How to Install a Kenwood Car Amplifier
Installing an Kenwood amplifier is a great way to improve the overall sound of your car stereo system. Most car stereo systems are vastly underpowered, and it's actually more dangerous for a speaker to be underpowered than overpowered. Most car speakers are blown due to cranking up the volume on the stereo and forcing a speaker to work harder than normal to give you the desired result. With an amplifier, the speakers don't have to work nearly as hard.
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Things You'll Need
- Screwdriver (flathead and Phillips)
- T-taps
- Amp wiring kit
- RCA cables
- Drill
- Metal bit
- Rubber grommet
- Ring terminals
Instructions
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1
Pop the hood of your car.
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2
Disconnect the car battery by removing the negative wire first, and then the positive. Make sure neither wire is touching a battery terminal.
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3
Cut six to eight inches of power wire and strip the insulation off of both ends. Crimp a ring terminal on one end by inserting the wire into the open end of the ring terminal, and squeezing with pliers. Connect the other end of that wire to the fuse holder for the amp. The fuse holder generally comes with an amp install kit. If it doesn't, you'll need to purchase one. You can't run an amp without a fuse. Doing this is a severe fire hazard.
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4
Strip the insulation off of the end (about half an inch) of the remaining (long) piece of power wire. Connect this piece of wire to the other end of the fuse holder.
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5
Run the power wire through the firewall and into the passenger compartment. If you can't find a factory hole in the fire wall, you can make your own by drilling through with a metal bit. Be sure to insert the wire into a rubber grommet so that you don't get water into the passenger compartment.
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6
Run the power wire to the amplifier. Give yourself slack so you can hide the wires later if you'd like. You can always cut off the excess wire.
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7
Ground the amp by finding a solid metal connection in the general vicinity of the amplifier. If you are mounting the amp in the trunk, you can pull up a piece of carpet and mount the ground wire to the bare metal of the wheel well. To ground the wire you can strip the insulation off of the end you are going to ground, and apply a ring terminal. Use a screw (and perhaps a washer) to screw the ring terminal directly into the wheel well. The ground wire is the negative wire in your amp kit, and it should be a different color than your power wire so that you can differentiate the two. The ground, or negative, wire should be the same thickness as the power wire.
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8
Pull the radio out of the dash and connect the RCA cables to the preamp outputs (RCA connectors) on the back of the radio. If it's a four-channel Kenwood amp, you'll plug the RCA cables into the front and rear preamp outputs. If it's a two-channel, or mono Kenwood amp, you'll plug into the subwoofer preamp output.
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9
Use a wire color chart (Resource 1) to find the color of your car's remote wire (12 volt accessory) wire. T-tap into that wire by applying the side that looks like a mouth directly over the wire, and squeezing it down until it clicks. This automatically strips the insulation and makes a solid connection with the wire. Now, insert the remote wire for your amp into the other end of the t-tap and squeeze it with pliers. Give it a bit of a tug to ensure that it doesn't come loose.
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10
Drop the remote wire, and the RCA cable(s) through the dash so that they hang down under the radio. You can put the radio back into the dash now as well.
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11
Pull the remote wire, and the RCA cable(s) from under the dash until you have enough excess wire to run back to the amplifier. Run these wires to the amplifier.
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12
Connect all of the wires to the amplifier. Kenwood uses a couple of different designs, but generally all of the connections will be on the same side of the amp. Almost always, Kenwood amps use this order (from top to bottom): power, ground, remote, speaker wire and RCA inputs at the bottom. Connect each wire to its appropriate spot. The power goes to the 12 volt positive, the ground goes to the 12 volt negative, the remote wire connects to the 12 volt accessory and the RCA cable gets plugged into the RCA inputs. Kenwood uses screws to secure the wires in their respective places so you'll need to unscrew the terminal on each input, insert the wire, and then screw it back down to form a tight connection with the wires.
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13
Connect the speaker wire for the speakers you plan to amplify. This uses a screw system as described in Step 11.
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14
Insert a fuse into the fuse holder under the hood.
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15
Reconnect the battery.
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16
Adjust the amp gains (on the opposite side of the wire inputs) to tweak the sound to your liking.
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1
References
Resources
- Photo Credit amplifier knobs image by Darko Draskovic from Fotolia.com
