Placing an active subwoofer in my S70 (spaghetti mess)

[Ocelot]

Hey guys,

My wonderfull girlfriend gave me an active subwoofer for my birthday (she's the best gf in the world because she heard me mumbling about the newly fitted LPG system and because of that the bulky subwoofer and amp had to go). The active subwoofer is a Kenwood KSC-SW11, see picture.

kenwood ksc sw11.jpg (108.31 KiB) Viewed 1270 times

Right now, it's working and the sound is nice! The bass is also very nice, it's there but it's not THERE THERE if you know what I mean. The sound is very... balanced and I like that.

Right of the bat: I'm not good with cable management. I'm defenitely not good at it So my first question is: do you have any tips and tricks for me how to get rid of the "spaghetti mess"?

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more spaghetti.jpg (205.93 KiB) Viewed 1270 times

And my second question is: I can't find a good place around the seats to place the ground cable. Do you guys have any tips for me on that? I looked below the seats and I found a certain metal clip that's directly connected to the bodywork, but I can't see how to mount the groundcable to that clip. It's also the thing that I don't understand. The controlcable (the blue one) is like 5 meters (15 feet) long, but the groundcable isn't even 1 meter (3 feet) long Why Kenwood, why? Will a too long groundcable cause trouble? So now... I placed the ground cable at a very amateuristic place (please, don't be too harsh on me, that's why I'm asking for help haha).

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I'd love to hear from you so I can fix this spaghetti mess

[Goupil]

You can lift the carpet quite easily, I swear I've seen on guide on here but can't find it All it takes is to unclip a few trims


There's two grounds under the rear seat (bolt at the bottom right of the picture, taken pre-vaccuming ), you can just undo the bolt, stack yours on to of the existing one and bolt it back in. I did that when I ran 12V straight to my fuel pump and it works just fine

[Ocelot]

You can lift the carpet quite easily, I swear I've seen on guide on here but can't find it All it takes is to unclip a few trims


There's two grounds under the rear seat (bolt at the bottom right of the picture, taken pre-vaccuming ), you can just undo the bolt, stack yours on to of the existing one and bolt it back in. I did that when I ran 12V straight to my fuel pump and it works just fine

Hey Goupil,

Thanks for your help! Is there an easy way in lifting the rear seat? I saw a video of RobertDIY and he lifts the back of the rear seats out before he lifts out the bottom part of the rear seat. I wonder, is there another way?

[wrybread]

Very cool addition. Which stereo do you have in your car? I'd love to add this to my sc-815 but I don't think it has a line lev output. I wonder if there's some clever other way to do it.

[Ocelot]

Very cool addition. Which stereo do you have in your car? I'd love to add this to my sc-815 but I don't think it has a line lev output. I wonder if there's some clever other way to do it.

So I discovered a way to lift the bottom part of the back seat up. It seemed I was too nice to it and it just needs a firm hand They are expecting much nicer weather conditions this coming weekend, so I'm planning to work all this spaghetti mess away this coming saturday. Concerning your question, I think you can hook these kinds of active subwoofers to any existing audio system (see the photo/electrical diagram below).

kenwood electrical stuff.jpg (140.73 KiB) Viewed 1170 times

I had it a bit easier because my radio isn't an original one, but an aftermarket single DIN Pioneer system with a RCA output. So if your system doesn't have an RCA output (which I reckon most original Volvo radios don't have) you'll have to connect the wires as shown in the picture above (which doesn't look too hard to do).