Door Speakers & Subwoofers in my Leaf

[Randy]

Here is the rear of the head unit after it has been removed. This baby is definitely the centerpiece of the Leaf with all the connections...Just take your time and pop each tab. Then there are 4 screws to remove to get the head unit out.

[Randy]

We decided to run the power and remote turn on wires down the drivers side of the door frame and the speaker wires down the passengers side of the car. Then the wires join up under the passenger seat and go under the seat to the trunk area....The cushion of the rear seat just pulls up and out of the two connectors (Thanks to the service manual). Just tug hard and the clips will come out...See the two hooks on the underside of the seat? They just lift up and out. Also note the "hump" and how the rear seat belt hooks are oriented...That will be part of our mounting method for the subs....

[Randy]

Here are a few shots showing the wire path and the wires running from front to back. The plastic moulding is held on with clips (be careful not to break them) and the seat belt assembly between the front and back seats is held on with different clips (it's helpful to have the mini plastic crowbar tool pictured in the beginning of this thread)...We ran the wires as inconspicuously as possible and used cable ties to anchor them to other wire assemblies as we could...As an aside, people have been talking about replacing the carpet, but that would seem difficult because it is molded to the floor and has lots of curves and edges built-in.

[Randy]

We used crimp-on wire clamps to attach to the head unit speaker and remote power wires. The new green speaker wires go to the rear and have connectors crimped on so they mate up with the head unit wires. By the way, there are errors in the service manual wiring diagram. I'll post more information later with the corrections, but this took us a long time to figure out....The colors are correct, but the positions shown on the connectors are not correct.

[Randy]

The ground wire for the amplified sub comes from under the passenger seat where the seat belts screw to the frame. We tried to run the power wire from the battery through the firewall, but had a heck of a time getting the power wire through the bundle of wires that penetrate the firewall. They were sealed.

After some time, we gave up on that because we didn't want to damage those wires and decided that we didn't want to drill a hole in the firewall. So we connected the positive wire for the sub (7.5 amp fuse) to the 20 amp circuit that feeds the cigarette lighter adapter. If we had a more powerful sub, we'd have to connect to the battery, but this seemed like a good compromise...As an interesting aside, I thought that since we were connecting the power to the cigarette light adapter, the power draw of the subwoofer would show up on the energy display in the other systems graph in the lower right. In my car with the music running, it measured about 500 watts previously and about 500 watts after the subwoofer install. So it looks like the cigarette lighter / power adapter circuit is not included in that energy reading.

Now it's time to solder all the wires we ran to the sub...I have a little soldering jig that makes it easy and we used shrink tubing to protect the wires and then spiral wrap after that to bundle up the speaker and power wires separately...

[Randy]

Finally, like a cooking show that whips out the souffle from the oven, here are a couple of photos of the finished product...We put in about 12 hours on that Saturday, and a couple of hours on Sunday / Monday to finish up. I ended up having one of my speaker connections out of phase so I had to reverse one pair of my soldered connections at the subwoofer. But after fixing that, I can tell you that the subs sound great!!!

And, we have an installation that can be removed with almost no evidence the subs were there. The seat belt loops hold the speakers just fine, two loops for the heavier amplified sub, and then one loop for the lighter non-amplified sub. I put a little bit of double-faced tape on the bottom of the plastic base assemblies under the subs that the straps go through to hold them steady, and as you can see the rear trunk cover goes back in place and the cargo organizer also fits back in just fine!!!

It really adds another dimension of sound to the previous door speakers I installed....I'm working on Malcolm now to get him to upgrade his door speakers...

[EVDRIVER]

Randy,

Are there any spare pin positions in the audio plug? I'm wondering if any could be line level out.

Thanks.

[mwalsh]

Any clues as to which wires on the head unit carry video from the reverse camera?

Nice job, BTW!

[EVDRIVER]

Any clues as to which wires on the head unit carry video from the reverse camera?

Nice job, BTW!

Sent it to you via email..

[Randy]

Randy,

Are there any spare pin positions in the audio plug? I'm wondering if any could be line level out.

Thanks.

There are some spare open slots in the connector, but no wires installed and they're not mentioned in the service manual. There may be line level outputs or at least they could be retrofitted into the connector with enough time and patience. But there was no evidence that they were there and ready to go...