I'm looking at possibly a set of Alpine SPS-600c and was wondering when installing these if I can just install the speakers on the factory locations with the factory wiring using the existing crossover or do I need to wire in the crossover that comes with the speaker?

 

there is no factory crossover other than the small cap on the factory tweeter.

yes, you need to install the new crossover. you can use the factory door speaker wiring - accessible behind the head unit, but you'll need to run a new wire from the crossover to the new tweeter. you can locate the crossovers in the glove box and still have plenty of room in the glove box. just take your time with wire routing so everything is neat and tidy. you could also just stash the crossovers behind the dash, under/behind the radio.

the bummer is that you'll have to cut factory wiring.

to not cut factory wiring, you need to run new speaker wire and intercept the tweeter wiring for the crossover.

note that performance increase will be marginal. you're still dealing with the very low power factory amp. and speaker performance will be largely determined by the installation methods. refer to the door speaker sticky in this section.

 

Cool, thanks for the info. I actually did go through the sticky on the door install. Good info there. Car audio isn't totally foreign to me, I've just always worked with coax speakers, never components and I wasn't sure how the factory one worked.

I'm upgrading in steps right now. I want to do the speakers, thinking about Alpine 609's in the deck and then go for a 4-channel amp, just a lot to bite off at once so I was planning on doing the speakers first.

 

most systems are built one piece at a time. you're on the right track. if you can upgrade to Type-R speakers, give it some consideration for the front - they do sound that much better.

 

Yeah, I was looking at those too. It was between the S's and R's. I know they have a higher RMS and the amp I was looking at was 75w x 4 which is close to the max of the S's. They are just close to twice the price.

 

I ended up getting these exact speakers (apline S 600c) for a deal. I'm having trouble with how to install the wiring with the built-in crossovers into the existing factory network. All the diagrams I can find show connections for an amp(which I don't have yet).