V36 Speakers Upgrade

[Jeremy1607]

Hi guys,

I'll be installing aftermarket amp and speakers in my car. I was just wondering if anyone knows which are the speaker wires located behind the head unit ?

I know what colour it is from the door panels but there are about 3-4 different plugs and too many wires coming out from each plugs.

I really can't find which ones it is and so many different colour wires.

Also, would anyone know where or what colour wire I can tap into for the remote turn on wire for my amp ?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Jeremy

[The Max]

I don't have the FSM handy to point out which pins are the speaker outputs but it is part of the connector which has the main power as well.

Sadly, if you don't have a Bose system, and it looks like you probably don't, there is no readily available remote output. The simplest way is to use the accessories power rail, of which I think that wire is on that same connector as the speaker outputs. Besides which, your amp needs to be on full-time anyway because of your phone handsfree. No amp, no phone audio.

Go to the Nico club forum where you will find a copy of the G37 FSM relevant to your model. Generally, it's one year later than your V36 (ie. V36 2009 = G37 2010). Look up the AV section of the FSM and you'll find the relevant pinouts in there. Be sure that you look up the correct system within the manual as it lists all the variants - with/without navigation, reverse camera, Bose, etc.

Last caveat, are you putting in split/component speakers in the doors or just full-range? If they're splits and you don't have a Bose system, you will need to thread another pair of wires to each door because Nissan only have one pair feeding each door and the woofer and midrange (or as they call it, "sqwarker") are connected in parallel with a bipolar capacitor as a high pass filter for the midrange driver.

Looking back on the work I did to mine, if I had to start all over again, I'd ensure my V36SP was equipped with a Bose system because all the wiring could simply be done in the boot with no need to touch the head unit.

By the way, where are you mounting your amp?

Edited January 2, 2014 by The Max

[Jeremy1607]

I don't have the FSM handy to point out which pins are the speaker outputs but it is part of the connector which has the main power as well. Sadly, if you don't have a Bose system, and it looks like you probably don't, there is no readily available remote output. The simplest way is to use the accessories power rail, of which I think that wire is on that same connector as the speaker outputs. Besides which, your amp needs to be on full-time anyway because of your phone handsfree. No amp, no phone audio. Go to the Nico club forum where you will find a copy of the G37 FSM relevant to your model. Generally, it's one year later than your V36 (ie. V36 2009 = G37 2010). Look up the AV section of the FSM and you'll find the relevant pinouts in there. Be sure that you look up the correct system within the manual as it lists all the variants - with/without navigation, reverse camera, Bose, etc. Last caveat, are you putting in split/component speakers in the doors or just full-range? If they're splits and you don't have a Bose system, you will need to thread another pair of wires to each door because Nissan only have one pair feeding each door and the woofer and midrange (or as they call it, "sqwarker") are connected in parallel with a bipolar capacitor as a high pass filter for the midrange driver. Looking back on the work I did to mine, if I had to start all over again, I'd ensure my V36SP was equipped with a Bose system because all the wiring could simply be done in the boot with no need to touch the head unit. By the way, where are you mounting your amp?

Thanks for that. I'll have a look around. I'm putting splits in front the full range in the rear. It was so hard passing through the new speaker wires through the molex connector.

There's very little space, need to drill a new hole, etc. My side and reverse camera was just showing a black blank screen.

I opened up the molex again and turned out I accidently bent one of the pin on the connector, I've fixed it though.

The drivers's side is worst which I have't done yet. I've only pulled through the wires for the passenger side.

I'll probbaly mount the amp on the side of the trunk liner where the old TV tuner used to be.

I had a look at your thread, you did a very good job with the install with all the custom work you did, etc. !

[The Max]

Oh so you found my little how-to. It's a shame I didn't continue to take photos throughout the process but the Sumitomo door harness connectors definitely need a lot of care and patience, particularly when plugging them back in. It sounds like you've added wiring for both drivers in each of your doors rather than use the stock wiring for the tweeters in the least as I did. I hope you left some slack inside the cabin as I advised in the event that you need to ever have the doors removed, in order to allow yourself some slack to cut and re-terminate those cables during and after the removal process.

With the drilling, even though you've already done the job, it's best not to use a drill bit but a carbide cutting tool which abrades its way through instead of gouging. You have better control over the motion of the bit with no risk of warping the plastic or losing control and damaging neighbouring pins, etc.

Anyway, point being, take your time with it, even if it means taking two weekends instead of one. It's way easier to do damage in modern vehicles than it was back in the 90s! You'll save yourself a lot more time and heartache in future.

Also, be sure to use glue heatshrink over your soldered connections but also be careful where you apply the heat around the surrounding wiring loom, trim and carpet. Keep cardboard tubes handy to help you shield surrounding wires during this process to be sure your heat gun (or mini blowtorch, which I don't really recommend) doesn't upset anything else.

Did you find the FSM for your vehicle?

[Jeremy1607]

Yeah I did, your install seems complicated though haha. Like 4 core, 8 core wires, etc. What system are you running and where did you tap into for the remote turn on wire for the amp ?

Also is it hard changing the firewall grommet ? I don't think I broke the clips but seems like it's abit loose. It doesn't come out when I pull on it though and I couldn't get the rubber thing back into place/the ring.

My splits came with crossovers, was I not supposed to use them ? My front speakers has 4 terminals, 2 for the amp and 2 for the crossovers. So the tweeters gets power from the speakers I think.

I don't know what a carbide tool is but I'll do a research haha.

I did, I'm having a look at the FSM now.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Jeremy1607

[The Max]

It's not complicated. I just put a lot of detail into what I do for two reasons, which are mutually inclusive - neatness and reliability.

I've intercepted the front speaker outputs of the OEM stereo. The OEM stereo front speaker output feeds an Arc Audio PS8 DSP. The DSP then manages the splitting of the signals to the front and rear channels of my Rockford Fosgate T800-4AD amp as well as my old faithful Sony XM-1002HX amp which is attached to my equally old faithful Soundstream Exact 12" subwoofer enclosure in a portable arrangement, since I didn't have any room to neatly mount it in the vehicle as well. I'll update my how-to thread with some more photos once my work here in Russia is done.

The 4-core speaker cable carries the front speaker outputs from the OEM stereo back to the DSP.

The 3 runs of 8-core speaker cable carry the following as individual groups:

1) Feed from the output of the Rockford Fosgate amp to the front and rear crossovers which you see pictured in my thread (Front left, front right, rear left and rear right = 8 wires)

2) Feed from the crossovers for the rear speakers to the rear parcel tray. (Each side requires 4 wires since we have separate tweeters and woofers so L+R = 8 wires)

3) Feed from the crossovers for the front speakers to the dash behind the OEM stereo where the tweeter pairs feed the existing OEM wiring which I had intercepted earlier (as there's negligible power loss given high frequency drivers don't require as much juice) and the woofer pairs are then soldered to additional 18AWG speaker cable for passing through the drilled out door harness Sumitomo connectors.

For the remote turn-on wire, I tapped into the 12V accessories feed since the amp needs to be on at all times in order for the phone handsfree to be usable. Again, I don't have my design files on my FTP server so I can't tell you off-hand which pins I tapped into for that.

Is it hard to change the grommet? Not really. You just need to be careful because you need to disconnect the ECU wiring and the last thing you want to do is bend (and consequently break) any pins in those connectors! My photos should have reasonable detail on what's involved there. How did you remove the grommet to pass your power cable? Did you remove the rubber cap first and then press in the plastic clips at the three equidistant points on the grommet? If you did that and you can physically see that there's nothing broken, then you're fine. However, if it seems loose, then you definitely need to fix that. Remember, it is there to shield the interior of the vehicle from water. You need to ensure that the plastic grommet sits well inside the lip of the rubber cap so that when it clips in, the rubber forms a gasket on the firewall and therefore seals it completely shut. Otherwise, water won't just go in and mess up your carpet. It will potentially trickle down to some electronics, including ECU and BCM. Those are the two devices you don't want to risk. Do the job properly or give it to someone who will before you cause yourself grief. You have a nice car - keep it nice. Take your time, take pride and most of all, take absolute care.

Yes, you are supposed to use the crossovers on your splits. The only time you wouldn't use them would be if you had a DSP like mine which has several outputs and can act as an active crossover. Of course, that would mean that you would need a total of 8 channels of amplification just for one pair of speakers and therefore a total of 16 channels of amplification if you want to do front and rear. That's something I didn't have the room for in my boot if I was to keep it as stealthy an installation as possible.

What brand and model speakers did you get? I'll tell you how it should be connected because you seem confused or in the very least, you haven't carefully read the manual that came with your speakers. If it has 4 terminals, that means it's two pairs of terminals to be fed from the crossover. In other words, you wire the amp's output into the input of the crossover and then the tweeter and woofer are connected to the respective outputs of your crossover. I'm guessing your speakers probably have the option of allowing you to mount the tweeter on the woofer if you don't want to physically split them apart, like I had my Boston Acoustics ProSeries 6.5 set up in my Maxima. Because the speaker grilles in our Skylines are a much lower profile by comparison, I dismounted them from the coaxial arrangement and mounted the tweeters separately on the Scosche 6x9 speaker adapter plates in order to maintain a lower profile and clear of the grilles.