I just swapped my 02 Ram QC for an 06. Nice truck! I got the Infinity 7 speaker with 6 disc Sirius head unit and it is CRAP!!!
Basically I get highs from the dash, poor bass only from the front doors and highs only from the rear doors. I like the head unit but I want to the replace the rest of the system with an upgraded system from my old 02.

Old system includes... Sony xplode 600W 4ch amp, RF 6x9's front and Infinity Kappa 5.25 rears with an Alpine 300W mono amp and Diamond Audio 10"sub. It all hooked up in my 02 quite easy and sounded great.
I took my new truck over to Circuit City to get some advice on upgrade possibilities. I was told if I keep my head unit (which I would like to) I would have to run high level lines from the stock amp to my Sony amp, then speaker wire back to where the stock amp is to hook up to the factory wires. I was told this still might sound like crap.
If I do this will the front speakers still be outputting low end or will they be full range, same for the rear (high) speakers (assuming I will have the aftermarket speakers installed)?
Is there a remote wire from the stock amp to run to the new amp?

How do I hook up the sub? My old head unit had separate Sub RCA outs. Would I just splice the high level wires going to the 4ch amp and run them over to the sub amp?
Another option was booting the head unit aswell and putting my Clarion in. I was told if I do this the factory Sirius equipment would be useless and I would have to buy all new Clarion specific adaptors. Apparently even the fitted antenna and wiring would all be useless and I would have to add another antenna. Is this true?
If I replaced the head unit is there anyway of still using the steering wheel controls?
I've read that replacing the stock system some how can affect the computer in the truck, not really clear on what this is all about????

Thanks for any help!!!

 

Bump

 

There is no way the Infinity system can compete with what you had before. Time to upgrade the amp and speakers.

 

I'm not expecting it to compete. The whole problem I have is getting the new amp and speakers to work effectively with the factory amp & head unit so I don't have to pull that out aswell and pay for a new sirius system.

 

Gotcha. Unless you went with high level inputs with the new amp, I haven't the slightest idea on how to make all that work. I'd also recommend a dedicated Audio store to do the work. Heard to many horror stories of the other stores.

 

My new amp has high level inputs but what i'm worried about is that the doors are still going to be fed just a bass signal (either coming from the HU or the factory amp) like they are now so even the new door speakers will be just bass. I'm going to take the door panels off this weekend and take a look to see if the door speakers are low end components so if I get some full range speakers in there it will sound better. If they are full range already it means the amp or HU is doing it which sucks.

 

There is a crossover on the factory amp for the tweets and the "bass" speakers in the front. The ones in the rear door are full range, to the best of my knowledge.

Honestly, I'd suggest investing in some advise and design from a true audio shop so that everything will work as intended (especially the steering wheel controls).

 

Ok I've been trying to think of what I can do as I really want to keep the factory HU.

What I was thinking was to cut the wires before the factory amp and run them to an aftermarket amp so that I could bypass all the preset factory signals. Then run the wires from the new amp back up and splice them back in to where the speaker wires come out from the factory amp and feed the doors. Basically bypassing the factory amp. Is there any downside to this i.e. is the factory amp responsible for any other functions that bypassing it will cause problems?
Also, given that the preamp signals will be low is there anything that you can hook those line level wires from the HU to the RCA ins on a new amp, kind of like the High level to line level converters but without the conversion, just the wire to RCA connector.

Thanks.

 

This could be what i'm looking for ....

OEM-1 or OEM-2

Basically connects between the factory HU & amp and gives you 4 RCA outs to connect a new amp. I figure I could cut the speaker cables coming out of the factory amp and hook them to the new amp which is being fed the full un-touched signal from the HU.

 

Boy, do I love replying to my own posts!
Anyway, incase anyone may try this in the future...
After further investigating I found out that any aftermarket equipment MUST be installed AFTER the factory amp. Apparently the signal from the factory HU is fixed. Basically this means the volume control on the factory HU sends only data to the factory amp to tell the amp to increase/decrease the volume, there is no actual change in signal strength from the HU.