car audio..... I NEED HELP!

[stratcat]

wow.... don't know where to start on this one, understand that I'm not that hot with electrical crap, and car stereos are totally foreign to me....

I bought a car, it had a nice stereo system in it at one time.... it's got this little kick butt Kenwood tv/dvd/cd/whatever else in the dash.... I opened the trunk there's a bunch of wires for the add-on system laying there, now there's a couple of monster suckers (1/2" dia) that are hot and ground I guess, then there's a bunch of RCA connectors.... along with this, the stock stereo system still exists and appears to be wired up and intact.

now, a couple of questions...

I've got no sound, this leaves me in the car singing to myself and that's just downright horrible! can someone help me figure out how to make noise? I'm assuming all that extra stuff it just wires right now and the stock speakers should work.. (this could be that I'm not smart enough to figure out this high tech radio also0

I'm going to isolate these wires, but would like to know how to use them later (i.e. amps, speakers, etc) there is a kenwood amp on the back deck along with the stock power amp...

does anyone need a project? lol... I can pay money.... I'm being about half serious on that one...


or???? is there someplace I can check that will teach me this stuff in a nutshell?

[Michowski]

First thing I would do is put a tester on all those wires and figure out whats live and what isnt. 2nd, if you have no idea what your doing then take it in to be fixed or bring it to somebody who can.

[bubbaracing]

Oh brother just what you need, what kinda car did ya get? I might be able to get it squared away for ya pal, if not I know someone who could. :joy:

[stratcat]

nah Matt, it's a nice Impala.... I had to get rid of that pontiwreck, it was falling apart waaaaayyyyy too fast (this car will save me on shoes now that it has brakes)

I may give you a yell today if I can find your number again, I'm thinking of heading to work, parking in the garage (the nice heated one that you don't see) and messing with the electrical and possibly a coat of wax

oh yeah, and maybe test drive the nitro bike

[cemeb4dk]

If all the stock speakers are there. You may just be able to get a wiring harness from best buy or someplace like that that will be a direct fit for your stock harness to your radios. It all depends on the hack job that the original owner did. I would also test the live wire in your trunk, make sure its not hot. It is probably wired straight to your battery. Check at your battery and see, if so just unhook it at the battery and leave it so when you do upgrade the wire is aleady there.

[stratcat]

ok, got it figured out.. when they upgraded the system, they hacked half (8 wires) of the stock harness where it connects to the amp under the back window... i'm thinking i'll splice all of it back together...


but then I got to thinking... that's 8 wires, if I could figure out how to wire it back, I may just add a cheap amp and box to the trunk... there's those 8 wires, three red power wires and a black one of the same size (heavy duty stuff) and a few RCA plugs.... how hard would it be to figure out what's what in that harness and wire something back together?

oh yeah, it's dead.. I disconnected both of the audio wires from the battery....

it should be just as easy to maybe add something like this to the trunk right?
Speaker SUBS 10in (MTX) .!!!!!and AMP

[Michowski]

Honestly if they started to hack apart the harness and other stuff its best to just tear it all apart and fix/replace whats needed. Nothing gonna suck more then buying new shit and not fixing the original wires. Also this is a good way to make sure theres no bare wires exposed that could short anything out.

[stratcat]

I'm just wondering if splicing that harness back together is going to do the trick, just like you said, it's gonna suck to do the work and then find out that it still don't work....

I'm thinking it's last setup was with the aftermarket stuff, probably should go that way, it wired nicely, in th trunk the hot wire comes into a round thing and is split out into three leads... under the hood is a nicely wired fuseblock and everything....

I just don't know

[Michowski]

If you dont know, I would just replace it. If its bad enough to make you think twice about it, then pitch it and start over. At least this way when all is said and done you know its gonna work and its all done correctly. Nothing worse then trying to figure out other peoples hack jobs for weeks/months and then end up just replacing everythign in the end anyway.

[stratcat]

that's where the big problem lies......


I don't know how I've tried to add amps to car stereo's before and never have been able to get it to work

I either have to hope for stock, or hope to figure out the mess...







by the way, when did we get the cool noisemaking banner up top? and why the halloween thing when it's after christmas? or are we getting in the mood early?


edited to add: oh hell yeah!!!!! go move your pointer back and forth across the banner a few times, you'll get a whole mess of them and the echo is cool

[micro Loopie]

I can wire a car audio system in my sleep and probably be able to explain it over a phone, I'll try and see how well I can type it.

You say you have a nice deck? Good.
You just want sound? Do you care about sound quality, how loud it is? want some bass?

I've seen you're talking about a factory amp, so the speakers probably run on some stupid high impedance(8ohm or more, compared to anything you buy runs 4ohm) you'd most likely be able to get an adapter to plug into the deck and this will bypass it making it seem like the factory amp is getting 8ohms when the deck is really only putting out 4ohms.....but, after you do that you said the factory wiring was all hacked up anyways.

What I would do is just find out what the Impala has for stock speakers, and get aftermarket speakers of that size, if they're 6x7's or 6x8's you could get a plate that's that size and get a 5 1/4 component set (components have a 1" separate tweeter for all your low and lyrics, and the 5 1/4" mid bass) and a 5 1/4 set will probably blow your mind with how crisp they can sound. JL makes nice ones, and I'm actually running 5 1/4 JL VR525 components and they sound NICE!

And, the rears I'd just replace with the 5 1/4 Co-ax(built in tweeter, don't need the two mounting positions) or if you just straight up bought an after market 6x7 or 6x8, get 2 sets, or what ever.

If you're getting components...you'd NEED an amp to power them, for sure. If you're getting run of the mill 6x7's etc. you could get away with just powering them off the deck...but, if you were getting aftermarket stuff like components and what not.....I'd just get a decent 5 channel amp, 2 channels for the front speakers 2 for the rear speakers and 1 for your sub...or if you wouldn't go components, just get a 1 channel amp and run your sub.

Now, the hooking this up.

Pull the deck out, see if RCA's are attached...if there are, then they're the ones dangling in the trunk prolly, check if the wiring harness is hooked up to anything, etc. etc. Is there a BLUE thin wire dangling in the trunk anywhere next to the pos. and negs. ?

To hook up the deck to speakers w/out the factory amping.....On the back of the deck there will be 8 wires. Pink, White, Grey, Green...4 solids, 4 stripes. 1 stripe 1 solid of color = 1 speaker. I can't recall which color is what corner of the car....Google it?

So, just run wires from the deck to each of the doors under the carper, under side panels, etc. solder the wire onto a coat hanger and use that to push the wire through the wiring boot in the door if you're doing it...there, turn the deck on and you have sound.

To run them with an aftermarket amp..do this.

Disregard every wire on the back of the deck except the Black, Red, and Yellow(negative, positive, constant power)..Oh, you'll also need the Blue striped, and the solid blue. Striped blue is the blue one I asked if it was hanging in the trunk if it's not..you'll need to run this to the trunk. the solid blue connects to the wire in the dash that matches it if the car has a power antenna if not, disregard this wire.

After those 4(or 5, depending if you have power antenna) are connected...if you have an RCA plugged in(if you're doing front rear and a sub, you need 3 sets of RCA's) then you just plug that into your amp in the trunk, (on the front, rear, or sub.......and what ever you have it plugged into on the deck that you want it to power) plug the blue wire into the dedicated spot on the amp, put the ground in the amp, then the power.

Now, your speaker wires come off the amp. Same deal, they'll have inputs for the front right, left rear right left, and a sub if it's a 5 channel amp.

Pair this writing with looking at the back of a deck and looking at an amp...there's no way you couldn't hook it up unless you were too lazy to run wiring....which I am a lot of the time.

[stratcat]

thanks man... I figured out what is going on I think I could probably do it other than having two green two blue wires... this is a problem, because they are different shades adn I don't see the difference.....

but! I've threatened my little brother with damage to his body if he don't loan me his amp, it's a nice 500w blaupunkt that he hasn't used in years... then I talked to my buddy who's into stereos and he's going to help me hook that in on saturday... and if the amp don't work, I'll be at a place where I can steal a working one, lol....


as far as building a system, I'm still a bit mixed, I've got the nice kenwood deck and the wiring for the amps so I'm going to use it... right now I just want noise, I'm tired of the voices in my head! lmao anyhow... I'm going to get it going and see what I think, first thing to be upgraded will be speakers (it has aftermarket ones now, just didn't see the brand) and then I'll see if I want subs or not, I'm not crazy about this just because of the extra electrical and the drain on the system, I just want something straightforward and simple that I can understand.... if I end up deciding on subs, I'm sure it won't be much more than a set of 10's or something... Hendrix just don't sound so great with a lot of bass (sorry, Noel wasn't a badass bass player) Besides that, I don't want to sink a lot of money into the stereo right now, I want some suspension hopups and some performance out of the engine....