Hello Stereo People, I Need Some Info.

[Latoilette]

I am full of questions today, please help me out.

i figured out how to remove the whole stock radio & stock amp (under the passensger seat)

i know how to remove front/rear speakers ..

i am pretty sure i can remove the front squakers (or whatever they are called..in the dash) you just pop the grille, and pop out the speakers, right? (i need confirmation)

Can my aftermarket cdplayer work with stock speakers (if amp is not bypasses)?

how to bypass the amp?

what's the size of the squakers?

should i do 3 way components in the front (using squaket space)?

somepeople said there isn't a harness, but i just bought one from ebay (does anyone familiar with this)?

can anyone give me wire colors for the radio?

what's the best way to route 4 gauge wires into the vehicle from the battery?

thanks a bunch!

[apoc519]

first of all, what year? I'm going to assume 92-96 based on the amp location.

You can use the stock speakers with aftermarket deck but you'll have to completely take the stock amp out of the equation and run the speaker leads up to the dash. You'll only have input for four speakers though so you'll either have to use some kind of passive crossover or something if you want to make use of the tweeters and front dash speakers(its not worth hooking them up IMO).

I used the same wire harness, just match the colors from the aftermarket deck to the harness, they should be industry standard. Its idiot proof once you've got the factory deck out you'll see.

There's a rubber plug in the firewall on the drivers side by your feet that leads to the wheel well and from there another hole that leads to the engine compartment and to the battery. You'll have to pull up the carpet to run it back to the trunk from there, it just snaps out once you have the trim off.

I'll have more info in a bit...

[apoc519]

here pictures of how to run the 4 guage. I suggest you make a hole in the rubber plug rather then run the wire around it like i did.

[apoc519]

interior through rubber plug....

[apoc519]

after going through wheel well(must remove the mud guards) up through engine compartment. Its the newer looking black one.

[apoc519]

here you can see where i spliced into the door and tweeter speakers and then ran them to the back of the deck. Its a lot easier then trying to run new wires through the door hinge. You'll find the plug under the cover by your feet on the left. The drivers side colors are yellow and black for the door speaker and pink and purple for the tweeter. I think yellow and pink are the + connections but don't hold me to that. You'll have to get to the speakers to be sure.

The colors are different on the passenger side but the wires are in the same location so you can figure it out.

You'll have to remove the back seat and dash to figure out the 6 x 9's, not too difficult really. Hope this all makes some sense

[Latoilette]

thank you for your help.

by the way, how does radio send signals to amp.. RCA cables OR speaker leads?

thanks.

[amf1932]

RCA cables

[apoc519]

something else you should know... I've yet to get my power antenna working ever since i put in the new deck, im sure you could find it if you try. It's probably one of the wires that went into the factory amp. On the deck its the blue wire with a white stripe that controls it

[SKperformance]

RCA cables

There are no rca cables on a stock amp and deck

[amf1932]

There are no rca cables on a stock amp and deck

There are shielded signal cables to carry the signal to the amp! Whether they are terminated with RCA jacks is another story. When I said RCA cables, I was trying to differentiate between the unshielded type of wire as used for the speakers as opposed to the shielded type.

[Latoilette]

so..can you add rca jack to the end of the signal wire?

It that could work, I would love to keep my stock radio b/c it blends in better with the whole dash.

this is what i would like to do:: keep the stock radio, just replace 4 speakers.

will aftermarket speakers work with stock amp?

[amf1932]

If all you are doing is changing the speakers to an aftermarket type, all you have to do is cut off the terminal ends from the speaker wiring harness and solder these wires to the speaker terminals on the replacement speakers. If you do that, make sure that you use the correct polarity, otherwise they'll be out of phase and the sound will suffer.

Read this to give you an idea of what I mean: http://www.sfxaudio.com/AudioSchool/installspkr.asp

[Latoilette]

so aftermarket speakers are compatible with stock lexus amplifier..

what's the RMS on the stock oem lexus amplifier? and can i replace it with stronger amp and power my aftermarket speakers?

also..does anyone know the size of the speaker wires (gauge)? (if it's 16 gauge or thicker, it would save me a lot of time, b/c i wouldn't have to run new speaker wires.

thankx.

[apoc519]

I wish you'd make up your mind...

first of all the stock amp is a piece of crap, if you're replacing the speakers, then get an aftermarket amp because they will sound terrible otherwise.

If you get an amp with high level inputs you should be able to just plug in the speaker leads to that, no need for RCAs. I've never used them but that should work.

If that doesnt work you can buy line converters that make the speaker leads RCA's but they're expensive for decent ones

IMO you'll be much happier if you take out the stock stereo and run all new wiring. Takes 3 or 4 hours and you'll be much happier with the sound, I was.

Here's a great article on adding an amp to a stock deck and your options

HERE

the aftermarket deck wont look as bad as you think. I sanded down the face of the dash kit and painted it flat black to match the A/C controls. Matches perfect, have a look

This is the last you'll hear from me on this and I hope to god that anyone else planning to do this, finds this thread

oh and I'm pretty sure the wiring is 16 guage

[Latoilette]

thank you very much for your unconditional effort.

[dmccombs]

Hi,

I have a 95 ES300. My rear speaker went out so I replaced it with a mid-level set of Infinity 6x9s. It sounds pretty good, but I noticed that there is no base at all coming from the 6x9s. I wired in another known set of working speakers as a test and still no base. It is as if there is a filter somewhere preventing the low frequencies from going to the 6x9s.

I know the front speakers are wired to the amp under the driver's seat. Are the 6x9s as well?

Is there a filter inline that prevents bass from going to the rear speaker? If so, does anyone know where it is (i.e. the deck, amp, wired in-line).

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Darrell McCombs

[bbsal]

make sure you dont have the positive and negitive wires crossed because then you wont have bass and the speaker will sound crappy.since you replaced the 6by 9 did you check what was positive and what was negitive on the wires?if not you might have them crossed and thats why it has no bass.my 6by 9s have bass so i dont think theres a filter on them.i know they are all connected to the stock amp and the front door speakers do have a filter but i dont think the back ones do.

[SKperformance]

As the faq states the factory system is not made for high power just very efficent if you change anythign you have to change everything. There is no bass as the speakers are not getting enough power as the amp cannot produce it. The original speakers worked as tehy were efficent and made use of low power .

[Latoilette]

do you know what RMS power rating the stock amp produce?

[amf1932]

Firstly, what year ES are you talking about? You didn't leave your car year in your profile.

Secondly, Lexus doesn't give the power ratings in RMS...they only give you THD(Total Harmonic Distortion) ratings.

Thirdly, these figures are different, depending on the year of the car.

[Latoilette]

1995 es300