Car audio reccomended wiring charts (need some)

[spazworm]

hey all,
howrya all, just wondering if someone could hook me up with some charts that will tell me what size cables can be used for amount of watts (eg. 1.5mm cable can carry 300watts for 5m) or whatever it might be.

Also if someone could tell me, im an apprentice electrician and as such my boss had a crapload of copper wires from the 1mm to the 6mm variety. is there any reason why using house wiring wouldnt be good.

ok thanks guys looking forward to any feedback.

[Joe Peeps]

copper is copper

Car audio still pretty much uses AWG. Heres a handy conversion table

http://www.dave-cushman.net/elect/wiregauge.html

and from there you can use the following links to determine what power/speaker wire size you need. Enjoy:

Speaker: http://www.caraudioaustralia.com/for...howtopic=43516
Power:http://www.caraudioaustralia.com/for...howtopic=42643

[StoneX]

House wire is usually too stiff and doesn't have the same type of protective jacket that car audio cable has. Car audio cable has heat and chemical resistant jacket because it has to run into the engine bay.

[Joe Peeps]

Hmmm. My bad, i hadnt even considered the jacket... Could it be used for speaker wire though? Provided it could be manouvered where required of course

[StoneX]

Yep, as long as it won't be constantly bent, like in a door jam as solid wire will snap eventually.

[spazworm]

cheers for the info guys.

so if i use double insulated cable will that be good for running into the engine bay or will it be ok anyway as long as i make sure its not in close proximity to the engine?.

[Tasmaniak]

cheers for the info guys.

so if i use double insulated cable will that be good for running into the engine bay or will it be ok anyway as long as i make sure its not in close proximity to the engine?.

typically I wouldn't suggest it. as neither of the two insulations are heat resistant. But on that same hand it could go forever. Anotheer note though is that since current typically runs along the surface of the wire and not use the internal as much. I suggest NOT using it for any current application. SImply because the more strands you have to make a certain thickness you raise the current capability of the wire.

[spazworm]

ok
so i have a chart for amp wiring so far as i can tell but does anyone know about what charts are about to tell me what size wire would be good for running from the amp/headunit to the speakers?

[StoneX]

The site below has a couple of calculators to help work out what wire to use.
http://www.bcae1.com/wire.htm

[JBDrifter]

Just do it properly man and go buy the stuff from JB or something. Just get about 5m of red 4AWG or 8AWG, and about 1m of black in the same size as the red cable. You want your ground cable to be as short as possible, so find a good grounding point close to the amp.
It'll cost you a bit for the cable but at least you will know you've done it properly and you wont run into any problems with it. Like they said, the car audio cables have better sheathing which is designed specifically for car audio.
The other cable you'll want to do properly is your RCA's.. don't just go using some AV cables from you TV or anything, get a good set like the Stinger's.
The rest you can get away with using general cabling... for speaker wiring just use figure-8 cable, and you can use anything really for the remote wire. I installed my old sub and amp into my car a couple weeks ago, still had all the power cabling (4AWG) and RCA's from the original install, but didn't have the remote wire so I used the blue/blue-white pair out of some spare cat5e I had laying around (I'm also an apprentice sparky). Was just gonna use the single blue wire but after separating the pair from the other pairs I couldn't be bothered un-twisting them, so I stripped both wires together and twisted them together at both ends. It may be a pretty dodgy remote wire, but it does the job... doesn't carry much current anyway so it's all good.