Well, in preparation for the Car PC, I put in my Amp today. A while ago I bought a JL 2 channel Amp and JL split speakers to match. Cost me about $600 including a wiring kit, but that was with a discount of about $300 or so, so it is pretty good gear. The reason why I stuck with the 2 channel amp is that I want to put in a car PC and my sound card will only have two channels. The Guy at JB said I would not hear rear speakers so why bother? So I went along with his advice. The current install is a bit temporary as the factory headunit will go once I get the PC and a touch screen in the car.
Don't underestimate how big a job this is, Spent all yesterday afternon and this morning on this project. I used a line out converter to reduce the speaker outputs on the factory head unit to line inputs. To do this, the first thing I had to do was to work out the wiring to the head unit and I posted it here:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2436 The first job I tackled was installing the speakers. I won't go into the detail as it's been covered before, but I bought the speaker adapters from the US. I think I may have ordered the wrong ones as I got the 6.5" adapters and had some trouble mounting my 6" speakers so I had to drill some new holes in the speaker surround which was pretty scary butchering a $379 pair of speakers! But it turned out all good. I followed the instructions that came with the spacers and used some Sikaflex to glue them to the door before riveting them in.
I decided to mount the tweeters in the door and the Amp behind the back seat. People like JB did not like these locations (mainly because it is more work I think). The said they usually mounted the amp under the seat and surface mounted the tweeters on the dash. Anyway, you be the judge from these pics what would look nicer:
The instruction book for the speakers said to use a 45mm Hole saw so before I did ths job I went looking and only had a choice of a 44mm or 46mm so I bought a 44mm one. I got it home and it was huge. It would have required using the second bezel around it that came with the speakers that looked a bit poxy. I ended up buying a 38mm hole saw and the fit was perfect! (so be warned, check the manual against the hardware before drilling a hole in your car before you buy a hole saw).
I left the factory speaker wiring in place in case I needed it again and spliced into the wires behind the dash. I spliced into the speaker wires (pins 1,2,3 & 4 in the link above) and I also picked up the Accessory power line (pin 7) to use as the Amp turn on line. I used a Stanley knife to pare off about 8mm of insulation from each wire, trying to stagger them, to reduce the chance of a short. Then I wrapped the new wires onto the bare sections and soldered them on and wrapped them in insulation tape (sorry, no pics).
To mount the speakers, I had to install the speaker crossovers. The manual said not to put them in the door because they don't like water, so after I removed the factory speakers, I pushed a length of wire down through the convoluted rubber conduit that goes from the car to the door. You have to massage the conduit and work the wire into the door. Then I pulled two sets of speaker wires from the door back into the car. There is just enough room near where the speaker wires come out inside the car behind the kick panels to mount the cross overs. Keep them as high as you can otherwise you won't be able to replace the kick panels (I found out the hard way!)
This is the passanger (left) side under the glove box. You can see my Aux power socket with the Flouro light plugged in. It always seems to be late when I finish these jobs and get to the photos!
I ran the speaker wires from the factory headunit down to below the console where I mounted the speaker to line-in adapter.
The top of the console was pretty easy to remove. Mine is an auto so all I did was unscrew the T/case lever knob, pull off the plate around the handbrake, grabbed the console near the handbrake and gave a big reef upwards and it all popped off.
I picked up some power from the second battery and ran it up to the fuse supplied with the wiring kit. Decided not to screw it onto the firewall, and just cable tied it to the wiring harness. I noted the amp needed a 20 amp fuse and the kit supplied a 60 amp one. I bought a 20 amp fuse but was not impressed to find they sell the fuses in sets of 5!
So anyway, with the fiddly stuff done, I ran the power wire under the sill panels along the left hand side of the car. While I was at it, I ran another power lead for the Car PC (which will run off an Opus Power supply). I also ran the Amp turnon wire along this side. I ran the left speaker wire and the lineout from under the console across to the Drivers (right) side and back along under the sill panels to the back of the car. That way, I won't get interferance as the power is nowhere near the audio signals.
Removing the rear seat was much easier than everyone said it would be, I just needed a helper to remove the seat from the car. You just need to undo the two bolts that secure the hinge on each side of the car and unhook the rear of the seat from the slide. Hope it goes on easy!
I mounted the amp centred and rested it on a small box the right height until I had screwed it off. I ran the power wires up and along the reinforcing channel. Ther was a gap to get the wires into the channel, but I drilled an exit hole. I used my trusty piece of wire to pull the power wire and the amp turn on wire.
I screwed the earth wire to the seat hinge mount after rubbing the paint with some wet & dry down to bare metal (I'll spray a bit of paint around later).
So anyway, was pretty pleased with the job so far, turned it on and Nothing! Not impressed. Got an Ipod and plugged it direct into the amp and it worked. I was confident the wiring was good, so I had a look at the line adapter. I removed one pair of speaker wires from it and patched in one of the original factory speakers. I had sound! The lineout adapter was a dud!. Not impressed. Back to JB who are 30 minutes away, they said that they did not have anybody to test it on a Sunday. They agreed to provide a credit if I bought another adaptter, so that was what I did. Took it home, slipped it in and it fired up straight away!
So now to calibrate the amp according to the instructon manual. It said to remove the speaker wires and connect a volt meter to one pair of speaker wires. It said to play a 1000 Hz tone (which I found on the internet and burnt to a CD) at 3/4 volume. It said to adjust the input sensitivity on the amp (and I also played with the line out adapter adjustemnt as well) until the voltmeter read 13.4 volts. that's what I did and it was perfect! Maybe other amps will have different voltages, I don't know.
Once I put the car back together, I invited my 16 year old son who is a very keen bass guitarist to check it out. He threw some tracks at it that at half volume was shaking the front door trims like you would not believe with no distortion. Top gear this JL stuff I think! Very pleased with my handiwork. Can't wait to get the PC in the car so I am not worrying about changing CD's.
So anyway, I will have no rear seat this week, but at least I have the music!