Notice:
This page was created as a guide to assist you in the installation of your kit. This page is meant to be accessed by those who have supported Subthump by purchasing a kit from us. Those who wish not to support us, can find their own methods. With that in mind, we ask that you do not display the link to this page in a public forum. We are active on most forums and if we see the link to this page posted, we will either change the link or delete this page altogether. Thank you.
To Begin
To begin installation of your kit, locate your factory amp which is hidden behind the moulded carpet on the back wall of the trunk on the driver's side.
If you plan to mount your aftermarket amp elsewhere, you can leave the factory Boston amp in place and just unplug the 3 harness connectors that connect to it. However, if you plan to use this factory spot, you will need to remove the amp. Remember the spot is very small and only a few amps will fit here. We do offer a nice mount that goes here if you find an amp or processor that will fit, item 5G-FFA on our website. If you decide to remove the amp, use a 10mm wrench, loosen and remove the nut and the Boston amp will pull up off the stud and out of it's holding tabs. With the amp removed from it's mount, you will notice that the main audio harness is split into 3 sections. The connector at the top is called the x1 connector. This is mostly used to power your factory amp, but the power wire is really too small for a good aftermarket amp so it will not be used. The middle connector is the x2. This harness contains almost all of the speaker wires that lead out to all your speakers. The only exception would be the wires for the midrange section of the rear 6x9s, which are part of the x1 harness. More on this later. The bottom connector is the the x3. X3 is simply the input harness. Which means the 4 channel pre-amp signals coming straight from the radio.
The X3 RCA Harness Resistor Installation
Our kit is relatively simple. Use our x3 harness (harness with brown connectors) to connect to the car's x3 connector. This will give you 4 channel RCA's that you can plug your rca cables into for your input signal. Before you install the x3 harness, there is one step that you will need to perform to the X3 (brown) harness. It is detailed in the following video. Please follow it carefully. The resistor is included in your kit and is taped to the back side of the paper that you found this web address printed on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSC16enf414
Please note that this step is not mandatory and will not harm anything if you don't install the resistor. The only function the resistor serves is to trick the radio into thinking that the factory amp is still connected. On some cars when the factory amp is unhooked, the radio behaves very differently. For instance, the chime and blinker volumes can get really loud and some speakers may not work. The resistor simply applies a load to the amp control wire (orange) to make the radio behave normally. As said, we have found that many cars don't require the resistor so you may decide to skip that step to save yourself some time. However, if you skip the resistor installation and experience any of the symptoms above, then you definitely need to hook up the resistor in your kit. You can use any ground in the car desired when connecting the resistor.
Next, run your rca cables and connect them from the x3 harness to your amp. Please note that our harness uses the signal straight from the radio. When you fire your system up for the first time, if you hear any strange sounds or your amp goes into protect mode, this means your amp doesn't like the dc voltage that is in the system. What you need to do is get two of our nr16 ground loop isolators. These plug into the x3 harness and then your rca cables plug into it, and it eliminates the ground loop. Most amps will not need this, but we have experience a few that do and so we want you to know what to do in that instance so you don't panic.
Remote Enable
The Brown wiire with the White Stripe on the x3 harness is your turn-on lead. Wire this to your amp's remote terminal.
Power And Ground
Don't forget that you DO need to run power and ground to your amp. The x3 harness will not power up your amp alone.
The X2 Harness
The x2 harness (harness with green connector) connects to your amps speaker outputs. The wires are coded EIA standard and are also labeled to ensure you hook each wire to the proper output channel on your amp. Solid wires are positive, striped wires are negative. The x2 harness comes with 12" of wire. If you need more reach, simply use some 16 ga. speaker wire as an extension. Just be sure you get them wired correctly. We take no responsible for any blown speakers or shorted out amps. Once the x2 harness is wired up, it will snap onto the x2 connector of your car's audio harness.
The X2A Jumpers (needed on coupe, not used on convertible)
The last thing involved is installing our x2a speaker jumper wires (harnesses with gray connectors). To install these, All you do is unplug each rear 6x9 (at the speaker) and install the x2a (short gray harness) In-Line. That's it Done.
Background
The rear Boston 6x9s are bi-amp'd meaning the tweeter and midrange are powered by 2 sets of speaker wires and two channels on the factory amp, not one. Since a 4 channel amp only has two channels available for the rear, we have two options. Either power a single portion of each rear speaker or split the signal and power them both. Earlier versions of the X2A only powered the midrange of each rear 6x9. Further develpment of our of the x2a harnesses (v3.0) allows us to power both the tweeter and midrange of each rear speaker and this is a huge improvement. The power is split at the connector and a small capacitor is installed in the tweeter line to filter out unwanted bass. This makes for a full range speaker set--just like most aftermarket speakers. If you later decide to install aftermarket 6x9 rear speakers, you can simply snip off the ends of each harness and hardwire it to the new speaker using the gray wires. This way you will not have to cut the factory harness to install new speakers.
Troubleshooting.. Please read this section thoroughly before asking the following questions.
The main thing is don't panic if something is not quite right when you first attempt to fire it up. Even though this is a simple kit, one missed step can be the difference between getting it to work or not. There are many variables in an install so be sure to check over all your steps.
Again, when you fire your system up for the first time, if you hear any strange sounds or your amp goes into protect mode, this means your amp doesn't like the dc voltage that is in the system. What you need to do is shut the system off and get two of our SNI-1 ground loop isolators or any good line out converters (not scosche).
Also if you fire it up and the chime is much louder than your music or only one door speake works, then you need to revisit the section on performing the x3 conversion and how to hook it up properly.
Remember, Gains are Key. The chime, onstar and other warning sounds in the car are heavily dependent on the gain settings on your aftermarket amp. Higher gains mean more power to your speakers, but the trade-off is louder chime and onstar voice. So turn your gains up to levels that you are comfortable with and stop. High gains are not required to get improved sound quality and output. Actually, very minimal gains are all that's needed. During our trials, no more than 1/4 the way up was plenty. This is a 6v system so it pushes plenty signal to your amp.
If everything works except your backup warning signals, please note that the backup sensors are a high frequency signals from the rear channels on the radio. If you set your crossovers on your amp to filter that frequency out, then they will not be audible. So changing your crossover settings should bring them in.
If you shut your system down and experience any thump or other strange noises, this is actually quite normal and expected to a certain point, but varies greatly from amp to amp. It can be more pronounced with some amps and a non factor in others. It just depends on the power supplies that are used by your amp. If you have your gain settins up too high, it can make it worse, so keeping your gains down really helps diminish the sound if you have it. Also using our ground loop isolator on the subwoofer rca set is also highly recommended. p/n SNI-1. This will eliminate the turn-off thump completely.
Static. If you have static, then you probably have a rca cable running near the power cable for the amp. Try re-routing these so they are not right next to one another or using shielded rca lines. Also, we have found that digital amps tend to have static caused by interference with the radio antenna that is imbedded in the back window glass. So it is best to stay away from digital amps altogether.
If you have any further contributions, please let us know and we will post it here for the benefit of others.
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