*A method to fitting a sub/amp/alarm: C3 desire 2004*

Hi all

With great difficulty and 5 hours later I have successfully managed to install a sub/amp enclosure to my Citroen C3 2004 desire. As this was such a b**ch and that it took months of figuring out ways and coming across plenty of hurdles, I thought I would share this with you. The main issues before getting in the garage, where getting the power cable through into the engine bay and the blasted quick release battery terminal. Something that Nick has recently posted.

After much thought and observation, I realised the bulk head was pretty tightly sealed with minimal ways to get a thick power cable through from foot well to battery (unlike my previous 2001 Punto which was a grommet frenzy). The locations for the grommets/access to foot well/engine bay, that people had mentioned on this forum, where not there in my car!

I went to motorman to buy yellow crimp terminals of which I used. A guy in there came outside and showed me that on the fuse box in the engine bay as pictured, there is a nut and bolt of which the power cable can be safely attached to. This was a genius suggestion as I had horrendous ideas of having to cut the quick release battery terminal off or dodgily splice the cables together by releasing some slack with the rubber around the quick release terminal. The way that he suggested, meant I wouldn't have to touch the battery terminal! And as you can see by the image, I crimped a yellow terminal to power cable and attached it to the nut and bolt.

I spent most of the time nearly giving up on being able to feed the power cable through... I then thought I would pull on the bonnet release grommet (which is very thick), with 2coat hangers attached to the power cable, feed it through (passenger side foot well below the wiring loom). This worked. The grommets where too large to cut away at or make a hole in. The wiring loom grommet was far too thick to cut or make a hole thick enough for the cable to go through, so this was the only option.

Plenty of hours lying with my back half in and half out the car the wire finally managed to get through, simply by pushing the grommet towards the side to free up a minimal amount of space. My friend then pulled it through from the engine bay using coat hangers as mentioned. We then cable tied the cable in the Bay, connected the cables to the HU and the AMP in the boot. Here, the power cable, remote cable and RCA's where put under the plastic panels on the sides of the car and it was earthed to bare plastic (sanded the paint) and attached earth ring terminal to the tail light bolt. The RCA's where fed opposite sides of the car, this is important for clear sound.

Lastly we then made sure the fuse holder was about half a foot away from the battery and that it was secure, we then disconnected the battery, attached the fuse and screwed the ring terminal for the power cable to this nut and bolt on the fuse holder (to the right of the battery when looking at it from outside) we then connected the quick release battery for power to the car and all was perfect! Bass sounds ace just need to replace rear door speakers as they are blown... Too much trap music!
Images starting from the first one, follow the cable from foot well into the engine bay through the bulk head and shows the location of this bolt on the fuse box.

Images:
The red lever is the bonnet release and it also shows the cable coming up through into the engine bay, showing the fuse insert on power cable. Also showing where I have connected the power cable.

I hope this helps! It was such a ball ache for me as it was issue after issue but I managed it.