this (2-3kHz in some cases). I had some electrolytic caps laying around to use with the new speakers and decided to use 220uf, which is around a 180Hz high-pass filter.

Tomorrow I plan to take the cover back off and (somehow) install a foam ring to help seal off the front and back wave of the speaker, which is critical for lower and midrange frequencies. This can be done by either sealing the front of the speaker against the grill, or sealing the back of the speaker against the dash cutout. Once that's done, I'll start on the other side.

 

[Turbocat9000]

I swapped the passenger side dash speaker this morning and added a few additional pics at the link above. The process was the same, but for the t-taps, this time I used a smaller pair of pliers with a wider nose on them which made it a bit easier to work in that cramped area under the windshield. The wire colors on this side did not match netrickyaz's post for some reason, so I just looked at the pic I'd taken of the driver's side wiring and used the same pattern. So far they are a significant improvement over stock and I'm sure will sound even better once I properly seal off the mounting area. I haven't figured out how I want to do that part yet, so it will have to wait for another day.