Speaker cable

Going to fit a new stereo and rear speakers to my C. Did Mk1s come with any factory fitted rear speaker cables hidden away or will I need to fit my own?

Cheers

Not 100% sure, but if it does there will only be 3 wires, as on older setups the speakers were all earthed to the same point, where as newer stereos have separate -ves for each speaker, so you will need 4 wires.  Probably best to run 2 new lengths of wire. Halfords sell speaker cable for 99p a metre that would be more than adequate for the job, but pratically any speaker cable would be ok.

I wouldn't recommend using really cheap cable though as the sound quality suffers, as the cheaper wires have a higher resistance.

Mike.

Thanks, got plenty of speaker cable. Just a bit a lazy and hoping I could just plug the speakers in rather than running the speaker wires under the carpet e.t.c

Cheers

I once put in a rear wiper on an old base model metro I owned, built my own wiring loom up, was feeding it through the car, getting really pleased with myself as I got near completeing it.

It was only when I came to putting the wire through into the tailgate I suddenly found a bunch of other wires. Yep, you guessed it, it was already wired up to take it, just needed to be plugged in, and a relay and switch installed!! You've never heard such expletives!!  

Morel to story, it's definitely worth checking if the wires you want are already there! Saves hours.  Just felt I had to share that for some reason!  

Mike

Both my mk1s had speaker wires already.

Grey for one side, Green for t'other.

Still using it in fact.

Peter.

Yep mine had the wires installed too  

Only problem was I had 4 grey/blue  &  2 white/black ( which went to front)

So wired up 2 grey blue & no sound…… :dontknow:

The doughnut  had only used the same wires as the dash lights

Just thought about it in more detail, i think it's the cabriolet that only has 3 wires going to the back, or at least my one does. The reason for that as far as I can work out is because of the silly fader control that they seem to have fitted as standard, which I cut the wires on and by passed.

Thinking back my Golf CL did have 2 pairs of wires, one purple, one green.  Just remembered that as i was reading the last post, so retract what I said above, it's fairly likely the wires might already be there, just need to do some digging around!

As a cabriolet owner and having completed a rear re-wire I can add a little to this section. The rear speakers are/ were wired from the rear to the front using three wires. Just under the dash somewhere along the line of the 'A' post there was a plastic jointing connection which on one side had three wires going in and four on the other. The four wires then would have run to the balance/ fader roller situated on the dashboard and then to the stereo (or vice versa). By the time I got the car the roller was obsolete and by passed straight to the stereo. When I installed my stereo I got some good quality rear cable from Halfords and took all the old wire out. A proper balance could then be achieved. The front wires remained in place. All works well with Infinity 6 x 4's up front and Infinity 4 x 4's in the rear.

Strange - had a good dig around, but could find nothing. Had the back seat out as blowing through fuel lines from tank - so quite confident I looked hard enough.

Cheers

My wire ran under the carpets. From the O/S/R they dropped down behind the panel and emerged somewhere near the seatbelt anchorage point, from there they ran across to the N/S. They weren't actually under the seat itself.