Hello again, CL community. I'm in the process of upgrading my car sound system and it's time to move to the amplifier stage.

First things first: Budget. I'm looking at around a $150 budget to buy an amp and upgrade the factory speakers (front and back: 4 speakers).

Here is what I've selected as what I see as the stuff with the best price to performance ratio for this budget:

Amp (x1): ~ Amp is (RMS) 250 x 4 / 500 x 2 with (Max) 500 x 4 / 1000 x 2.
~ 2 Ohm stable

Speaker Options (x2 set): or ~ Pioneers are 40 RMS with 250 Peak. These require additional mounting equipment for the ES300.
~ MTX are 45 RMS with 90 Peak.

Proposed Setup with :

The head unit has 4 RCA jacks and the amp is 4 channel. I proposed to hook up the front two speakers on their own channels (Channels 1 and 2) while I used one channel (Channel 3) for both rear speakers and the last channel (Channel 4) for the factory sub woofer.

Questions:
- The head unit has the basic wiring for FR/FL/RR/RL speakers in its harness. Will it be equally effective to use those wires as opposed to splitting the 4 pre-amp outputs for use with RCAs like I proposed?
- Is this a viable setup?
- Do you have recommendations for a similarly priced amp and/or speakers?
- Do you have recommendations for amp wiring kits? (Favorites?)
- Do the wires have to be a specific gauge?
- Do I need speaker harnesses or will they be included?

When I find the answers to these questions or are answered in the thread, I will update for future reference. Thank you for any help.

 

That amp is 250 watts rms @ 4 ohms and 350 watts @ 2 ohms... the speakers are 40 watts and 45 watts @ probably 4 ohms. Need I say more...