I've got a 93 w/ the active speaker set up and i replaced the hu w/ an alpine cda-9884 w/ polk db460's in the front and rears. The guy i bought the car from ripped all of the audio out of the car before i bought it and swapped the engine and trans for a 95 so the amount of unplugged and hanging wires is a nightmare. I've been trying to hook up an mtx amp to run a sub in the system but i can't seem to get power to the amp. If anyone has any help w/ pictures i'd really appreciate it.

 

Are you saying you can't get a 12 volt supply to it? Or you don't have the main power source working from battery to amp?

 

I'm assuming you want to use the stock wiring? Why not just run a wire from the blue remote wire on the back of the head unit to the amp like everybody else? Is there some kind of problem with the head unit? If you are trying to re-use the stock signal wire its the lavender wire that is running into the stock amps.

P.S. you do know that you need a remote wire in addition to the 12v power supply, right?

 

I thought the remote wire was the 12 volt...? That is what I was getting at, regardless. I was also going to suggest that if the stock wiring isn't working for the remote, you could run that wire from the battery too, but throw a switch in to turn it on and off.

 

No, you need the 12v constant (which would be the thicker gauge wire, running from the battery) and a 12v remote switch that detects when the head unit is turned on. It should be a blue wire on an aftermarket head unit (I think) and it needs to be run to the "remote" terminal on the head unit. The remote wire basically "wakes up" the amp when the head unit is turned on.

 

We're on the same page, I just didn't realize the main power was 12v too... I've never heard anyone refer to it like that, so it just threw me off!

 

Well, to the original poster, did you ever figure out your wiring situation yet? If you can't get the amp to turn on, like I always say: Use a meter and see where you're not getting power.

Like Ry says, you should have 12v at remote and 12v at your power wire. (Sometimes it fluxuates, but if it's at least 12~14v-ish when the car is on, you're fine)

If those both check out, make sure that you're using a proper ground. If it's painted metal, you want to scrape that down. Proper grounding is important.

If not...Maybe your amp is bad?

 

i had everything hooked up from the head unit including the remote wire off of the harness from the head unit. I've done a couple installs before. I did grab my DVOM and checked everything and i didn't have any power from the power cable. Battery had 12.37v so that wasn't an issue. I went and traced the cable and it had a short to ground from a pinch. Fixed that and now i have a working amp but can't seem to get ANY amp i hook up to run ANY sub. I figured out the issue about 15 min after i posted.

 

Do you have any pictures of the way it's set up? You can't run the amp off the stock power system unless you've got a REAL small amp. You're going to need an amp kit. I'm just assuming you're trying to run it that way. Let me know what it looks like.