Re: 2015 Volvo V60 T6 R-Design
Slow progress, but progress....
https://i.imgur.com/EzNiwx6.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/gu0B1yL.jpg
Got the holes drilled into the door for the new rubber boot and speaker wire. Going to pick up some touch up paint tomorrow to paint the bare metal to protect it against the elements a little. Drilling was not as simple as hoped, but not crazy. Had to remove the door card, then pop the molex plug out from inside the door to make sure that none of the factory wiring was going to be impacted by the drill. Once that was done, the metal is 2 layers, which made drilling not quite as straight forward, but not terrible either. Getting the doors off and back on was actually incredibly simple.
Here's a better shot of the grommet on the kick panel side of things:
https://i.imgur.com/OsTaB4k.jpg
And here is why I was not going to even attempt to drill the molex, no way was I going to be able to get 3 sets of speaker wire through there.
https://i.imgur.com/csqdc7o.jpg
So, next is going to be running some wire towards the trunk. I can't deaden the doors just yet, there is a recall on Volvo door latches, which the repair involves them stripping the inner door entirely to get to the latch. If I put deadening over there, then they will have to rip it all off. I am slightly reluctant to even put the speakers in to be honest, but apparently Volvo will not even have parts until April.
Re: 2015 Volvo V60 T6 R-Design
Might as well throw in some Lambo hinges while you're at it.
Re: 2015 Volvo V60 T6 R-Design
Just picturing how bad they would look in my head is enough to say no.
Re: 2015 Volvo V60 T6 R-Design
Nice car! It looks like the door woofers are mounted to that fibrous plastic panel instead of metal, if so you may have to fight with some resonance issues. My old '07 Mazdaspeed 3 had a similar woofer mount, that whole plastic panel would flex and resonate like crazy with the midbass. I was younger and less-wise, so I didn't really understand what was happening and made the problem infinitely worse when I realized I could squeeze an 8-inch midbass behind the factory grille...
Do any of the more-experienced installers have a solution to bracing that style of factory mounting?
Re: 2015 Volvo V60 T6 R-Design
Quote:
Originally Posted by
goatpanda
It looks like the door woofers are mounted to that fibrous plastic panel instead of metal, if so you may have to fight with some resonance issues.
I'm planning to make new baffles to mount the midbass to and bolt those to the metal of the door, that coupled with some deadening of that panel should hopefully mean not too many problems.
Re: 2015 Volvo V60 T6 R-Design
Looking good Ian! I have considered removing doors in the past... always chickened out, so you are a braver man than me for sure!
Re: 2015 Volvo V60 T6 R-Design
Nice progress. And yeah that molex looks like not even the most stubborn installer could get wires in there...not even 18g with a thin jacket. I've been able to run wire along the sides of the molex before but even that looks like it would be impossible in your case.
Re: 2015 Volvo V60 T6 R-Design
Another little update, previously I have always used spade connectors onto the speaker at the end of the run coming into the door itself. Decided to try XT60 connectors and make little pigtails to make life a little simpler in the case of troubleshooting, swapping out equipment etc:
https://i.imgur.com/P054mSj.jpg
Was getting annoyed with things until I picked up some decent solder, made life a whole lot easier then. I figure these will also make things a little easier if I do install speakers before the recall is complete as I can quickly unplug and remove the speakers before heading to the dealership.
Re: 2015 Volvo V60 T6 R-Design
A couple more updates, getting power wire through the firewall into the cabin first. This was a giant headache due to the lack of room, thickness of insulation etc. First thing I had to do is find a grommet, what I had to do is pop this cover off here where the strut brace is. The red circle indicates a grommet you are looking for:
https://i.imgur.com/aJRI7UI.jpg?1
Here is the grommet:
https://i.imgur.com/taIUjqt.jpg?1
Inside the car, with the glovebox and a couple other bits of plastic removed around the door (kick panel trim, side of dash) I was then able to pull the carpet back and then some thick foam padding in order to see where the power wire should hopefully come in at. Feeling through the grommet at the top, I could feel the foam so knew it would be there somewhere.Initially I spent far too long trying to feed the power wire in from the top, bear in mind if you have even remotely large arms, fitting your arm in that hole by the strut brace to get at the grommet is going to suck. My forearm feels like it was shut in a door, you have to sort of put your arm parallel to the cowl there and bend your wrist to access the hole. So, after much cursing I gave up. The next morning I figured I would try and come in from the footwell with a wire coat hanger, feed it up under the insulation and hope I could see it at the grommet to pull it out there. Nope, not a chance. I then decided to try feeding the coat hanger in from the grommet at the top, while making sure to be careful so as not to damage anything. The first couple tries it felt like the hanger hit something solid, that pushed it horizontally along the dash. I was about to give up when I heard a sound of a wire coat hanger hit something in the foot well. Walked around to look and I saw this:
https://i.imgur.com/5t5FRnL.jpg?1
Success! I followed the hanger back and could feel where it came into the cabin behind the PCM here just to the left of the wiring harness bundles.
https://i.imgur.com/sNRtOzN.jpg?1
Back under the hood I used a bunch of electrical tape to secure the power wire to the coat hanger. I had my wife pull the coat hanger from inside while I tried to feed the wire in from the top. Even doing this it was slow going and I had this sense the wire would slip off, which sure enough, it did. Since it felt like we had managed to get the wire someway into the car I decided to reach up behind the PCM just to see if I could feel anything, while the power wire had slipped off the hanger there, it had come through enough that I was able to get my hand behind the box and pull the wire all the way through.
https://i.imgur.com/tVGbToo.jpg?1
Under the hood it's a straight shot from where the grommet is located across to the battery box beneath the plastic cowl. I am not sure yet how to secure it without it interfering with anything under there, but I think it is clear of the wiper motors anyway so should be simple to run it over to the battery. I think there are heater pipes there as well, my concern with those is them getting hot enough to melt the wire, I don't know that they will, but am not sure (if anyone knows how hot those get and if it would be safe, let me know)
Next was onto the speaker wire, I had already drilled the hole in the doors and had planned to use a pair of these https://www.summitracing.com/parts/eli-4301-70-011 and then feed the wires through this large grommet in the kick panel area:
https://i.imgur.com/32M4fiU.jpg
The center of that grommet is perfectly sized to seal against that boot. Thinking I could just snake the wires through the grommet and into the cabin, I started hunting around for an entry from the grommet. Which, apparently there is none. At least not a usable one in any visible location. Sent a message to a user on DIYMA and he confirmed that yep, have to drill another hole on the inside. Peeling back the carpet at the front edge of the doors, I drilled another hole here and was then able to feed the wire through.
https://i.imgur.com/PLpBJCx.jpg
Pulled the back seat cushion, upper and lower B-pillar trim, lower front and rear door trim and was then able to route my speaker wire and power wires alongside the factory wiring until finally they appeared here:
https://i.imgur.com/4oOWhpW.jpg
Finally, it feels like I am making some progress. The only other wires I now need to get into the trunk are going to be the signal tapped from the stock amp under the passengers seat, which hopefully (hahaha) won't be that difficult. Started trying to think of how to mount things in the trunk yesterday, the floor of the trunk lifts up to reveal quite a lot of space, I am tempted to make use of the insert under there as a sort of ready made amp rack. It's fairly thin, so I am thinking of attaching some wood/plastic beneath it and bolting the amps / DSP etc down through that.
https://i.imgur.com/9MPaFbt.jpg
Pro's with going this route, it's virtually ready, cons are it being flimsy. It's molded fairly tightly to everything underneath it, for example at one point I had the speaker wire resting near the air compressor and it would not go back down. The other option is to build something to go here:
https://i.imgur.com/qAgNOpu.jpg
Then simply mount everything to that. If it fits, I could make a large enough board that will cover the air compressor still and carpet it to match the trunk. I need to take some measurements though to see if I can get a flat piece of board to cover everything under there. Once I get the trunk figured out and the signal wires to the trunk, then things should go fairly quickly as it will just be a case of mounting speakers (not doing any sound deadening until recall is complete) and plugging everything in.
Re: 2015 Volvo V60 T6 R-Design
This car can be maddening at times.... since there is no low level signal available (and no MOST interface available either) I have to tap into the aftermarket amp for a speaker level signal to feed into the DSP. Since I am trying to avoid cutting into factory wiring, a few weeks ago I ordered this adapter https://www.ebay.com/itm/Connects2-C...-/352936311231
Now, of the 7 plugs shown I only actually needed one of them. The green one all the way to the left plugs into the output on the amp, so I cut the others off and yesterday decided to try a quick test to make sure it would work. Unplugged the factory green connector from the amp, plugged that one in and twisted the wires onto a speaker I have. Works perfectly. Great. Since I only needed 4 wires I decided to try and remove the other 12 wires giving me a slimmed down connector to work with. Removing the wires was a headache, but I ended up removing about half of them before saying screw it.
Went back to the car, exact same test as yesterday only now a few less wires on the connector and it's no longer working. Took it out and made sure it was plugged in fully, nothing. Essentially the head unit loads the navigation screen but is completely unresponsive. Plugging the factory connector back into the amp and it works fine.
https://i.imgur.com/BOk3GJf.jpg
What I can't figure out is why this worked yesterday and not today with the only difference being that I removed some wires (that did not actually go further than about 4"). I added a couple of the wires back in so that for every pin that is used on the factory plug (it only uses 11 of the 16) that I had something back on my aftermarket plug. Still nothing. Weird. Now I am trying to decide do I want to cut the factory wiring or not, I plan to keep the car a long time, so on that side cutting into 4 wires is not a big deal, I can strip the factory tape back and pull enough slack that I can either solder or crimp on some connections and have plenty of tesa tape to wrap everything up again. But, on the flip side it would be nice to have had this adapter ready to go with enough wire to reach the trunk, (factory amp is mounted under the passenger seat) that all I needed to do was take it to the car and plug it in, then if I ever sold the car or wanted to revert to stock it's a plug and play to put things back.