I have a 1991 Convertible that I am looking to run some speaker wire in since mine have been spliced together in several places. I am looking to do so now since the interior is all torn apart and the dash and carpet are out.
My question is, how did those of you who ran your own wires hook them up to the radio? I don't see a lot of point in hooking nice wire up to the skinny little wires the radio came with.

 

I am not sure you have much choice in the matter. Whatever head unit you have won't be pushing more power than that skinny wire can handle. When I added wiring in my 91 GTA for the front kick panel speakers I spliced them to the wires coming off the plug that goes into the back of the deck and left the rest of the wiring (power, ign, etc) going through the adapter to the factory plug. Downside was it made it so I couldn't just disconnect everything, but it did leave all the factory wiring in place so when I did take it out it was much easier to return to stock.

 

Unless you're going to run an external (aftermarket) amp, you have little choice with wires if you hook up to the deck directly.

 

I removed all of the stock speaker wiring. Those stock wires suck. I run external amps so I have my RCAs going straight to the amps and then the speaker wires running directly from the amps to the speakers.

 

I ran the RCA cables out the back, along the trans tunnel, and to the aftermarket amplifiers. You almost HAVE to for anything beyond stock. ...if your stereo doesn't have those preamp "outs" you can run converters that will take your "speaker" wire, and convert it to a preamp signal.....although I've seen mixed results over the years in terms of sound quality.