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Ultimate Installation Guide!May 16 '00 Write an essay on this topic.This is the basics to installing a car stereo. Recently I bought two 12" jl w3 series subs, a kicker zr360 amp, and a jvc kdsx930. I set a state record and still hold it in the 200-400 pressure class. I hit 143.7 db in a 1999 civic hb. Here is how to install a basic system. Make sure you have all items you need. Cd player,Amp,Speakers(SUBS),Box,Wires. Next you need to get some tools. 1.Wire Strippers 2.Crimpers 3.Butt Connectors 18-14gauge 4.Wiring Harness and Dash Kit 5.Amp Wiring Kit (I personally like lightning audio) 6.Speaker Wire Topics I'll discuss. I. Products to buy II. Installing Your Cd Player III. Installing Amp & Speakers IV. Why do it yourself? I. Products to buy Make sure you get quality products. Yes this usually means spending a lot more, but hey you'll thank yourself that you went all out when you have a very reliable system. The reason I know is because I've bought cheap stuff and watched it fail. I spent about $1200 on my system and I'm very pleased with it. When you buy cd players make sure you get a good one. You'll also need a cd player that has preamp outputs. When buying speakers also go with a very reliable brandname. My personal favorites are Image Dynamics and JL Audio. When buying an amp make sure you get a top of the line amp. Kicker and Phoenix Gold are two good brands. II. Installing Your Cd Player Let's say that you are installing my system. First I'd start off by installing the cd player. Your cd player should come with it's own harness that you wire up to another harness that fits the make and type of car you have. You can usually get these and any type of stereo place such as Pied Piper. Now you should also have a Dash Kit which will hold your cd player while taking up any extra space left in the hole in your dash. Hooking up a wiring harness isn't hard. Take your strippers and splice the wires on both harnesses. All the wires are color coded so now just match them up with eachother and crimp them down using your butt connectors. There are a few wires you don't hook up at all, one of them is the remote wire. The remote wire is usually blue and sometime has a white stripe through it. Your amp kit should contain a 20ft remote wire too. Once you have your harness wired up go ahead and put your cd player in. Make sure to run your remote wire and rca cables so you won't have to take your cd player out again. III. Installing Amp & Speakers Next I'll discuss hooking up your Amp and speakers. Personally I like to mount my Amp on the back of my speaker box. It saves space and makes everything look neat. Let's assume you have your amp mounted on the back like mine and your speakers and amp just need to be hooked up. Ok, this is where your amp wiring kit comes in. You should've ran your rca cables and remote wire from the cd player. Go ahead and hook these up to the amp. Next run your ground wire. You need to make sure that your power wire and ground wire are the same gauge. The ground wire should be easy just splice it hook one end into the ground spot on your amp and the other find a nice screw on a metal part of your car to hook it on. Make sure you get it nice and tight so it won't come off. Next run your power wire from your battery. You want to make sure to put a fuse on your power wire near your battery. Run this power wire from the battery to your amp. Now there is just one thing left to do. Hook your speakers up. This is pretty self explanatory. That's all there is to it! Make sure to take your time when running wires and hide them it looks better. IV. Why do it yourself? Now some of you might be asking why do it yourself? Well once you know how to do it you can save yourself a lot of money. You also learn a lot about installing car audio and you can even make money from hooking people's systems up. Trust me at least do it once because you need to know what to do if something goes wrong. If you have the money to go out and have it installed professionally then do it. These people know what they're doing and most do a very good job. If you are having a lot of trouble and need some help drop me an email at ericb1@zoomnet.net I'll try to help as much as I can, I'm no expert on this stuff but I do know the basic knowledge. Hopefully I'll be able to help. Good luck with your system !  |
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