Alright heres the deal, i connect the blue wire coming straight from the deck to the blue/white wire from the truck, the amps dont turn on. I connect the blue wire from the deck, blue from the harness and blue/white from behind the harness and the front speakers turn on and play. Then when a certain volume of bass hits they skip, dont know why, any help? This is in my 98 RAM 1500 Laramie SLT with suicide doors, not sure what it is considered club cab or quad cab lol. Thanks

*EDIT* I just thought that maybe when the bass hits the stock amp drops below 12v and it shuts off, cause i just turn the bass down by about 3-4 and it doesnt turn off anymore, could this be possible?

 

OK just so I got this strait...
Your installing an aftermarket stereo in your truck.
You are connecting the deck to your stock speakers.
Does your truck have infinity speakers option?

 

It may be wired up differen't since you have suicide doors.

I'm like Rabbler we need more info? You should have the blue wire from the harness connected to the remote turn on lead if you have the Infinity sounds system. Thats what I had to do when I had the first setup. I now have a seperate amp powering them so that doesn't matter with my setup now.


Are you sure the skipping isn't your deck skipping?

What kind of deck are you trying to install? Are you splicing into the factory harness or do you have one of the adapters? What system does your truck have now? How did you wire up the doors?


Or do you mean suicide doors as in the rear? Like the Quad Cab? If thats the case you should just connect the blue wire to the remote turn on lead as long as it's the Infinity system.

 

you know im not exactly sure if i have the infinity set-up, all i know is it came with 6 speakers 2 in the front door 2 on the back suicide doors and 2 dome tweeters.
Nay the deck isnt skipping for sure, i use my iphone to listen to music and it plays through just fine but once i hit a certain volume the front speakers kick off and i can hear a clicking noise coming from behind the dash that goes with the beat of the song. Is there a simple way of checking to see if i have the infinity system without taking off the door panels? It is the suicide doors so i dunno if its considered club cab or quad cab. I tried doing the wiring shpeel, the only way i got it to work was plugging it into the blue wire along with the blue/white wire form the deck, so i had 3 wires connected together.

 

If your back doors open suicide style than you have the quad cab.

What I always recommend is going down to Wally world or whatever is available to you and buying a wiring harness adapter. Most car audio places will have them as well. They have many that fit to the factory harness and adapt to your head unit (depending on brand name, e.g. Sony, Kenwood, Pioneer, etc.), and they have ones that adapt the factory speaker harnesses in the doors to new speakers (pretty universal). Just make sure the guy you talk to gets the harness for the right year of your pickup, a brand new Dodge Ram will be different than yours or mine. Best Buy, where I work, has some nice speakers and head units, but they usually give you the wrong adapters if you choose to do the work yourself rather than have them install (which can get spendy, I wouldn't recommend it unless you have money to throw away).

I went down the road of custom wiring new stereos into my first two vehicles, and they were somewhat of a pain. I went online and found wiring diagrams for the factory stereos, then using the diagram that came with my new head units, I matched wires together. Good old wire strippers, wiring nuts, and electrical tape. Not to hard, but tedious. The wiring harness route, if you can do it, is much, much easier, and usually the adapters are pretty cheap, around $10. If I ever switch out my current factory stereo for a new one, I'm going to use adapters as much as possible. Easier, inexpensive, and they look much cleaner than a custom job if you ever need to put things back.

If you can't find what you need locally, there's always www.crutchfield.com.

Oh, and a word of caution... if you are using an expensive, high output head unit with your factory speakers, make sure you don't turn it up to loud and blow them out (unless you are looking for an excuse to get new speakers). I switched out my factory speakers for some very nice Infinity aftermarket ones (Best Buy discount baby!), and when I sold my still perfectly functional stock speakers on eBay, the end auction price was about $50.

Just my two cents.

 

ya i got the wiring harness and combined my Alpine CDA-9885 wiring with the wiring stuff colors with colors and got everything hooked up right i geuss, but i still am not too sure. I have the front speakers working correctly and 1 rear speaker but my right rear speaker doesnt work any longer, i think i am just gonna take this thing into best buy tomorrow and pay the 50 bucks and get them to check the wiring and all that stuff, this sucks. Why does dodge make it so difficult for aftermarket wiring *sigh* thanks for your input
P.S. I do plan on getting new speakers just not sure of what to get just yet, but i know how im going to do my sub install and all that. Im gettin an FI Audio 12" and im going to take out my middle seat and make a box to fit in the middle there and place the seat cover and all that right back on it, me and a friend did it once and it worked out perfectly. Do i have a factory amplifier and how could i check if i do?

 

If you don't want to take your door panels off, take it in to Best Buy or wherever and have it tested.

As long as you're careful, you can do the same things they will do, and be out much cheaper. Up to you.

1. Remove the right rear door panel. The back doors are the easiest to remove and put back on (where as the fronts are more difficult). Take a screwdriver (if I recall correctly, Philips head, but might be a hex-type as well) and unscrew the two screws located on the inside of the door handle. After those are removed, the only thing holding the plastic door panel on are plastic tabs. Take a common head (also called a flat head) screwdriver and gently pry between the plastic door panel and the metal of the door. Once the opening is big enough, stick your fingers in and pull the panel off enough to where you can comfortable get to the speaker (no need to completely remove it unless you really want to). If you break a few of the tabs, not a big deal, you can go down to any auto parts store and get new ones, they are cheap.
2. Unscrew the two screws holding the speaker. Again, I believe they are Philips screws. Unclip the two wires from the bottom of the speaker and remove it. If you have a voltimeter or a bulb tester, go to 2a. If no voltimeter/bulb tester, go to 2b.
2a. If you have a voltimeter/bulb tester, put one probe into one clip and the other into the other clip. Now turn on your stereo. If you are detecting voltage (or in the case of a bulb tester, the bulb lights up), then your wiring is fine, the speaker is bad. If there is no voltage/the bulb doesn't light up, your wiring is bad. If your wiring is bad, skip to 3. If your speaker is bad, skip to step 4.
2b. If you have no voltimeter, take a spare 12v speaker you have lying around (or the one out of the left door that you know works) and hook it up to the wires. Even if you get the polarity wrong for this test (+ to - and - to +) you will still get sound out of the speaker if you wired the head unit correctly (just not as good as quality, which for this test, who cares). If no sound, and you know your test speaker works fine, then you wired it incorrectly. If you get sound, then you know the stock speaker is bad. If your wiring is bad, go to the next step. If your speaker is bad, skip to step 4.
3. Retrace/redo the wiring for the head unit, unless you can figure out which wires you missed/wired incorrectly. If you are stumped and still can't make it work, take it into Best Buy or some place and have them take a look at it after skipping to step 5. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.
4. The speakers in the back doors are 5.25" in size. You can find replacements for them at any Wal-Mart, Best Buy, or any other electronics store, as well as some auto parts stores. They will usually hook up the same way the old ones did, but if they don't, you can either do a custom wiring job (not that hard with only two wires to deal with) or buy a little harness adapter.
5. Put the door plastic back on the same way it came off. Just make sure the tabs go into their correct holes, and push firmly one tab at a time. Again, if you break the tabs, not a big deal, any auto parts store should carry them. Just take the broken one in for comparison and you should be able to find replacements in no time, and really cheaply. After the tabs are all taken care of, put the handle screws back in. You're done.

Let me know if I missed anything you guys. Its 2:30am in the morning here, so I may have done so.

 

If your factory head unit has the word "Infinity" on the front near the digital readout, very plainly visible, you have the Infinity sound system. If it does not have that word on the front, you don't. Infinity, if I understand correctly, made all the speakers/head units for our Dodges, they just put higher quality ones in for the "Infinity sound system" option. Another way to tell is that the "Infinity sound system" will have five equalizer controls (sliders) on the front of the head unit, where as anything else will have three or less.

If you have no Infinity sound system, I believe the only amps you have are the ones connected to the front door speakers. They are shaped like crescents, are bolted to the 6x9 factory front door speakers, and have many wires coming out of them. Basically, almost any amp you buy from a reputable company (Sony, Pioneer, etc.) will be better than these. I just zip tied them to my new 6x9 speakers when I installed them, and left them in there. I don't plan on doing anything else with my stereo setup (like an amp) other than possibly a new head unit way later down the road, so these are good enough for me personally.

 

oh well there you go, yes i do have 5 EQ sliders, so that means i have the infinity set right? i think im gonna take it to best buy, to much hassle let them figure it out. Its worth 50 bucks ive already got the wiring and maybe if my buddyy is workin i can get it done for cheap or possibly free lol.

 

Yes, then you have the Infinity sound system. And I'm not sure what that system has for an amp or amps, you'll have to do some checking online (or just have Best Buy people tell you).

Just make sure they don't give you a bunch of crap for answers. If your buddy works there, definitely see if he can do the work. Most of my fellow employees are good guys/gals, but there are always one or two bad apples that don't give a crap about customers. They know enough to get by and don't care about the results, its just a job to them.