Speakers everywhere! Has anyone installed a legitimate aftermarket system at this point? If so, are there any learning curves or gotchas vs. ICE cars? Is it even possible to find good speakers to replace every single type in the model 3?
Drizzle
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Thanks and will do!
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I have a 4ohm 100W resistor.
As for the parallel v.s. series: wouldn't series imply that the power is passing through the device, not around it? Like if your device had 12V in and 12V out, that would be in series. But because your diagram is jumping from terminal to terminal, the 12V isn't impeded by each device. Just the wires its running through and the terminal posts its connected to.
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You can use a multimeter on the DC voltage setting to test this. If it reads negative voltage, you have it backwards.
Wow I feel stupid, thanks for the response, not sure why that did not occur to me
Was looking at the Lci2, for those who have it, the documentation says it compensates for the factory system pulling bass at high volumes, but I don’t see where it can amplify the frequencies below 60 hertz that trail off in the stock system. How is that done, or do I need a more sophisticated signal processor?
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It can be done with the LC2i. It has a crossover knob, so I just tuned mine to only boost those frequencies below 45ish hz, as I don't typically my bass being artificially boosted. It does a pretty good job at bringing those lower frequencies back into the audible realm.
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These will sound like newbie questions but I'm not taking any chances, so to confirm:
- If tapping the OEM sub wires, we tap AFTER the amp harness on the red, purple, green, brown wires going directly into the sub box... correct? (far right OEM amp harness outlined in diagram)
- Has anyone else noticed these 4 wires (leading to the oem sub) have a high voltage? Mine is reading +12.75 volts on a multimeter on all four wires coming off of the amp. This doesn't seem right. I would expect two to have negative charge on a MM.
These same wires also a connector half-way to the OEM sub box where the wire colors change from Green, Red, Purple, Brown to Green, Black, Red, Blue. I tapped in about 3" after the harness (far right in diagram) between the OEM amp and this transition. This is where my multimeter is reading 12.75v on all 4 wires.
From Amp:
Green to green (pos)
Red to Blue (neg)
Purple to Red (pos)
Brown to Black (neg)
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1. correct
2. I don't see the concern with the higher voltage. You are, after all, picking up an amplified signal that is designated on the stock subwoofer as being in the 80W per channel realm.
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Any hints/write up to help with installation that's different from dfwatt? thanks
Yeah I think the main difference was he removed the factory speaker mount, I left it and used a dremel tool to remove some of the inner plastic door liner. Here is what I did.
![Image]()
I used a drill bit to remove the factory rivets, pulled the factory speaker off, then used a dremel tool to flatten the factory mounts to reuse
![Image]()
I used washers between the speaker and the mounting post to raise the speaker slightly off the ring you can see in the previous picture so the rubber surround would not interfere. For the third mount I cut a fender washer so that it sits between the speaker and the factory ring and then part of a metal bracket to make a clamp to hold it. This holds the speaker snuggly in place but hopefully will keep the surround on the speaker far enough away to not get shredded. For the screws I just drilled pilot holes into the factory speaker mounts and used those.
![Image]()
I used a drill bit to remove the factory rivets, pulled the factory speaker off, then used a dremel tool to flatten the factory mounts to reuse
I used washers between the speaker and the mounting post to raise the speaker slightly off the ring you can see in the previous picture so the rubber surround would not interfere. For the third mount I cut a fender washer so that it sits between the speaker and the factory ring and then part of a metal bracket to make a clamp to hold it. This holds the speaker snuggly in place but hopefully will keep the surround on the speaker far enough away to not get shredded. For the screws I just drilled pilot holes into the factory speaker mounts and used those.
This was the worst part, to get the basket clearance I had to dremel away part of the inner door shield. When I was done I siliconed the gaps to map sure it was still water right. Took me about two to three hours, most of the time on the first panel. I did just order four more to do the fronts, as well as the torx set recommended earlier, can’t wait to tear into that
Just a few tips, from a friend of course, after a first timer's install and two months with a subwoofer in a Model 3:
The 5mm spade connector recommended by Ingineerix for VC_LEFT never fit snug for me, I mean my friend. He tried bending a few leftover spade connectors, and he eventually found a snug shape: almost a circle. You pinch the two sides of the spade connector together and then pry up the teeth with a small flathead. YMMV.
Tesla Raj's recent model 3 lift gate video gave my friend good tips for cable management from the penthouse to the trunk and from VC_LEFT to the trunk through the sides of the seats. Putting those sides back in kind of sucks though. It was easiest to unclip the black retainer from the seat/shelf and put it back on the seat side cover before putting the seat side cover back.
Don't leave your high voltage penthouse connection unscrewed/disconnected while you're rerouting your cables like Tesla Raj. The 12V in the frunk area takes over power and your climate control quickly kills your 12V battery and bricks the car. You'll need to jump your car with an extra 12V you have laying around from swapping out your lead-acid battery to a racing lithium ion battery. You don't need to remove the whole frunk again, just the flap by the washer fluid. More info on disconnecting high voltage and 12V is available on the web from a Tesla Service manual.
Strange LC2i behavior: if you accidentally reverse the polarity of one set of inputs, the accubass settings are extremely inconsistent when changing dial. You'll find sweet spots of popping in and out, and you'll have to turn it almost all the way up. If you have this symptom and tried everything else, cross reference nice diagrams in this thread for correct polarity. Also revisit the awesome tips from @Defjukie on tuning the LC2i that are somewhere in this thread.
If your OEM amplifier completely dies on you for no apparent reason several times and inexplicably comes back to life after a few days of no blinker noises, microphone or music, you might have a defective amplifier. But also maybe the power surges in your solid state relay circuit are causing the VC_LEFT to trip its time fuse. MCU reboots and powering down doesn't help you. Also plugging the amplifier in and out again with any of its various cables doesn't help. You might also be confused by the lack of immersive sound options in your audio settings. You have to disconnect the 12V battery in the front and possibly the high voltage to let VC_LEFT reset. Check out the nice work others are doing and put those 100W resistors in your circuit. Also double check your spade connector and bend it into a better "O" shape like my friend suggested.
The 5mm spade connector recommended by Ingineerix for VC_LEFT never fit snug for me, I mean my friend. He tried bending a few leftover spade connectors, and he eventually found a snug shape: almost a circle. You pinch the two sides of the spade connector together and then pry up the teeth with a small flathead. YMMV.
Tesla Raj's recent model 3 lift gate video gave my friend good tips for cable management from the penthouse to the trunk and from VC_LEFT to the trunk through the sides of the seats. Putting those sides back in kind of sucks though. It was easiest to unclip the black retainer from the seat/shelf and put it back on the seat side cover before putting the seat side cover back.
Don't leave your high voltage penthouse connection unscrewed/disconnected while you're rerouting your cables like Tesla Raj. The 12V in the frunk area takes over power and your climate control quickly kills your 12V battery and bricks the car. You'll need to jump your car with an extra 12V you have laying around from swapping out your lead-acid battery to a racing lithium ion battery. You don't need to remove the whole frunk again, just the flap by the washer fluid. More info on disconnecting high voltage and 12V is available on the web from a Tesla Service manual.
Strange LC2i behavior: if you accidentally reverse the polarity of one set of inputs, the accubass settings are extremely inconsistent when changing dial. You'll find sweet spots of popping in and out, and you'll have to turn it almost all the way up. If you have this symptom and tried everything else, cross reference nice diagrams in this thread for correct polarity. Also revisit the awesome tips from @Defjukie on tuning the LC2i that are somewhere in this thread.
If your OEM amplifier completely dies on you for no apparent reason several times and inexplicably comes back to life after a few days of no blinker noises, microphone or music, you might have a defective amplifier. But also maybe the power surges in your solid state relay circuit are causing the VC_LEFT to trip its time fuse. MCU reboots and powering down doesn't help you. Also plugging the amplifier in and out again with any of its various cables doesn't help. You might also be confused by the lack of immersive sound options in your audio settings. You have to disconnect the 12V battery in the front and possibly the high voltage to let VC_LEFT reset. Check out the nice work others are doing and put those 100W resistors in your circuit. Also double check your spade connector and bend it into a better "O" shape like my friend suggested.
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OK, so I was in the camp of people who WEREN'T getting error messages after upgrading to aftermarket amp & sub.
However, in the last 2 software releases, my sound has completely cut out and resetting / letting the car sleep does not bring the audio back. First happened on 2019.16.2, sound came back when I got the latest software, but was gone after about a day again.
I'm going to install the relay / resistor and see if I can get the audio to come back to life. I'm still not getting any kind of error message, btw.
However, in the last 2 software releases, my sound has completely cut out and resetting / letting the car sleep does not bring the audio back. First happened on 2019.16.2, sound came back when I got the latest software, but was gone after about a day again.
I'm going to install the relay / resistor and see if I can get the audio to come back to life. I'm still not getting any kind of error message, btw.
Good luck and sorry to hear. I measured the VC_LEFT when this happened and it showed no current or voltage going through it. The way I finally reset was disconnecting both 12V in front and the high voltage line. This was accidental by the way, which I wrote very verbosely above (sorry).
You can find link to Tesla Service PDF here: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/thr....com/tmc/threads/model-3-manual-disconnecting-12v-and-high-voltage-power.96736/
In short: you disconnect and wrap off the negative terminal on the 12V. Then you disconnect the high voltage. Then you wait for car to make clicking noise and become unresponsive. Then you put back high voltage. Then you put back 12V.
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From what I read so far, the people who get the error "cannot maintain" are using amp line-in level as the remote start. I haven't heard anyone getting error when they setup the amp remote start from the 12v VCLeft power. If there's any correlation or not, I'm curious.
I had the cannot maintain power error. I setup the solid state relay fix without the resistors. This resolved the error. Then after roughly one-and-a-half months my whole audio system went out including microphone functionality and blinker noises. The immersive audio settings weren't visible either. This is a symptom of a bad OEM amplifier. No reboots or resets worked including powering down. I noticed VC_LEFT read negligible voltage even when car was on. After about two days the system reset itself. Unfortunately, a few days later, my audio system went out a second time and wouldn't recover. I had to completely disconnect both high and low voltage systems - which I did accidentally while doing some cable management - to reset it. Even unplugging OEM amplifier cables didn't work. After putting in resistors with the relay, I'm going to keep a close eye on things. If things continue to break, I'll swap out the OEM amplifier.
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JFYI I finished my install on Sunday (will post pics soon) using this exact setup and have yet to see any error messages of any kind.
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