GE8 Infinity BassLink Install

[kimonostereo]

After a few weeks of searching and research, I've finally been able to install my Infinity BassLink subwoofer into my GE8!

Standard disclaimer: This is just how I did it. If you follow this and damage your car, I'm not responsible.

Stuff you'll want to have to do this install

• Mini Pry bar
• socket wrench
• 8 mm socket
• socket wrench extension
• masking tap
• wire taps
• wire ties

Before you begin, make sure you have all of your wiring for this install. This would include the power wire that will go to the battery from the Basslink, A short ground wire that will attach to the rear hatch area, the remote volume cable and the speaker input wire that will run from the subwoofers amp to the head unit.

Once you have all of the cables, it's time to plan how you will run these wires. I chose to run the power, speaker and remote cables along the drivers side under the plastic covering. I chose this because it was a straight line from the amp to the battery as well as in sight of the location that I wanted to install the remote volume control.

My install won't use a remote wire to turn the BassLink on and off. Instead I will use the head unit's front speaker output to signal the BassLink to turn on and off. Okay Let's do the hard part: Getting the head unit off and installing the speaker wires.

Step One:

Pop your hood and take the negative terminal off the battery.

If you don't have one, you'll want to buy one of these things:


I tried to use a makeshift pry bar but it got bent up and was too weak to remove the head unit. Spend 3 bucks and get one of these.

Step Two:
Pry off the lower cover under the headunit. This is located right above the accessory socket. You need to remove this to unbolt the head unit from the chasis.



Step Three:
Move your AC vent lever from recirculate to fresh air. Doing this allows you to access the bolt that you need to remove. (this picture shows my make shift "pry bar" )

Note: You might also want to remove the lower glove box in order to get a better view of what you are doing near the head unit.

Step Four:
Use an 8mm socket and a ratchet extension:


Then remove the bolt under the head unit by accessing through the lower panel you removed in step 1. In this picture you can see my ratchet extension pointing at the bolt (circled area). The photo was taken from the lower glove box, aimed at the area under the head unit.


Step Five:
Tape up the area around the head unit. Make sure you double tape the areas you plan to use the pry bar with.


Step Six:
Removing the head unit is the hardest part! Use extreme care when removing it. If you open the upper glove box you will notice a small notch on the side of the head unit. Put a flat head screwdriver in as far as it will go and then slowly pull the screwdriver toward you to break open the initial clips holding in the head unit.

Once the head unit is pryed open a bit, use the mini pry bar and carefully pry the head unit loose going around the lower half of the unit. The AC ducts are connected to the top of the head unit so those will come off as well.

Put a soft towel under the head unit to protect it and the area under it from getting scratched. You wouldn't want your vinyl and plastic all scraped up right?

If you've gotten this far, you're almost done.

Step Six:
There's a lot of stuff connected to the head unit but you're only interested in one connector, the one that is circled.



After much searching and pleading with folks all over the net, a nice fellow posted the wiring for the GE8 head unit. How this matches up with the 2008 Accord wiring harness is beyond me since I looked at the Accord wiring and it's different?

Anyways this is what you want to know:
Battery
Wire Color PINK
Polarity (+)
Location RADIO HARNESS
Pin # 24

Accessory
Wire Color ORANGE
Polarity (+)
Location RADIO HARNESS
Pin # 14

Ground
Wire Color BLACK
Polarity (-)
Location RADIO HARNESS
Pin # 12

Illumination
Wire Color GRAY
Polarity (+)
Location RADIO HARNESS
Pin # 13

Dimmer
Wire Color RED
Polarity (-)
Location RADIO HARNESS
Pin # 1

Power Antenna
Wire Color BLACK
Polarity (+)
Location RADIO HARNESS
Pin # 3

Speaker 1
Front Left
Wire (+)
Wire Color LIGHT BLUE
Pin # 23

Wire (-)
Wire Color LIGHT GREEN
Pin # 22

Front Right
Wire (+)
Wire Color BROWN
Pin # 19

Wire (-)
Wire Color RED
Pin # 18

Rear Left
Wire (+)
Wire Color GRAY
Pin # 11

Wire (-)
Wire Color BROWN
Pin # 10

Rear Right
Wire (+)
Wire Color BLUE
Pin # 7

Wire (-)
Wire Color ORANGE
Pin # 6

Be careful that you choose the correct RED wire! The red wire that you can see in the photo above is the WRONG one. That's the dimmer wire. The red wire you need is located on one of the other rows.

I chose to tap the front speakers for this install, so I ran my speaker wire from the rear hatch along the driver side then pulled it under the steering column then through to the head unit.

Make sure you do a good job when you use taps or you'll have to take the whole head unit off again to fix it. For now leave the head unit where it is and let's start running the wires.

[celph titled]

man some of you guys are brave..props to even trying.

i couldnt tear open something like that up..and wire, etc etc..


lol im a noob.

thanks for the info.

hows the sound?

[niko3257]

man this is great info. this is exactly what i was looking for.
+ rep to you sir

so how do you like it so far?
i'm doing the spare tire subwoofer.

[kimonostereo]

Step 7:

You'll want to pre-measure your power wire and make sure you have a long enough run from the back where the sub will be to the front of the car where the battery is. Once you've figure that out, run the cable down the drivers side along the seat and leave the extra slack for attaching to the battery in the front drivers side floor mat.



Along the bottom drivers side door sill, you'll need to pull the rubber lining out. You'll want to also pull off the plastic cover that surrounds the hood release. What you'll see under the runner is a some cabling thats already run along the side. This is where you will be running your power wire and speaker wires. Yes I know it's probably better to run the speaker wire on the opposite side but I've done this before on 2 other cars with the same sub and this wasn't a problem.

Step 8:
Be sure to also run the remote volume control wire as well as the speaker wire along with the power wire. I made sure to neatly strap tie them together. Then you'll want to tuck them under along with the other wiring and replace the rubber liner.

Repeat the same process on the rear drivers side door sill until you cannot see the wires along the side. The wires should neatly tuck under and lead to the back hatch in between the rear seat.


Step 9:
Now it's time to get that power wire through the firewall and to the battery. This one had me stumped. There was no easy way to get the power cable through to the engine bay the "right way".

Instead, I decided to "cheat" and run the power wire through the rubber grommet / tubing on the driver's side door.



Be sure you cut a small "x" into the top of the rubber with an xacto knife or something similar. Don't cut it too wide since you don't want water/moisture to get in there. Pulling the wire through is HARD WORK but if I did it, you can do it.

Once you've got some slack wire through the rubber piece, fish the wire along the inside front fender through to the engine bay. From here I attached my power wire to the fuse then to the battery terminal.

Step 10:

Let's ground the the amp on the Basslink now. I want the ground wire as close to the amp as possible. The strap hook on the floor board in the hatch has a screw you can remove that will make a great ground.

Remove the screw and the hook, then sand off the paint under the hook. I tested the ground with a multimeter to be sure there was good connectivity but you can skip that if you don't have one. I sandwiched the ground wire which had a loop connector at the top between the chassis and the hook. You can kinda see how the ground wire is hooked up here:



Step 11:

Lastly, lets plug everything in and test it out!

Put the negative terminal back on the battery. Plug in your power, ground, speaker wire and remote volume into your amp. Turn on the ignition and test to see if your sub works.

Once you know it works, turn the ignition off and wait 5 minutes to be sure the amp turns off. The amp should turn off on it's own in approx. 5 minutes if it doesn't sense power through the speaker wires. I accidentally hooked up the wrong wires following the Accord wiring and the amp wouldn't turn off.

Once the amp turns off, put the head unit back in and clean up! You're done!

All that's left is to figure out where to put the sub control but I'll leave that up to you.



Hope that helps anyone doing a sub install in a GE8!

[kimonostereo]

So far I like it. It fills out the sound of the head unit. I wish I had $$ to buy a new head unit but this will do for now.

I still have to tune it a bit to get the best sound but I haven't had the time to do it. The sub volume control is great when the bass is overbearing too!

[FitStir]

Originally Posted by kimonostereo

Hope that helps anyone doing a sub install in a GE8!

It sure does. Thank you. +reps

[strmslvrfit]

wow! great write up, this should be sticky'ed in the ICE section!

[kimonostereo]

I just wanted to add:
Be sure to wire up the sub with the correct polarity! I made a mistake and wired one speaker in reverse. After I turned off the engine, I was able to hear sounds coming from the sub whenever someone shut the door. It was as if the speakers became microphones. So a huge thump would occur when shutting the door and you could hear when you tapped on the side of the door as well.

Correct wiring fixed it.

[blythe]

Awesome awesome post, especially outlining all the wire colors. I don't plan to install a sub anytime soon, but I'll certainly bookmark this one just for info purposes.

My mechanic recommended these tools because they're nylon and don't have as much of a chance of screwing up the plastic (if your tape comes loose or something). Thoughts? Any particular advantage to the metal crowbar?

[CBX]

Excellent post with nice pictures. +Rep!

I didn't catch where the mounting location is. Do you have a final picture?

[kimonostereo]

Oops I knew I forgot something.



It's located in the rear left side hatch and it's bungeed down so it won't move around at all when driving. This is pretty much the same way I've had it set up in my EP3, Prius and now my GE8.

Not the best picture but you get the idea. I'm still waiting for my cargo tray to come in from the dealer. Dunno why it wasn't inside the car when it was sold....

[kimonostereo]

Originally Posted by blythe

Awesome awesome post, especially outlining all the wire colors. I don't plan to install a sub anytime soon, but I'll certainly bookmark this one just for info purposes.

My mechanic recommended these tools because they're nylon and don't have as much of a chance of screwing up the plastic (if your tape comes loose or something). Thoughts? Any particular advantage to the metal crowbar?

I would use the nylon tools if I still had my set. My set disappeared when I was helping some folks with their cars a while back. I only used what was cheap and I could find at my local hardware store. The makeshift mini pry did not last and bent all over the place. The $3 one was worth it to me because I can use it for other things outside of just my car.

[vwli]

Nice post. Good info. Thanks.

[blythe]

Originally Posted by kimonostereo

I would use the nylon tools if I still had my set. My set disappeared when I was helping some folks with their cars a while back. I only used what was cheap and I could find at my local hardware store. The makeshift mini pry did not last and bent all over the place. The $3 one was worth it to me because I can use it for other things outside of just my car.

I just bought the tools I linked to last night. They were on sale for $5, yay!

[DieKeis]

Very nice install and writeup. Love the bungee cord.

A question though; will the Basslink not fit under the magic seats?

[niko3257]

Originally Posted by DieKeis

Very nice install and writeup. Love the bungee cord.

A question though; will the Basslink not fit under the magic seats?

most likely yes but then you loss your fold down option.

[kimonostereo]

Originally Posted by DieKeis

Very nice install and writeup. Love the bungee cord.

A question though; will the Basslink not fit under the magic seats?

It'll probably fit but I wanted it out of the way of things. Also I don't think i would be able to secure it if I put it there. The rear is where it belongs. Out of the way.

[blythe]

Just started the process for installing my amp, and got stuck at how to get the power cord to the battery. Thanks for the tip about the grommet in the door! So easy!

[niko3257]

i went throught the wire harness on the pass side.
it's very big you can't miss it.
it was very easy to get to also.

[drock305]

Originally Posted by kimonostereo

The sub volume control is great when the bass is overbearing too!

hmm.. hard to believe