Rockford and Fuse install in 08 Lancer ES
 

I decided to drop the Rockford system in my 08. The system I have is coming from a 2013 evo. That also means I can run fuse. So, going to try to get fuse running as well.

I have the head unit installed without the amp and fuse using the 08 bluetooth. Works just fine. Glad that works, but the worst is yet to come.

Now for the wiring. That's the tough part. I don't want to rig up something. The best alternative is to swap out wiring harnesses. Would be stupid easy if I wasn't also going with fuse. Now I have to have a wiring harness out of a 2011+ car for both the under dash and floor harnesses. That's easier said than done. Junk yards are happy to sell over priced evo x and ralliart stuff out of wreckers, but couldn't find anything out of a base lancer. On top of all that, I decided to get a harness that works with a nav system. In case I go with the factory nav, I have every wire needed including the av rca inputs.

I consulted with Mitsubishi ASA and the shop manual. I found out something very surprising. In theory I can use a ralliart under dash and floor harnes. Even the evo floor harness will work. Since the washer bottle is in the back seat on the evo, only the floor harness will work. I want to do as little Frankensteining of the wiring as possible. So, I bought an underdash harness out of a 2012 Ralliart and a floor harness out of a 2010 Evo, both had nav. If I can't just plain swap, I can Frankenstein. Either way, I'll make the harnesses work.

For the bluetooth, I ended up swapping with a board member. I consider that a pretty nice arrangement.

The under dash harness is here, and I started comparing plugs, and even plugging stuff in. A half torn apart dash board makes this easy. Everything in the center console and radio areas are straight plugin. Even the wire colors and positions are matching. To make the harness even better, I have the plugs for awd control and heated seats. I will probably never have either of those, but you never know.

I wish the harness was going to be that easy. The plugs on the either side of the harness that mate up to the floor harness are totally different than what I have. I only hope the evo harness will solve that problem. Won't know until sometime during the week.

Now for the next problem: getting power to the amp. Looking at the wiring diagrams, there is a wire with a 30 amp fuse coming from under the hood. The last thing I want to do is rip out and engine just to replace a wiring harness for one stupid wire. Yup, I get that detailed in what I do. I looked under the hood for the fuse. To my surprise it's there. If the fuse is there, maybe the wire is there too. Down to the kick panel on the driver's side to see if there is a wire. I'll be...not only is the wire there, but it's hot too.

The next worry I have are the front doors. In the base system, the tweeter wires are live when the system is on. Finding this out, I started stressing over having to track down front door harnesses as well. I checked with ASA, part numbers are the same for all base models. That's a relief. I checked the wiring diagrams and found where the tweeter wires are connected to. The etacs box has a junction that connects the tweeters to the front speakers. The rockford system seems to bypass the etacs box all together.

And the final problem I can come with: sub wiring. Since I don't have a sub, I may not have the sub wiring, and i may not have the sub cut out in the trunk lining either. There's another blessing in this project so far: I have both. The sub should be a plug and play install like the head unit.

That's all I have for now. I'm waiting on delivery of everything before I can continue with the flow of information.

...so the sub wiring is ran too? It's just plug n play?

this will be nuts if you pull this off :o

I have the power wire coming from under the hood, tweeter wiring in the doors, and sub wiring in the trunk. I even have the mounting locations for the amp and sub.

I plan on getting pictures of everything so everyone has a reference. A little known day called Father's Day took up my day yesterday, so lost time for taking pictures. Hoping I can do that tonight.

Almost everything is here. All that's left is floor harness. FedEx is having fun holding the harness in Salt lake city for the past 6 days. I guess that coincides with FedEx sending boxes being sent to me 45 minutes north when there's a sorting facility 15 minutes away and another 20 minutes away. At least the boxes can get down here now that the bridge between the facility and where I am at is fixed.

On with the project at hand. While waiting impatiently for the harness, I decided to take pictures to help everyone else figure out what they need when doing the same project.

First is the amp fuse in the engine bay. The fuse is marked with a red arrow.
http://i933.photobucket.com/albums/a...l/hoodfuse.jpg

Next comes the wire the fuse sends power to. The best way to find the wire is to remove the left side kick panel. Once under the dash, the plug the wire goes to is easily seen. for reference, the black box on the left side is the etacs fuse box and the black wire going through the firewall on the right is the hood release.
http://i933.photobucket.com/albums/a...teriorplug.jpg

The wire in question is the red wire being pointed to. I had a hard time getting a picture of the wire. If the wire is missing, the harness going from the engine bay to the driver side interior has to be replaced, or the wire added to the harness.
http://i933.photobucket.com/albums/a...elocation1.jpg

I pulled the plug trying to get a better image of the wire.
http://i933.photobucket.com/albums/a...elocation2.jpg

If you have the wire, the rest is really easy in comparison to getting that wire ran.

The absolute easiest part of the whole job is installing the tweeters. Simple remove the tweeter covers, screw in the tweeters, plug the tweeter in, snap in the cover back in place, and there you go. Make sure do to this when the door panels are off. The tweeter covers have to come off to get the door panels off. My door panels are still on for a slightly good reason: the Rockford speakers and tweeters need the amp to work right. Without the amp, the speakers and tweeters can be ruined.

Here’s the tweeter wire going to the tweeter cover.
http://i933.photobucket.com/albums/a...weeterwire.jpg

Then here’s the tweeter plugged in.
http://i933.photobucket.com/albums/a...rconnected.jpg

And the last item I was able to check out today: the sub. First the plug for the sub. Pull the trunk lining back on the left side of the trunk, there might just be a plug with 4 wires there.
http://i933.photobucket.com/albums/a...ll/subplug.jpg

Have a sub sitting the trunk without some sort of mounting system might not be such a good idea. Another relief in this project is the mounting points and screws are already in the trunk.
http://i933.photobucket.com/albums/a.../subscrews.jpg

Plug the sub in and screw down the bottom brackets. Requires a 10mm socket.
http://i933.photobucket.com/albums/a...submounted.jpg

Not quite done yet. The top of the sub has a mounting bracket that keeps the sub from putting too much strain of the lower mounts. Looks like I need a bracket. And, before I finish for the night, the carpet also needs to be cut to fit around the lower sub brackets.
http://i933.photobucket.com/albums/a...ngsubmount.jpg

For the 131 visitors, here's an update.

The evo x floor harness came in last night, finally! The harness won't simply plug and play with my current under dash harness or the 2012 ralliart under dash harness. So, frankenstein it is. I am in no way surprised.

Freeing up the rockford system wiring from the floor harness was really really easy. I have barely started the under dash wiring. I am pulling the entire system wiring, half for the rockford system, and the other half for another project using my leftover base system. I have to give Mitsubishi props for making the plugs easy to modify. Pull the back of the plugs out, but not all the way, pull the wire's retaining click up, then slide the wire out. A jeweler's flat blade screw driver is all that's needed to make the job stupid easy.

What I really don't like is how the speaker wires were routed in the evo. If you're going to install a high end system with amps, subs, and nice speakers, the speaker wire should be on the opposite side of the car from the power cable for the amps. I even run the rca cables on the opposite side of the car. That just plain helps with better sound. Not mistubishi. Instead the speaker and input wires are ran right next to the starter and engine bay fuse box wiring. Nice job there, not! Luckily for the base models the speaker and input wiring going along the passenger side of the car is preferred, keeping as much of the audio wiring away from the etacs and fuse box under the dash.

The speaker and input wires are twisted pair. Those in networking (myself included) can appreciate the positive gains using twisted pair wiring. When pulling the wiring out a harness, make sure to keep the twists in tact, too many benefits for doing this.

Another nice job from mitubishi are the two grounding points. One is good enough, two is overkill. Some electrical engineer figured out two is better, so why should I argue with a $70K(?) a year (hopefully experienced) engineer? One ground point is under the driver seat, the other by the back seat on the left side of the car. If a take the lessons from a bose systems I yanked out of a 96 maxima, 92 maxima, 97 infiniti, and 95 infiniti, the multiple ground points help eliminate alternator whine and other interference from the car. Maybe that was mitsubishi's reasoning. But there's an odity with the grounding. The three ground wires goes up the left side of the car towards the firewall, are junctioned together with other ground wires, and then sent back to the ground points. Don't ask me why. From my limited electrical engineering education, the shorter the ground the better. 4 feet to the junction, then 4 foot and 6 foot lengths are just not short runs.

The other oddity I found was the power wire. There's a too small (in my opinion) power wire going from the plug pictured above to under the driver seat (but not the the amp), under the center console, to under the passenger seat. The wire is then somewhat soldered to 3 wires which then run back to the amp. The engineer was thinking something, don't know what. Since the amp (stupidly) requires three power wires instead of one, the only reason I can come up with is prevent electron fields from screwing with the components in the amp. I found out about this problem when wiring up a relay for the alarm on my wife's car. I ended up doing the same thing to her car mistubishi did to the amp. The relay power wire goes three feet past the relay, is split off then goes to both power terminals on the relay. This sort of thing is done to prevent premature failure of the relay due to interfering electron fields when using the same power source for two different connections on the same relay that should actually have two different power sources.

That's all for now. More to come soon.

While waiting for my latest braniac project to compile at work, I may as well give some props to some board members. Without them, this project wouldn't be going on. Maybe the company President will actually come down to the bowels of the office to actually say how good of a job I am doing, instead of hearing that from him through my boss....yeah right, not happening.

First, Jgoble32. I traded bluetooth modules with him. When starting this project, I was wondering how I was going to tell my wife that after spending ~$600 for the upgraded system I would have to spend another $350 for a bluetooth module just because I won't be able to use my current one? Turns out I can use my current one since I am not going to be swapping harnesses. But what goodwould fuse be without fuse? Jgoble32 got what he needed and I got what I needed. He;s great to work with, and packaging was excellent

Second, ikt. While working with ikt, we both learned sending fedex packages to a fedex store really saves a ton on shipping costs. The final box with the sub, amp, and speakers was going to cost $70 going to my door. Going to the local store a 1/4 mile away ended up costing $17. That is a huge savings on shipping! Packing everything up took him a while. When I received everything, I was thoroughly impressed with the packing, and was well worth the wait. Everything was cellophane wrapped and surrounded with bubble packing. Nothing broke, and so far everything works. He is also going to be modifying my tweeter housings as well. I'll keep everyone updated on how that goes. I just need to stop fooling around with wires and get my stuff to him.

Project is compiling again. Through my boss, the company President loved the program I created, and wants some minor tweaks. I love how the company president tells me directly. Such great motivation and morale boost.

Waiting for a compile, I may was well use up the few cycles I have left to babble on about where I get the wiring harnesses from. I bought the harnesses from TAE Used Auto Parts through ebay. I'm pretty tough as a customer. I expect emails and calls to be returned in a timely manner, parts descriptions by sales to be correct, fair shipping costs, fair parts prices, and care taken removing parts from wrecks.

One harness was shipped through USPS using flat rate priority shipping, a free box, and no packing materials. At a much lower cost than $20 for shipping, I'm not too happy not getting the discount. No way does priority flat rate for the under dash harness cost $20, more like $15. I thank them dearly for raping me on shipping (sarcasm). The harness itself was in great shape, had everything I needed, and a lot more. None of the plugs were broken. If I had a 2011+ ralliart, the harness might have been plug and play. Come on now, charging $20 for $15 shipping? No thanks. I was gouged enough for the harness, gouging me on shipping as well isn't necessary. Refunding the shipping difference would have turned the dash harness experience into a much more positive review.

The floor harness was also purchased through TAE. I wish I had gone though the board member in alaska instead, but the TAE floor harness came out of an evo with nav. TAE got a chance to redeem themselves with the floor harness. The harness was shipped through fedex, and definitely cost at or close $20 to ship. The big complaint with the shipping was fedex holding the harness in salt lake city for 5 freakin days. Frigging morons, just get the box to me, there's enough fedex planes, trucks, trains leaving Salt Lake City, there's no excuse for a 5 day delay. Not blaming TAE for that. However, besides getting gouged for the wiring harness, when both harnesses would cost me $40 at the local yards, the well over $100 for each is one hell of a gouging. The floor harness has broken plugs, which makes the gouging even worse. The sales rep at TAE said no plugs were broken. Yeah, fat lie there. Every plug that mounted to the body was broken in half, leaving the harness useless for straight plug and play. The **** for brains who pulled the harness from the wrecked evo ended up being too much of a gorilla to take the extra few minutes to properly remove the harness. The broken plugs aren't going to stop my project, but might for someone else. All of the clips on the harness that helped secure the harness to the floor were destroyed by the gorilla too. I can understand a few, that's the nature of removing wiring harnesses, but not all of them. The floor harness cost way too much in my view, until I got the box in. Not only did I get the floor harness, I was given the starter power wire going from the battery in the trunk to the starter, the fuse block wire that goes to the engine bay from the batter, and the trunk harness as well. If I didn't have the sub wiring in the trunk, I would end up being covered. If I ever decide to move the battery to the trunk (most likely not going to happen), I have the wiring already. If it wasn't for the broken clips and plugs, I would have been thoroughly pleased with the floor harness, and thought the price was worth while.

Oh yeah, let's not forget they ignore presales emails. Not everyone can pick up a phone during their business hours. They also can't return calls. If they say they're going to return your call, they don't. I can over look the gouging and broken parts if presales was done to reasonable expectations.

Overall, TAE has lost me as a customer. Two chances to redeem themselves and they couldn't.

Enough rambling for the day, back to work.

A small update. I tore down the ralliart under dash harness. Besides having the video aux input wiring and the fuse bluetooth connection, there's nothing else I can use for the rockford system. Now I am on the hunt for another wiring harness. I have contacted some people parting out their cars, nothing yet.

Another issue I ran into are the head unit and bluetooth plugs. The retaining clips for the wires are a pain to move. I can get the retaining clip moved, but the wire gets jammed and won't move. I may have to break down and buy a terminal tool kit after almost 15 years of modifying wiring harnesses. What I hate about that is having to wait for shipping. I'm a terribly impatient person and would rather pick up tools locally. Sure, I may end up paying $10 more, but to get a tool when I need it, not when someone else decides I need it, is worth the extra amount. I'm so picky with my tools, I want to make sure what I am buying will work.

There's the update. Been nice talking to myself.

Do you know if the 08 rocksford has AUX ability? I went into an audio store today and asked and they told me it doesn't, but just double checking.

Recommendations if it doesn't of what I should do? I need to listen to the music off my Ipod! Should I just upgrade the rocksford system to a newer one ?

Sure does. I was using my rigged up aux plug before starting to tear the car down for the install.

Could you tell me how I go about installing the AUX for it then? Or what cable I need? Cause the dude in "Car Toys" out here in WA told me the 08 rocksford fosgate system doesn't have an AUX connection in the back lol

Sometimes the sales people at car toys don't even know the stuff on the shelves. To prove the guy wrong, hold the cd button down. The display should show "AUX" after about 3 seconds.

Car Toys won't have a cable that will work with our factory head units. You need to either go to mitsubishi and pay $50 for one, which is nuts for a cable, or search for one on ebay.

The install is fairly easy. This page shows everything: http://www.******************/index.php?showtopic=3374.

edit: Link goes to project lancer .net. I'm not far enough along in my project to show where the cables go yet.

If I push "Mode" there is definitely an AUX selection. just need to hook it up I guess