Connect Alpine Power Pack to Ignition Switch help

Hello all,

I recently installed an Alpine ILX-F509 and an

$259 Alpine KTP-445A Head Unit Power Pack

Alpine KTP-445A Power Pack Amp.

Since I used iData link to Alpine harness, the wire size for the power and ground are not the same as the Factory Alpine harness. Alpine purposely makes them a thicker gauge to send the correct amount of power to the amp.

I figured I would splice the factory harness to take advantage of the extra power needed and called Alpine to figure out what Gauge wire they recommended to use to connect straight to the battery. The rep said to just use the Power wire from the Alpine harness and connect it to the ignition switch to get the required 12v's.

My question now is where exactly would I be tapping into the "Ignition Switch"? I am pretty new to this so any help would be appreciated.

 

I wouldn't tap the ignition switch for a trigger, let alone power.

I think they meant a switched 12v source, like the cigarette socket? And that still makes me cringe a bit. I'd take the HU to power antenna as my amp trigger, and a line direct to battery as my constant 12V. But that's me. Some people have tapped the HU power in as their constant 12V, which is ok(maybe) for small amps.

 

Here's the HU Harness, you can see the Power (Yellow) & Ground (Black) are thicker than all the others.


This the HU harness connects to the AMP and Powers the AMP directly. Then the Amp connects to and powers the HU.


HU sends audio signal to the amp, and the amp sends audio to speakers. it

So then I would connect the Yellow power wire directly to the Battery but I guess now the question is what size wire should I run from the batter to the Harness power wire? Would going "too big" cause problems?

 

I don't have a 3rd gen but I am running a

$259 KTP-445A Head Unit Power Pack

KTP-445A & iLX-507. Alpine says as long as the factory radio circuit is rated for a 15A fuse or bigger, then it's ok to run it off the stock harness wiring.

Mine was 15A but it wasn't the same gauge as the Alpine harness. I ran it like that for years with my prev Alpine HU & KTP-445A. When I got the iLX-507 I decided to run it straight to the battery since the manual recommended the HU to be connected that way & since the power pack runs inline with the HU harness.

The yellow wire on the Alpine harness should be 14ga. which is perfectly fine to run straight to the battery. I wouldn't tap into any other power source, run it straight to the battery with a fuse or connect to the factory harness if anything else. I ran 12ga cause that's what I had. I just ran it to the driver's kick panel & tapped into my amp wire there & also installed a fuse there for that. In case you haven't already, connect the Alpine harness black wire directly to a chassis ground & not ground through the stock Tacoma wiring (I do this with any aftermarket HU).

I did run the ilx-507 off the stock 12v wiring temporarily, after connecting it straight to the battery I got about .4 less voltage drop. Not that I could really tell the difference by ear but that made me feel better.

 

Appreciate your response, this is definitely the route I’ll be going. How did you connect the 12gauge wire to the 14gauge harness? Butt connectors? Solder?

 

Sort of. I used non-insulated crimp connectors & covered with heatshrink. I prefer not to solder wires 12ga & larger cause I don't like the added bulk, same reason I don't like to use insulated butt connectors, on my own stuff anyway.

Here's an example, this is the same exact 12ga wire I used. Just so happened that the blue butt connectors I have the 12ga just barely fit, on the left was a blue butt connector that I took the covering off & is what I used, again covered with heatshrink.



But I used spade connectors at the Alpine harness to connect the yellow 14ga wire to my 12ga constant. I used the non-insulated crimps to connect the 12ga to the fuse holder where I tapped into my amp wire. The rest of the wires on the Alpine harness I did solder except for the remote wire where I used bullet connectors to connect the Micro Bypass trigger wire & amp.




And this is the fuse holder I used which happened to be 12ga also. I mounted it under the dash on the driver's close to where I tapped into my amp power wire. I used an unused threaded hole that was already there.