Disco 1 Rear Door Sub New Aftermarket Stereo Unit

I believe these wires (red and black) are for the sub in the rear door of my disco, because as I was fiddling with these cables they touched together and I heard the sub in the back make a noise every now and then, (I have since covered them with electrical tape for now just to stop them touching and causing issues I do not want.

I would like to wire these up to my new stereo head unit. Not sure how to wire them up into the head unit as they just have the standard white and red RCA cables. But as I mentioned earlier, when they touched together they made the sub make a noise, which says to me they have power themselves, but I thought the head unit provides the power through it's inbuilt amp?

I know on the standard disco stereo there is a special connector for these cables that goes into the standard unit, but some butcher in the past has messed with it so they are clearly cut.

Thanks in advance to all the electrical gurus out there

It's difficult to see exactly what's going on from a picture like that, but from what I can see, yes a butcher has been at work in there.
The sub-woofer amplifier and speakers are a self contained unit built into the rear tailgate, one speaker for each stereo channel. The audio feed to the amp is using a screened pair, a red wire, a black wire and a screen or braid, I presume that the red wire is the right hand channel and the black one is the left. Power for the amplifier is fed through different wires, pin 4 for the power, pin 6 for the ground and pin 5 for the on/off signal from the head unit.
I've attached the circuit diagram for the sub-woofer wiring, but you'd probably be better off by downloading your own copy a RAVE for the D1 from:-
http://www.green-oval.com/data/lr/rave03.iso

Ah I see! I was looking at that earlier after I posted this, the rave manual is so useful. I should be able to in theory wire up a white and red RCA cable to those wires and it should work, as you said the sub has it's own power source so should work ok

Many thanks again

You need experience other than what is stated in RAVE.

The red and black is the audio supply to the amp taken from the head units supply, it's not stereo... the subwoofer amp receives a mono signal. At your head unit the pair is terminated at the preamplifier output designated for the low sub frequencies then all that's needed is to switch on and balance the gain as instructed in your head units instructing manual to match the amp.

You will also need to find the amp switching supply which will be supplied by the aux output from your head unit and the ignition switched supply from F3, both should be in place at the connecting block..
Simples.




Sent from my iPad Air on a train.

Been there many years ago when I removed the rubbish Philips stuff and installed a Pioneer head unit, multi CD player and a 200watt sub, in theory a total of 500 including the output from the head unit.

Thanks discool!

Ah I see what you've done in the picture, guessing that's the original connector that goes into the factory unit. Bet that sound system sounds good!

Mine is sounding pretty good already, was expecting it to be utter crap but even without the sub it's fairly punchy for what it all is. Obviously not as good as the Bose system in my Audi A4 but it's decent! Should be even better when I get the sub working. Apart from the passengers rear speaker as that is blown I think lol, will likely upgrade those two at some point in the future anyway.