setup ideas, 2001 impala

Recently hooked up a Polk Audio DXI 112 sub with Alpine MRP-M500 amp powering it.

Its a 350RMS sub and the place who sold it to him told him 8guage power and ground will be fine.  I also think he ended up getting 16guage speaker wire.  I could be wrong, it might have been 14 but not sure at the top of my head.

Does this sound like it would work?  I told him he should maybe go with 4guage power and ground and maybe even 12 guage speaker wire.

Also we had a hard time finding a decent ground in the trunk.....where are you guys putting your amps in the impalas? 

Hes comming over tonight so I can look at his sytem since his sub stopped working.  Not sure if he blew the sub or what.  We just drilled a hole in the trunk and put the ground there.  But I am thinking of maybe moving it to under the seat and grounding to the seat bolt instead. 

But I guess im asking if you think the 8 guage is too small for that sub and amp and that might have been why it "might" be blown. 

Oh and also i been looking around the internet to find out what speaker wire is in the box of this sub.  This is the polk audio 12inch sub that comes in there own ported box..  Kind of curious if they used good wiring inside the box or what. 

in the manual for the alpine, it lists 8 gauge as the correct wire for that amp.  If you do use 4 gauge you may have to reduce it or it might not fit in the terminal of the amplifier.  Advanced

Hey guys. Just a little discription on my setup right now. Head Unit - Pioneer DEH-P6400 Speakers - Stock door and rear speakers Sub - 12' Infinity Kappa Perfect Amp - Alpine MRD-M500 Sub Box - doodiety walmart schosche sealed box. The inside volume of the box is 1.2 I think Looking for some ideas on some good setups for this. I have the sub and amp just sitting in the back on the floor right now but id like to find a good custom way to mount everything. Im also thinking of making my own ported box for this sub, I just need to find some good blueprints to make the box. Anyways I just picked up some Kicker DS600 component speakers for my front doors. I am on a budget so just want something better than stock speakers. Are these decent speakers? I also have an old school pioneer gm-h50 that I was going to use to power these speakers but by looking at specs this amp only puts out 25rms at 4ohms. And these speakers are rated at 50rms so im not sure if that would work very well. The amp puts out 40rms on 2ohms but i dont think those speakers work as 2ohm? If this amp wont work do you guys have any decent suggestion for an amp? Oh also can I even do it properly with my headunit? Someone said it would need 3 sets of outputs but I think it only has 2. One more thing since i cant stop typing right now haha. Is it possible to turn my fader on my headunit to the front and still have my sub work? When i turn my fader to the fronts my sub stops working so I have to have my fader turned to the rear more and I like the sound from the fronts and then just having my sub for my back. Okay sorry for rambling on guys. Thanks much! lol Hopefully this made some sense

How many RCA jacks does that radio have? If it has only one set, connect the rear speaker wires to the front speakers. Connect the front speaker wires to the rear speakers.

I think it has two. I will be going out to look in a little while here. But If It only had 1 set then I would just connect the front right to the back right and the front left to the back left? Actually to be honest I could even go without my rear speakers if that would make it easier to hook up that amp to the front speakers. I wont be having anyone ride in the back and it probably would sound better to just have sound from the front.

The Pioneer DEH-P6400 should have a setting in the menu to select whether the rear RCA output is a regular rear out or a non-fader. Easiest way to set it up is get a decent 400W 4 channel amp. run a set of rcas from the front output to the amp and Y the rcas to cover the 4 inputs of the amp. You'll then be able to adjust gains and freq. of the front speakers and rear speakers individually and also have a seperate rca for the sub. you'll lose front to back fader of the interior speakers, but allows you to control sub volume & frequency cutoff right at the head unit

I noticed too that now that I reset up my sub and amp that I am getting a pop from my sub when my amp gets turned on. I am gonna set my amp so it delays it but i am wondering if its something else that I should fix instead? I dont remember having this pop how my sub was hooked up before. I changed the sub wiring from 4ohm to 2ohms. I also changed my amp ground from my seat bolt as it was starting to rust and moved it to a bolt that bolts on the back folding seats. Figure I will recheck my ground and then set the amp to have a delay to power it. Also I do have my gain set kinda high i think? I want to say its at -10db on the mrd-m500. 0db being the highest and -24 being the lowest. My headunit puts out 2.2preamp volts but I read that some people tested it and it only was putting out .5volts untill fully turned up.

Bolts of any type are not the best grounds. The best ground is a spot of metal(paint scraped completely) of the main body of the car. Just be careful not to screw into your gas tank, brake lines, etc. Re-wiring the amp to a lower ohm load could be partially responsible for the popping. My question is how did you go from a 4ohm load to a 2ohm load with 1 sub?

Do you now have really bad engine noise in your woofers? if so, you blew a fuse inside your radio when you disconnected the ground wire from the amp. There is an easy fix if it does have engine noise.

I have the infinity kappa perfect 12.1d This has the duel coils so I wired it up like this: Put a wire from the positive on the left coil and put it to the positive on the right coil. Put a wire from the negative on the left coil and put it on the negative on the right coil. Then just put a wire to to the amp negative and positive. How can you tell if you have engine noise? I don't think I do. It sounds pretty good. I have made sure I had my battery unhooked and I also try to make sure everything is separated nicely when I unhook stuff so it doesn't touch. It just does a little pop after I turn the car on and the amp powers up. Like it gets a little power surge. Even if my head unit is all the way turned down.