Connecting everything:
At this point you should have everything you need ran to the trunk. We’re going to start with connecting power/ground. Using your razor blade, slice about half an inch down the end of each wire, and then around the circumference to remove the insulation.
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Cut a section of heat shrink and slide it over your power wire, then slide an 8 gauge ferrule over the end. Ferrules crimp to the wire when we connect it to the amplifier to ensure the power wire doesn’t come disconnected, and also prevent any loose strands from sparking against things. Make sure the strands go all the way to the end of the ferrule, remove more insulation if necessary. You may also need to separate some of the strands and cut them off if the power wire is slightly too big for the ferrule.
Once the ferrule is on, slide the heat shrink over it and use your heat gun to shrink. The adhesive lining will help hold the ferrule in place until we plug it into the amplifier.
If you have an amplifier that has fork terminals rather than circular ones, you’ll need to crimp on fork connectors instead. A crimping tool big enough for 8 gauge may put you over the $120 price point overall, so keep that in mind. You may be able to jankily crimp it with a normal set of kleins.
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Attach appropriate size ferrules to your sub outputs and amp turn-on as well. Insert them into their respective terminals and tighten the set screw on top of them well. This will crimp the ferrules to each wire. Once you’ve got your amp where you want it, liberally apply zip ties to harnesses and flush cut.
My amp is currently mounted with velcro strips, which seems to hold it well enough but ideally I’d like to build an amp rack for it. I’ve also attached some foam to the underside to prevent potential rattles.
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Now we can connect our power wire up front. If you’re using the wiring kit I recommended, you’ll need to cut the power wire at the marked location and install your fuse first. Remove a 10mm from either 120a fuse on the battery terminal and put your ring terminal on there. Cut a little section out of the power terminal cover to make room for your wire.
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And that’s basically it, just have to set your amp settings. A few general guidelines:
Bass boost should always be set to zero.
If you’re using a LOC or you spliced directly into the preamp inputs of your factory amplifier, set input level to low. If you’re running speaker wires directly into a high-level input harness on your sub amp, set it to high.
Turn DC offset off.
High pass filter is up to you, but I like to set it around 120hz.
Gain is the only thing I can’t tell you how to set, because it depends. It’s not a volume knob, you are matching input and output voltage levels. if you turn it up too high you will asplode your sub - when in doubt, turn it down. The nice thing about the kicker key amplifier I recommended is it actually has a built in feature that will tell you exactly where the gain should be set.
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