Cobra's Gettin' A New Stereo - NEED ADVICE/HELP!

[Hissing Cobra]

I was thinking about some tweeters. I'll wait to see what the whole sound system sounds like when I first install it and if I want more "highs" I'll certainly buy some. I'm definitely installing the sub in the spare tire well (facing upward) underneath the carpet. If I don't like what it sounds like I may cut the carpet just so you can see the speaker. I haven't decided if my box is going to be ported or not. I've been doing some research on it but haven't made up my mind yet. Whatever I make, I will be covering it with Black fabric. I'm thinking the microphone won't be too good in the vent either. I may mount it on the top of the pillar or on top of the rearview mirror.

[85GT-79FJ40]

Ported boxes tend to be a bit "boomier" than sealed. It really depends on personal preference there. You could always put tweeters in the corner vents of the dash or at the tops of the kick panels aimed towards the driver. What you really want is to be able to close your eyes and feel like the band is playing on the hood of the car. Placement of the tweeters helps with that a lot.

[mustangxtreme]

I ran an 8" sub in my spare tire well for years. When I first installed it, I tried firing it down but found I had a rattle between the gas tank and body. After turning it over, it worked well. No more rattles.

[ZephyrEFI]

I'd recommend getting a set of cheap tweeters. You can find some decent 1 1/2" tweeters for under $50. Since they are only running highs they can easily handle the amp. In all honesty, your front speakers will not work great for tweeters because they are too close to the floor and aimed inwards. Tweeters work better aimed towards the ear. Mid's placement isn't as important.

This is why I like to use "separates" for my front speakers. You get the highs right where you need them to balance out the sub, but also the mids to fill in the rest. You don't want to go without mids unless you listen to a lot of hip hop. And the factory has already done your homework for where the tweeters should be placed. Put them in the 3 1/2 in openings. The sound will bounce off the windshield and hit your ear like it should.

As for your box, a couple things to keep in mind. Your sub should have information included with it for what the internal volume of the box should be. It won't sound as good if you don't get your enclosure close to that number. As for porting, ported gets you more power, but it's sloppier. a sealed box will get you tighter hits, better for rock. Ported is better for hip hop.

[Hissing Cobra]

Good to know. I may be replacing the front speakers and if I do, I may buy tweeters for the two dash locations. My box will probably remain closed and have no ports since I'm a Rock & Roll guy. No hip hop for me!

[Jack Hidley]

The QTS of your subwoofer is quite high. You definitely want to use it in a sealed enclosure. Make the enclosure as large as you can get away with. I would absolutely not make it smaller than 2 cu ft (3,456 cu in) internal. Stuff the enclosure with as much polyester fiber as you can put in there. This will help drop the Qms which will lower the Qts. You want it somewhat difficult to get the driver in the enclosure.

Thiele-Small parameters for the driver are at the link below.

http://www.parts-express.com/kenwood...ofer--267-4355

[Hissing Cobra]

Thanks for the info. I will make the enclosure the same size as the spare tire opening, thus the box will be round. I haven't figured out how to do that yet but it'll be tight to the well with foam padding around it to prevent vibrations and rattles.

[smitty54]

I was thinking about some tweeters. I'll wait to see what the whole sound system sounds like when I first install it and if I want more "highs" I'll certainly buy some. I'm definitely installing the sub in the spare tire well (facing upward) underneath the carpet. If I don't like what it sounds like I may cut the carpet just so you can see the speaker. I haven't decided if my box is going to be ported or not. I've been doing some research on it but haven't made up my mind yet. Whatever I make, I will be covering it with Black fabric. I'm thinking the microphone won't be too good in the vent either. I may mount it on the top of the pillar or on top of the rearview mirror.

I put Rockford Fosgate tweeters in the dash and Rockford Fosgate woofers in the door. The combo sounds great. The woofer grills are not over the top in styling and look almost stock.

[Hissing Cobra]

Rick,

Good to know. Those four way front speakers that I have are only rated for 35 watts. I may change them out for some woofers like you have (if I can get them in 5-1/4" sizing) and the tweeters in the dash.

[smitty54]

Pete,
These are the speakers. The woofers are 5 1/4". You can find the speakers for as little as $69. They do have other component speaker systems which offer a higher watt power rating. These are more than fine for me even with the top down.
http://www.rockfordfosgate.com/products/details/r152-s

[Hissing Cobra]

Rick,

That looks like a good component system. Those tweeters, do they wire directly off the woofers? If you look at the woofer closely, it looks like they have dual wire connectors on the backside of them.

[smitty54]

I believe the tweeters are wired off of the woofers. I didn't do the install myself. I had a local car audio shop do it. I didn't have the time or knowledge to do it, so I figured I leave the install to professionals. I just pulled the invoices, the speakers cost me $52 and the install was $175. Here are the speakers on eBay.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ROCKFORD-FOS...item2c8dddfaca

[Quicksilver]

Pete,
Sounds like you're well on the way to a nice audio system.

Here are a few thoughts. These are things that I ran into when I put the audio system in mine (I'm no audio expert).
Does the head unit have a built in amp? You have the choice of connecting to the pre-amp wires or the amplified wires.
The tweeters will run off the woofers, usually through an active or passive crossover and sometimes directly from the woofers.
For the rear speakers, put some acoustic foam in the rear quarters behind the speakers so the sound projects outwards.
Run your audio wiring down the opposite side of the car, away from all the other wiring and battery cables if applicable.
Wherever you put the amp, make sure there is enough air circulation around it so it doesn't overheat.
Consider a capacitor if you want heavy "hits" of base.
A deep cycle battery such as the optima yellow top will let you start your car if you listen to the stereo for a while with the engine off.
A 130 amp alternator will help.
An inline resistor, for noise suppression along with heavy amp and speaker wires will help with a clear signal.
If you do end up changing your kick panel speakers, new ones might be deeper due to the larger size of the magnets. Look for slimline speakers where the magnet doesn't stick out too much.
And for the funny part...as I said, I'm not an audio expert so I went to Chapters and bought the book "Car Audio For Dummies". This is a great resource on all the various components and the wiring. Definitely worth the read.
Hope this helps.

[Hissing Cobra]

Rob,

Thanks for the info. That book "car Audio for Dummies" would do me a great service these days. I'm amazed at the amount of help that you've all posted here. I will be referring back to this thread multiple times as I embark on the installation when the weather gets warm enough for me to work in the garage comfortably. My previous stereo installation with an amp was done back in 1986 when I installed a Sparkomatic 40 Watt amp that also had a 5 band graphic equalizer. I thought that stereo rocked and each speaker only had 10 watts each. This new one with 40 watts going to each speaker plus the subwoofer is going to blow that old one out of the water. LOL!

[ZephyrEFI]

Sparkomatic 40 Watt amp that also had a 5 band graphic equalizer

Hey, I think my first car ('79 Ghia) came with one of those!

And running the speaker wire and RCAs down the opposite side of the car from the amp power leads is a good one.

[Hissing Cobra]

LOL! Yes, I've seen online wiring diagrams and they all show that the speaker wires and the RCA's should be on the opposite side of the power wire to prevent noise interference.

[Hissing Cobra]

O.K. guys, I just picked up the amp wiring kit and two packages of RCA cables (the amp kit comes with one RCA cable already so I just needed to buy two more). I think this one will work as it's got a 5 gauge wire (within the 4 to 6 gauge that was recommended), a 100 amp fuse (compared to the 60 to 80 amp fuse that was recommended), and a capacitor, which I've read good things about. I think this Saturday I'll begin the installation and hope to get it all done except for the subwoofer, which I'll have to make a box for it. I'm also toying with the idea of buying new front speakers such as Rick suggested so that I can install woofers in the kick panels and tweeters in the dash. I think that will help immensely.

[ZephyrEFI]

sweet!!

[Hissing Cobra]

Well, after working a side job for 3 weekends in a row and fixing my '89 LX last weekend, I was finally able to start the installation of the stereo today. It took me all day and I'm still not done. I started out the day by making a new radio faceplate out of Plexi-glass and once I was done cutting, fitting, and sanding, I was able to spray it Satin Black to match the dashboard. I then installed the stereo unit and connected all the wires that I could (power, ground, radio memory wire). I also connected the microphone wire as well and mounted the microphone right on the dashboard, behind my Auto-Meter tach (clipped onto the wiring). The wire was extremely long so I was able to run it right underneath the dash pad, down the driver's side, and across the bottom of the dash to the radio area.

I then took the rear carpeting insulation pads out of my '89 LX (for some reason there were two of them in addition to the padding on the back of the carpet) and traced them onto a piece of 3/8" plywood. I cut the plywood out to the same shape as the padding, laid it into the cargo area, traced out the subwoofer, and cut that out as well. The pads came in handy because I glued one of them to the bottom of the plywood and used the other one to line the bottom of the spare tire tub. I've decided that I'm not going to build a box for the subwoofer after all because I'll use the steel tire tub as the box. With the padding on the bottom of the tub, the padding on the bottom of the plywood, and the padding on the bottom of the carpet (the plywood is sandwiched between two layers of padding) I think I'll be alright.

Next up was the removal of the sill plates, rear shock covers, front kick panels (and speakers that I had previously mounted in them). I then ran the RCA cables down the driver's side of the car and connected them to the stereo at the front and the amp at the rear. The speaker wires came next and I ran the front wires down each side of the car to the kick panel area before connecting them to the amp. I reinstalled the rear speakers and connected those wires up to the amp as well. I paid careful attention to the wiring to ensure that the positive wires went to all of the + terminals and that the ground wires all went to the - terminals.

The longest part of my day involved making up the wiring for the capacitor to the amp. It is a 5 gauge wire and I did not want to crimp it like the instruction manual stated. Thus, I soldered all of those connections and use shrink tubing over them. The capacitor was grounded to the spare tire tub and another ground wire was connected to the amp. Finally, I ran the positive 5 gauge wire from the capacitor to the firewall, where I left off for the night. For tomorrow, I will need to drill a hole in the firewall and connect the main wire to the battery, install the fuse, and install the front speakers. I'm hoping that when I reconnect the battery there will not be a fire or a short circuit. We'll see! Here's a few pic's.





New stereo with my homemade faceplate. I will be repainting the lower half of the dash to fix the scratches which have accumulated over the years.

[TopGear85]

Great work Pete. This system is going to sound great. Nice job on the stereo face plate.. It blends in nicely and looks like it could be factory (or in the least it looks like it came with the stereo...so great job!) I'm kinda shocked as to how much work is actually involved in setting the whole thing up, but with these cars there really is no short, easy job.

So what's gonna be the first song you listen to when it's all working properly?

[Hissing Cobra]

Thanks! It'll be a Van Halen song. I'm thinking "Unchained", as that's one of my favorites.

[foxylady]

great job

[ZephyrEFI]

Looking good!

[smitty54]

Nice job Pete!

[Hissing Cobra]

Thanks guys! Jeff (Capriman86) saw my post on facebook and commented about how the fox bodies are tough to seal the spare tire tub to the back of the tail light panel. I didn't even give that a thought and will have to see how it sounds the way that I made it. If it sounds like crap, I'll fabricate a piece of wood for the back wall of the tire tub and secure it to the plywood. I'll then use garage door rubber to line all sides of it. According to the directions for the subwoofer, it can be mounted in a closed box or a box with openings, so we'll see when I light it up later on today. I hope when it lights up, there's no fire! LOL!