Hi all,

I need some help!! I've just picked up my octy vRS today and I'm well pleased with it, however the first job I was hoping to do was run a nice length of 10mm power cable down the car to the boot for my sub etc.

After much searching here I removed the glovebox to attempt to find the elusive grommet without success :( .

I then switched to trying to find the 12v bus bar under the drivers side I've heard about, again without success!

Can anyone point me in the easiest direction for picking up a decent supply, ideally direct from the battery (via a large fuse of course ) - I can see how to lift the trim down the side of the car so this job would've been done by now if I could get into the engine bay!!! (Need to do this while SWMBO is out preferably to avoid the usual "you're not taking that apart" complaints - and me a qualified electrician too, would think she'd have more faith )

Somebody help me pleeeeaaasseeeee!!!!!:orb_bonk:

Try the search feature. I think their a guide somewhere on here from a few years back that shows you what to do.

congrats on the purchase

the grommet can be seen if you slightly lift the flap under your wiper blade

i went through it that way (from the top) be careful though if grommet drops out it s a so and so to get back in

Try the search feature. I think their a guide somewhere on here from a few years back that shows you what to do.

Thanks for the advice but I have been searching for about two weeks on this subject and have yet to find anything that helps

Fatty5000, I tried lifting the wiper cover thingy (couldn't see how to get it off though???) but I can't see any way of getting cables through.

I had another go at the glovebox idea and found a bunch of cables going through (although these are behind what looks like a blower motor and can be seen without removing the glovebox)but when I try and push the new cable through it just snags up immediately and won't go through. Also it looks like it's part of the bunch that comes through under the airbox (I presume?) and goes along the guide channel to the battery distribution block but I don't fancy trying to get all that out just for one cable.

The buss bar under the steering wheel is easy to find.

Look above the pedals and theres a large plastic cover.

There are two screws and two clips.

Just undone them and pull the panel out.

Theres a switched and permanent live under there

Alternatively going from the engine bay, remove the passenger wiper and the plastic cover at the bottom of the windscreen.

This gives access to the pollen filter.

Just behind this (back left hand corner) is where the gromit sits.

Just poke the wire through and you should be able to find it behind the glovebox.

Thanks vRS Si, I tried removing that cover under the wipers but the damn thing wouldn't come away and I was worried about breaking something!

Is there a method to getting that off?

From looking I thought that seemed like a good place to gain access just can't get my sausage fingers in there!!!

The plastic cover under the wipers takes a bit of effort to pull off - it just clips in - lift it perpendicular to the windscreen.

This might help a bit: clicky

have you sloved it yet i'll take a photo later and e mail it to you if you want i did mine a different way alltogether i went to the right of the pollen filter

stick it through the grommet in the bulkhead, i'll go take a picture of mine that has 0 guage (about 25mm in proper cable sizes) cable running through it.

best done with two people, one in the bonnet poking a long thing through like a coat hanger and the other to locate said coat hanger then tape the cable on and pull it through.

i'll go take a pic of mine

Thanks vRS Si' date=' I tried removing that cover under the wipers but the damn thing wouldn't come away and I was worried about breaking something!

Is there a method to getting that off?

From looking I thought that seemed like a good place to gain access just can't get my sausage fingers in there!!![/quote']

Yes it's a pain! Expect to come away with cut fingers and hands!

I found it easiest to remove the passenger wiper and then lift the plastic cover up from the front edge of it (i.e. the edge closest to the front of the car).

Thanks for all the help everyone - I've now got a couple of guides to follow, the one listed here being the best photos so far so I'll try and do this either later tonight after work or at the weekend (weather and SWMBO permitting!)

As there doesn't seem to be a idiots guide on here I'll try and take some photos step by step and post them in here - would be usefull as a sticky I'm sure judging by the number of people I found asking similar questions when I searched. (And believe me I did plenty of that before asking in this thread )

Will keep you all posted on my progress, need to do this so I can fit the nice home built 12" ported sub I built a few months ago for the old car - hopefully this one won't sound like the boot is about to explode

Matt

Right I've tried again and I still can't get that F@

Update: It's finally in .

I ended up taking it over to my local dealer (Bridgwater Irvines for anyone who's interested!) who very kindly removed the scuttle panel for me.

That is a complete pig of a job and the guy that did it told me they had broken a windscreen recently doing the same job (Gulp!) but after much fiddling and me holding the bonnet half way up he got it off and out the way.

Then I removed the pollen filter (easy) and the box (not easy, even with the borrowed 10mm socket) which required carefull use of molegrips around the socket extension as I couldn't fit the wrench in there!

Next out was the airbox, undid the two posidrive screws and lifted the top off, then undid the two bolts using the borrowed 10mm socket again ( ) and worked it free to remove it. Still with me? Good.

Next up was removing the grommet, which sods law dictates must be pushed into the hole before you remove it 5 minutes later with pliers like you should've originally .

Then removed the cable cover and fed the 10mm cable round and cable tied it in place where I want to fit the fuse and loomed back round the guide to refit the cover.

After that feeding the cable through and finding it in the footwell area (with the glovebox removed!) which in itself is tricky as it was obstructed by a large pipe for the air con - took me a few mins to see that!

Forgot to refit the grommet so pulled the cable back through again to fit that :O .

After that I just carefully removed the side trim and fed the cable down through the car and into the boot area, which involved going up the rear slope and coming out behind the carpet by the rear speaker (I may look at that section again when I continue with the install but the dealership man said that refitting the boot trim was a real PITA so I will be very carefull if I do anything like that).

That's all for now until I run the audios and cd changer cable (not forgetting the amp remote ) down the other side of the car and get around to fitting my minidisc and cd changers and sub before deciding if I need to change the speakers at all.

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions, in the end I was lucky my dealer was so generous with the help otherwise I may have been stuck on this one for some time.

Regards,

Matt

Slightly OT, but what are you going to be powering using that cable? It sounds awfully thin.

For example, I have two runs of 25mm cable, & that's just for a couple of processors, & 2 amps. Total draw around 160-170 amps.

It's only going to be powering a 300w amplifier for the sub and possibly a 2x55w amp for the 6x9's (or upgraded rears) so 10mm cable is plenty as it's tri-rated.

Good for about 80 amps and I know from putting a clamp on meter on the system before there's nowhere near that amount of draw!

Thanks for the warning anyway! )

Matt

Edit: Also in my last car I had a 6mm feed running the two amps mentioned and the cd changer multi control box with absolutely NO problems at high volumes - I used to get the whole car sounding like it was going to explode giving me a real headache and I never experienced battery/alternator problems or lights dimming!

Also have you ever put a meter on your system cos 160-170 amps sounds like a helluva lot for a couple of amps and processor, unless they're huge power - bear in mind that the fuse ratings on amplifiers are usually way over the actual pull in my experience.

Processors are a couple of amps a piece I would guess.

Bass amp is rated @ 700wrms @ 12V! So it's probably more like 1000wrms @ 14v.

Comp amp is 2 x 250wrms rated @ 13v. The draw I guessed it pretty reasonable, the bass amp actually draws slighlty more than the fuses it has on the side (fuses have quite a high tolerance).

I've just heard a few horror stories of the cable shorting due to getting too hot. Also, I'm of the opinion that the hard work is stripping the car, so you may as well get as much cable as you can in there while it's naked.

Your system must have a bit more power than mine then :P

I always thought mine was plenty loud enough especially since I uprated the sub amp recently and with the advances in head units in recent years I don't even bother with amping the fronts up now (I removed the little kenwood 2x25w amp recently and noticed that the fronts actually got louder yet still sounded as good!) so it's only going to ever run the sub and some rears for me.

I get your point about putting in large cable while it's all stripped but I "aquired" the cable (through work) and being tri-rated its got a good amount of insulation around it anyway, plus I was carefull to cable tie it in such a way that it's not able to rub against anything.

When I get around to installing the rca's (next problem as I want to allow plenty of spare as I'm not sure where everything's going in the boot yet - need to aquire some more quality cable ) I'll stick the meter on it with it wound up and see what it's drawing but I'll be suprised if it tops 50A really.

Matt