Ok, pulled half a tonn of amp eq and wires from my volvo this weekend, planning on putting in the new Kenwood, but in the process while testing and marking wires I found a dud left negitive speaker wire.

The thing at first showed to many ohms, upon further testing I traced the dud section of wire to the section between the door harness plug to inside the door, meaning the bad wire is inside the fully covered/protected cluster of wires in that section!!!

How did a wire inside there go bad???
About the only thing I can think of is a factory fault?
Anyone else had this happen?
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My 85 760Ti, and her name is Veronica...

which is exactly where you will get wire faults - due to the flexing action on the harness as the door is opened and closed...

if you are carefull and attacth your new wire to the end of the old wire (solder & tape) and lubricate the wires (KY jelly - dont laugh it works!) you should be able to pull a new peice of wire through...

alteratively get a small zip tie, cut the end of it and tape a wire to it and use it as a needle to thread the new wire through the rubber boot....again lubricate first...its a bit fidly but very do-able!

I thought about doing something like that, but I'm not to sure it's worth it.
with the having to cut and solder a few places a number of times, I just wonder if I should just wait till I buy the better speakers (in a few months or so) and then run new higher grade speaker wire???


Allthough, I did notice that the volvo grade of wire is not half bad for a factory setup, you hear install pros go on and on about upgrading your wires, yet when I got my Kenwood I realised that 1.The wires in the Kenwood harness are tiny, and 2.The Volvo wires are thicker than most cars I have worked on and thicker than the Kenwood harness wires!

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My 85 760Ti, and her name is Veronica...

i am suggesting you just replacew the run of wire in total...honestly its not a bad job...the solder is only to connect your new wire to your old wires so you can pull you old wires out pulling your new wires into there place....

sure upgrade the speakers you HAVE TO anyway as they will be 4 ohm speakers and your new head unit will almost certaily expect 8 ohm ones...and you run the risk of toastign the amps in the head unit if you run it with speakers under the manufacturesrs spec...

Almost all car stereos and speakers are meant for 4 ohms.... At least in the US I've never seen the use of 8 Ohm speakers in a car before...

Oh, and they do make a lubricant specifically meant for pulling wires =)

Cliff Scott
89 DOHC740

I supose I'd want something that is very slipery, yet drys out once used, I've got a couple of products hanging around, one of those may work.
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My 85 760Ti, and her name is Veronica...