Subwoofer Power Wires

I'm in the middle of installing subs in the car and I need to know asap where everyone who has a sub or subs hooked their power wires for the amp. I tried my battery in the back. The bolt is fat as hell and we can't wrap the wires very well around the bolt to make contact but I'm sure we could with more time. Right now we're working on routing the power wires through the car and up through the engine compartment to go around the terminal in the engine for the + wire.

Anyone have experience with this or helpful tips? We've got the other wires ready to go. Any help is much appreciated!

I bought posts to screw into the side terminals of the battery and used the posts to connect to the amp. This leaves the factory battery connections basically the same. It would be rather silly to run those wires all the way to the front of the car. There's a few ways to do it. It would be even easier than what I did to buy the extended side post terminals and just throw a ring terminal on the batter cables and you're done. Run over to your local auto supply and look at the terminals and such they carry.

Well, we wired it up to the front terminal anyway. Stupid, I know, but we wanted to see if that still worked. As of right now, it doesn't work. We don't really know what the deal is. The power wire is connected to the terminal, the RCA cables are connected to the sub outputs on my Pioneer HU, the remote wire is attached to the antenna wire post, we've got a ground on one of the bolts in the trunk... everything's hooked to the amp and the subs are hooked to the amp.

Everything seems to be good, but the power light to the amp won't come on when the car does. Hrm. Dammit.

If the power light never turns on for the amp, Check ground (painted surface will not work at all, the bolt alone won't cut it).
Just for temporary test purposes short the remote lead on the amp to your positive power cable connection on the amp to, in a like, bypass that remote and make sure it's not that. Thirdly, try holding your main power cable against the + battery terminal just to see if you get power then. Of course, check fuses on the amp an on your inline that you hopefully have. With those checks, you should have your no power problem identified. Good luck.

http://www.batteriesareus.com/images/battery%20terminal%20-%20side%20terminal%20Plated%20replacement.JPG

That would be a very ideal solution to the battery connection issue. Or really anything like it...

Don't use the front terminal, use the post extender straight off the battery, like Turtleman mentioned. Here's what an extender looks like:



It's very easy to wire up the existing + the amp power cable.

Don't forget to wire an inline fuse close to the battery, like this one:



DON'T SKIP THE FUSE, OR YOUR CAR COULD CATCH ON FIRE. IT GOES LESS THAN 4" FROM THE + BATTERY TERMINAL.

Check the ground to your amp is good. If that doesn't work, try testing it by wiring direct to the battery + and ground. Then connect blue remote wire to +. The light should come on. If not, check the amp's fuse(s). If still no luck, the amp is probably defective.

I made sure to get the inline fuse holder, no problems there. It's the ground then. It's on a painted bolt. Thanks for the fast responses. We'll start troubleshooting in a minute.

Got em working. It was the remote lead. Had it wired to the wrong place. Regardless, thanks for the help.

I had been meaning to replace one of my posts so I snapped a few pics while I finally did it for reference.



The bolt and ring terminal setup on the left is probably most ideal. The post and post-clamp method on the right worked ok for me but are more of a pain to install. Some offer the + and - posts in different diameters and some don't - same for the post clamps. So using the the side post bolt and ring terminal with the allen cable clamping is definately the most painless and sure way to do it.



closer look



Don't skip the fuse!

I installed mine to the Battery in back with An bolt extension from autozone and a cap for my zero gauge wire it fits nicely