I am planning on installing a set of 5-1/4" Alpine component speakers in the front doors of my '87 740 GLE, and I'm wondering how to rout the speaker wires. The rubber sheathing that houses all of the power lock/window wires is stuffed pretty tight, so I can't fish the wiring through. I was thinking as a last resort I could cut it off, run my wires and wrap everything with linemans tape (the stuff they wrap streetside powerlines with...very durable), but I really don't want to do it that way if I don't have to. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Matthew

My '92 740 was already prewired for the speakers, which made adding the front door speakers an easy install.ðYours might also be prewired.
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John '88 240, '92 740 Tampa Bay

Well there are speaker wires in place, but the Alpine's are going to be fed by a 2 channel 300 watt amp. The stock wires aren't really up to the job.

Sorry to be so caustic but if you need to feed the door speakers with 300 watts or even 100 real watts you won't hear my siren!

Seriously tho, you can pull the wires through the rubber duct if you play your cards right and take your time, I have done this several times on 700s for both the front and rear speakers. I have mirror strobes and they require a dedicated cable for the strobe tubes and is thicker than the # 14 monster cable. Inside the door you will find a reinforcement channel that runs behind the rubber boot and sends the wires down to the bottom, you can pull the boot from the door and run a fishtape through to the kickpanel areas and pull your wires through. Next you can run the wires into the door and down around the steel channel and follow the power window harness, you will have to take your time and use patience for this however the rewards will be no shorted speaker wires and blown amplifiers.


As for the stock wires they will handle 100 real RMS watts with no issues. I have yet to see an amp rated at 300 watts do this with a real sinewave for any length of time. 300 peak maybe or 300 at 1% distortion but at this point the voice coils are burning up from the squarewave.

Badge 988

Do what I did, run a 200 watt siren instead of the 100w...people seemed to notice the 200w one better, don't know why....

--
MD

Badge,

Thanks for the info...I guess I could use the stock wires, but I just figured that a thicker (10-12 gauge?) would be better. As for the power rating, I think of it as clarity rather than volume. Now as for hearing that siren, all the soundproofing I've done may have something to do with that ;)

Thanks,

Matthew

You could pull out the original wires, and use them to pull the new ones through