1998 M Roadster Amp Wire Identification

jimson

Regular Member
Joined
Feb 12, 2019
Points
14
Hello all, I've been struggling and am finally reaching out for help!

We have had this car from new and replaced the stereo sometime ago with a Pioneer unit and I guess they installed pretty good speakers in the kick panels and I'm was going to try to reuse those speakers and other factory speaker wire in the car.

I have a new head unit with RCA preamp outs and I'm getting signal into my new Kenwood amp in the truck and I know it works because I hooked up a spare speaker. What I've not been able to do is get any sound out of any of the speakers still left in the car, the kicks and the speakers behind the seats. Note: I removed the door panels and tweeters that were there and have ordered replacements as well has having removed the factory subs in favor of a new setup in the trunk.

The central question is, there were two large wiring harnesses plugged into the HK amplifier at the right of the truck. I cut both of these and am attempting to tap into the kick panel speaker wires. One harness has a 12 pin connector and the other a 26 pin. If I'm trying to hook up the left kick panel, which of these harnesses should I tap into and what two wires would it be? From my research it would be the yellow/red and yellow/brown, but no luck. I can't imagine that the factory speaker wires could have been fried, am I missing something here? FYI I'm not using any of the high level speaker outputs from my new head unit, just the RCAs.

Note: when I embarked on this, the sound system no longer worked at all and I assumed the HK amp was bad.

Thanks.
 

jimson

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Feb 12, 2019
Points
14
After another day spent. I was able to get sound to the right footwell speaker and the very weak speakers behinds the seats. The left footwell speaker wires need to be replaced, bummer! This caused me to rip out the interior and roll bars and I'm going to drill a hole through to the trunk for a nice install that will include 12 gauge speaker wire to the kicks.
 

t-tony

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Well Sean, if you're going to do it you might as well do it right. Upload some video to YouTube when you have it working.

Tony.
 

NZ00Z3

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Be careful when drilling holes. Remember that the fuel tank is between the trunk and the rear speakers.
 

jimson

Regular Member
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Feb 12, 2019
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Be careful when drilling holes. Remember that the fuel tank is between the trunk and the rear speakers.
Thanks for that. I did not know that. When I pulled up the carpet under the bonnet fold down section the trunk looks very accessible. I'll take another hard look.
 

jimson

Regular Member
Joined
Feb 12, 2019
Points
14
I have a 1998, those will be helpful thanks. At this point since I have at least one bad speaker wire I'm going to rewire the footwell and behind seat speakers and crossing fingers the wires for the door tweeters still work to power my replacement tweeters.

Thanks again.
 
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