factory door grommits' VT

[jabsy1]

these things are rock solid.

how would one run new wire into the door through these suckers?

do they pop off?

i hate them!!

[calais_cruzin]

I just poked a hole in the grommet and fed them thru on my last car.

They should pop off, but im not sure on vt's, never dealt with them

[DarkCrystal]

Just installed components in all my doors in my VT... the grommets do just pop out, a couple i had to get a flathead to pop em' out.. then i carefully drilled a whole thru the plastic and threaded my speaker wires thru and popped em' back in... it dosen't hurt to swear loudly while doing this.

[jabsy1]

i'll bet. cheers man

[StoneX]

It's not worth the trouble, leave the 30cm or so of stock wire, it's not going to affect your sound.

I had planned to do it a couple of years ago and spoke to a couple of guys who have won Australian titles in sound quality and they both still used stock wire into their doors.

[jabsy1]

really? thats interesting man. you'd think you'd need a higher guage wire all the way through...

[Tasmaniak]

Nope, no one gives enough credit to the stock speaker wire. Unless your feeding in about 200wrms all day long, I typically don't even bother replacing it at all myself. Unless requested.

[StoneX]

Personally, I wouldn't run stock wire the whole length of the car, but from the kick panel to the speaker in the door is fine. I actually have 200Wrms to each of my front speakers and it sounds fine.

See here for a speaker wire calculator. I put in 200W, 1ft (30cm) long, 20ga wire (not sure what stock is but it can't be smaller than 20ga), and 4 ohm... It shows i'd have 198W instead of 200W, no one could even hear that If I change it to 16ga (which is standard aftermarket speaker wire), it shows 199.2W which isn't worth the effort of pulling the grommet apart.

[Tasmaniak]

Running 16ga for 8ft will give you 193.?? on paper. Under real conditions you will probably look at 190. Either way, you won't hear a 10watt difference either.

It really is upto the user. Some people prefer the knowledge of knowing. Others like it because they used pink speaker wire to show everybody others do it because they can hear the difference.

To that last group, there is a good reason, it's considered the placebo effect.

[Shaneus]

Where would retailers make there money if there was no "placebo" effect?

All these people with 4AWG running there 200W peak power amps, at $10 a meter. I laughed when my mate told me he paid that. and $3 p/m for remote wire.

Back on topic: Go the stock wiring, this way you save time and money

[DarkCrystal]

Well the thing that completely ****ed me was this... i started my installation on the driverside rear door... the wires from the speakers to the connector were all the same colour... but the colours were completely different on the inside of the car... so i removed the grommet/plug, found they were different, cut the correct ones and drilled a whole through the plug and ran new wires. Funny enough all the other doors matched though.. I woud most likely have kept the factory wires other wise.. but to sound like an egg, at least i know it looks 'cooler' under the door skins.. ha ha

[Tasmaniak]

lol @ cooler under door skins.

[garfa]

i surprised that you all giveit so much thought. i jusy buy the wire for the main bits and it theres enough then great, otherwise who cares!

[StoneX]

It's because stores and friends tell them that they NEED larger wire, most people would just change it without asking on here because they believe whoever told them.

[wrx884]

i just upgraded n put some splits in the fronts, i was originally gonna try put new wire through the rubber boot wen i 1st put my speakers in but **** that 2 much hassle, i ended up cuttin the wire behind the looms where the rubber boot joins into the car soldered new wire in and ran them down the sides like normal, so 2day i put my crossovers in the boot so all i had 2 do was run new wire 4 the tweeters down the sides under the sills that was really as hard as it got.

[garfa]

the main problem with the stock wire is the amount of stands and the possibility of the strands breaking.

[kopper69]

The possibility of breaking should be next to nothing. Wire is going to break if it is stressed. Installation shouldnt be that tough on the wire, and once it is installed, it shouldnt be stressed during its life at all. The mains wire in your house is signal core. Single core wire is easier and therefore cheaper to make. If the wire isnt going to be stressed, single core is going to do the exact same job for less $.

[garfa]

door constantly opening and closing.
also there is the skin effect to consider with single core and larger power.
(plus single core is a **** to work with under a dash!)

[davey g-force]

Geez I wish I knew earlier that large speaker wire was not necessary the whole way!

Mine's installed now with big wire all the way from the amp, through the grommets and to the speaker. I just thought I'd share how I did it, incase you still really want to do it that way.

I got a piece of coathanger wire about 20cm long and on one end I bent it round 360 degrees and clamped it down hard onto one end of the speaker wire. So in effect it was kinda like a sewing needle & thread. The coathanger wire is flexible enough to bend into tight spots but still hard enough to push through the grommet.

There was still a fair bit of cursing involved, but yeah, it's definitely do-able if that's what floats your boat!

[Joe Peeps]

door constantly opening and closing.
also there is the skin effect to consider with single core and larger power.

Skin effect has no real relevance to audio applications, even at 20khz (talking fractions of db loss at these frequencies. Lower freq's are even less effected)

[Tasmaniak]

When your comparing a Single large stranf versus 100 small strands the surface area is a huge difference. So it does play a part in all areas. Anytime that you pass a current down a length of wire you have the surface contained within that wire come into play. How big of a part it plays varies. It can definetly be noticeable.

[Joe Peeps]

Ye, as you said it varies, according to frequency, and has most effect on AC. plus It only starts to really kick in at very high frequencies, (in audio terms at least) and for it to be audible, im impressed with your hearing volter!

[Tasmaniak]

It's in effect all the time. There is no "on" time and "off" time. It is all relative to the amount of current being passed along the line. Infact the more current you try to pass the more you will notice it. Henceforth it is more noticeable in lower frequencies and even my father can hear the differences.

[Joe Peeps]

The crucial element here is frequency. And youve got it backwards, skin effect is LESS noticeable at lower frequencies: Here is a list of skin depth from wiki at various frequencies:

"The decline in current density versus depth is known as the skin effect and the skin depth is a measure of the distance over which the current falls to 1/e of its original value"

For Copper:
frequency d
60 Hz 8.57 mm
10 kHz 0.66 mm
100 kHz 0.21 mm
1 MHz 66 µm
10 MHz 21 µm

Here is some actual math compared with realworld measurements (note this was using 12gauge wire, so naturally there would be increase with smaller gauge)

Again, recall our measured increase of AC Resistance due to skin effect was only about 3% at 20kHz resulting in a total cable resistance of 32.96 mohms for a 10ft length.

Actual Measured Loss

Loss(dB) (act) = -0.142dB

As you can see, the resultant calculated loss due to Rdc and Skin Effect (Rac) in the cable is negligable. In fact, if we neglected the Skin Effect losses, the resultant loss would be -0.14dB just from the DC Resistance of the speaker cables alone.

Thus the calculated Skin Effect losses in this example only account for -.04dB of total loss at 20kHz while the measured Skin Effect losses would be a mere 0.002dB! Also don't forget this is assuming a 2 ohm load, which most modern speakers do not dip down that low at 20kHz. In reality, a real world speaker load would make this loss almost immeasurable.

From:
http://www.audioholics.com/education...-cables-page-2

Your father has good hearing too in that case. Single strand cable is not suitable for audio purposes because of logistical reasons, the difference between 8mm of solid copper, and 500 strands equivalent to 8mm is tiny in terms of skin effect in car audio applications.

Back on topic, stock wiring is fine
EDIT: Are you talking about skin effect 12volt? i have a feeling we are arguing different points...