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I have 2 speakers in the living room and two speakers in the bedroom. 4 speakers should be fed with 4 pairs of wires, if you expect to have stereo reproduction. I pulled out the screws that were holding in the living room speakers and saw that the one on the curb side had 2 pairs of wires connected and the driver’s side speaker had only one pair of wires connected. Pulling the wires of the driver’s side speakers started to shorten one set of wires on the curb side speaker. Now, I know why the system seemed to sound better when I selected “Mono” instead of “Stereo”. Keystone cheated! They wired the bedroom speakers the same way. I would never be happy with this, so I had to find a way to run new wires to the speakers. This is not an easy thing to do in a camper! The exterior walls are bonded inside and outside to a sheet of foam. I didn’t want to tear into the walls and was hoping that there was a cable-run hidden somewhere. I couldn’t find any. My Stereo is in the slide and the speaker wires exit at the bottom rear of the slide. A little poking around and I found that the wood floor was rotted in the outboard corner where the wires exited. There was about a 5” by 3” area that was gone! I dug some more and couldn’t find anything wet, so I’m thinking it was an old issue. However, I checked all joints and re-caulked a few. While I was in there, I looked for access to run my wires. The speaker wires actually ran through a small hole in the aluminum frame. There was no way that I could squeeze in any more wires. Especially, since I planned to also pull in audio and video cable to connect my television to the stereo. Hmmm…the floor is already missing in the corner and I cannot get access to the wall. What to do? What if I ran the wires and cables down the wall and through the floor and did my best to hide it? That’s what I would do. All the cabinets have a dead space between the bottom shelf and the bottom of the cabinet. I ran the wires and cables from the stereo cabinet, through the overhead cabinet and down the back wall. I clamped them close to the valance like thing that runs down the side of the window. The lower half of the wall is blocked by the sofa, so you can’t see the wires there. Since they are in a corner, you have to look hard to see them.
When I got to the carpet, I cut a slit that was just big enough and did the same with the covering on the bottom of the slide.
After running the wires through there, I used silicone sealer. I then ran the wires the same way the original speaker wires ran to a junction box on the side of the steel trailer frame. The video and audio cables needed to go further forward and I ran them through a piece of PVC conduit clamped to the Trailer frame.
The rest was easy for them. I ran them between the trailer frame and the bottom cover and then up through the water heater compartment which is right under the TV. The living room speakers were another story. There was no way to get through the wall here, either. The floor is open here for water line access and covered with a carpet covered box. I ran the wires down the wall through a piece of CPVC because the color closely matched the wall color. I also hid this behind the valance thingy.
The system works well and sounds great. The TV sound can be heard without turning the volume up loud and I can plug in headphones and the DW won’t hear the TV at all when she’s trying to sleep. I also cut in a pocket to hold an MP3 player.
I'm going to fill the seams and paint so that it all looks like one piece. Next project will be to add outside speakers. Naturally, I ran the extra wires so it will be easy!
