3rd Gen Tacoma Amp and Powered Sub Install

Hello all,
I am fairly new to audio installation and electrical work, in general. I have ordered a few parts to upgrade my stereo system and have found very little about the 3rd Gen Access Cabs with Rear Seat Deletes in regards to the stereo system. The parts I have ordered are as follows:

-Two Kicker KS 6.5" Speakers for the rear (Already have the two in the front)
-Kicker Key 200.4 Amplifier
-Kicker 46HS10 Hideaway Subwoofer

I will be building a harness for the Amplifier using this tutorial (https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...e-to-kicker-key-t-harness-16-19.642415/page-3). However, my main questions are as follows:

First, do I still need to connect my Amp's Ground and Power cords to the frame and battery, respectively or will the harness take care of that for me?

Second, how would I go about connecting my powered subwoofer to my head unit along with my amplifier?

Thank you guys in advance. This forum has been extremely helpful throughout me owning and working on my Tacoma and I'm pretty stoked to be making my first post here.

 

no, you'll require an amp wiring kit specifically for the powered subwoofer.

personally, while i know that the key can be powered off the radio power as shown in that guide, my preference is that being that power/ground wire is already being installed for the subwoofer, i would prefer to run a dedicated power for the kicker key amp as well, and omit the portion of the guide for power/ground. it ensures the cleanest power path possible, which will offer the highest output the amp has to offer.

i don't have anything against the guides methods, only that it's designed for people that are only looking to slightly boost the output of the factory radio, and not intending to do anything more. in my opinion, once anyone is going further than that slight improvement, saving the cost/ time on the hassle of adding additional wiring goes out the window.

my preference is to always use minimal amounts of the factory portion as possible in any install. power wires in some ways are very similar to water pipes. toyota designed these 'water pipes' for a specific amount of 'water' to pass through. if other devices are pulling 'water' off the 'pipe', it leaves very little room for the key to pull additional 'water'. by adding our own brand new 'pipe' in the form of an amp wiring kit, we're ensuring that the key has every bit of power it needs, and that no other accessories are interrupting that flow.

your subwoofer will require 5 connections from the head unit, which you can connect to that key harness you'll already be building. it needs a key power/ignition/remote trigger(different terms,all the same item), audio signal left pair, and audio signal right pair. this will be a high level/speaker level signal

you'll need to add another blue wire within the metra harness, which will be the ignition wire.

you'll also need to add additional break out wires on the white, and white/black(left front), and grey, and grey/black (right front) wires. these will feed the audio signal into both amps.

it's plenty fine to follow the guide for the majority of your install, just keep those 5 connections open until it's installed in the truck, or alternatively, you can install

Qibaok 320 PCS Heat Shrink Spade Connectors Female and Male Terminals Insulated Quick Disconnect Wire Connectors Connectors Kit

insulated male and female spade terminals like this onto the harness(to allow you to build it somewhere nicer than the drivers seat, and later add wiring with the opposite male or female terminal within the truck while running the wiring to the amps respective locations.[/QUOTE]

 

Hideaway will have a power harness included. Key will not.

I have changed my view a bit and I do agree to grab a power wire kit for the key and not use the radio power. It’s just too cheap not to. Scosche ICAK12 is $11 on Amazon.

for getting your signal to the sub,the hideaway will have rather long input wires built into the harness. Run these under the center console and up behind the radio. Super easy

 

@soundman98 this is super helpful! Cool, I have wiring kits already ordered just in case I went that route so it won't be hard at all to just run power instead of building it into the harness.
I have a ton of remote trigger wire ordered so the sub is taken care of too. Thank you so much!

 

@destin_meeks that makes sense. If it's better that way, then I'll just run the power wires for both. I hadn't realized the hideaway came with a power harness. That makes my life easy. Thank you so much for your help!