Rear Speaker Liftgate Wiring

Someone on a message board asked me how I ran the wire for the rear liftgate speakers, so reposting for anyone else that wants to know.

The below photo is taken from the right side of the car, but the wiring is run down the left side of the liftgate, this is just to help explain.



I followed how the speakers were wired up in the T&C for this, with one exception. There is a small cavity just underneath and towards the edge of the rear trim panel (red arrow, there is one on each side). The wiring for both speakers enters into the cavity of the liftgate formed by the inner and outer shell. It runs along the edge of the window (inside the liftgate) just like the yellow line in the photo (except on the other side). The wiring exits out the top of the liftgate through a small hole in the upper window area.

On the T&C, there was a grommet and a hole on the upper roof area that my Aspen did not have. For the T&C, this was for the rear speaker wiring, the rear taillight wiring (for the lights on the liftgate) and for a power liftgate relase (if so equipped, mine wasn't). Instead of drilling the hole, I just ran the speaker wire up underneath the rear trim piece that holds up the headliner. You can see the wire in the red box in the photo.

I hope that this information is useful to anyone else.

New Stereo Installed

It's been awhile since I have put any work into the wagon, but this last week I was on vacation and I did spend some quality time with it. The engine is still in the Town and Country, so there was no work done with regards to the engine swap. But, I did install some of the donor parts during my projects last week.

Before I got the car from my dad, it was broken into and the tape deck that was in it was stolen. Nothing else but the tape deck was taken, probably some sort of gang initiation. :)

For the year that I've had it, it has been without tunes. This week I fixed that problem. Here are the components that I installed into the car.

• Panasonic AM/FM/CD/MP3 Player
• Blaupunkt 3.5" 2-way speakers (front)
• Blaupunkt 6x9" 3-way speakers (rear)

Initially, I wanted to install larger speakers in the doors of the wagon. I used the Town & Country to compare, and there is a cavity in the door for the speakers to mount. I pulled the door panel off of the Aspen, and sure enough the same cavity was there. However, since the Aspen didn't have any power options, there is no wiring routed to the doors and thus, none of the panels were punched out to run the wiring through the door jam. I could have mounted the speakers and routed the wires, but that would have required removing the doors completely to gain access to drill some holes to run the wiring. Too much work for what I wanted to do this week.

So, I mounted the speakers in the upper dash area in the factory location. That meant taking the entire dash top and front off to get everything mounted.



Here are the 3.5" speakers mounted in the factory location.



The first part that the Town & Country gave up were the rear speaker mounting brackets that mount the speakers to the tailgate. Here you can see the speakers mounted in the brackets.



The Aspen did not have rear speakers installed from the factory so I had to fish speaker wire through the cavity in the tailgate. Then I had to remove the entire left side interior trim to route the speakers up through to the head unit.



The next part that the Town & Country donated to the Aspen was the rear tailgate trim with the speaker cutouts. The piece is still the tan color that it was in the Town & Country, and it will get dyed when I complete the interior color change over.





Here are a couple of photos of the new head unit installed. It also has an AUX plug on the front, which will allow me to hook up my iPod to it. You can also see the cracked heater control unit in this photo. It was secured with thin wire to keep it attached to the dash.

This was the next part that the Town & Country has donated, a non cracked A/C - Heater control. You can see the replacement in the last photo.