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Switching HU, Non-RF Premium Stereo...

9K views 6 replies 1 participant last post by  Davis137 
#1 ·
Hey all, this may have been addressed before on here (I am going to search more thoroughly in these threads), but I have an 04 Spec V that doesn't have the base model or RF stereo. Mine has the free-air sub in the rear deck. I want to run a complete bypass of this speaker and run the fronts and rears directly off my replacement HU (JVC Arsenal KD-A805). I broke the rear molex connector on the sub in the rear shelf one day when trying to do something in the trunk, and it stopped the stereo in it's previous configuration from working. I have found online that the wires for the deck go to the amp in the cover on the bottom of that sub first, and come back to the deck, which I think is really dumb.

I want to know if it's easy enough to get the pwr/gnd/rem wires right in the dash to run the JVC, and if I can run speaker wires straight to the speakers?

I know there are wire harness adapters, but they woud just graft onto the exsisting harness, the one that goes to that sub first right? Some people have said to just unplug it, but that actually kills power to the stock radio.

One of the previous owners of my car had an aftermarket stereo in the car before, and I might get better answers when I pull the deck as to if any changes have been, or need to be made.

Have any of you switched out your Premium Audio with aftermarket, deleting the free-air sub outright?

I want to physically take it out of the trunk I think too, to port the trunk into the cabin, as I am going to use a Pioneer TS-SWX251 Subwoofer mounted right to the back of the seats, facing into them.

Any advice would be great!
 
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#2 ·
Well, I had a look on the sticky's and past threads and learned a lot, so I decided to get things underway.

I pulled the deck and portion of the dash, to discover that the metal support brackets for the center of the dash and radio are missing. Everything is only held in by the compression clips/fittings on the bezels, so it looks like I am going to be on the hunt for at least the large one at the wrecking yards.

I knew that the car had an aftermarket stereo before, but not to what extent. Once I removed the spare tire floor and carpet from the trunk, the back seat, and the threshold panels, I found a crapload of cables going everywhere. I also found that the car has Pioneer D-Series (or Premiere) 61/2" coaxials in the rear deck, MB QUart Reference RCE216's in the front, and like 1 or 2 gauge power and ground cables for the trunk, and speaker wires and RCA's for upto 3 amps through the car. It was obviously a pretty large stereo in the past.

I did some reinforcment of the wood panel that had been made to separate the trunk from the back of the cabin, and also put foam padding between it and all of the bracing to help reduce vibration from my stereo and also from driving. I also hard mounted the sub box vertically to the fabricated wall, and determined that I can't mount my amp for it under the rear deck (won't clear the torsion rods for the trunk lid), or anywhere in the trunk that it won't be in the way, yet easily accessible. I plan to put it under one of the front seats and just run a 10 gauge speaker wire back to the cabinet (which is not even a 10ft run of cable).

I removed almost ALL of the wiring and stuff from the previous stereo (pwr and gnd are too big for my amp's terminals, and I don't want to buy extra adapters to step them down), so I can start from scratch (single RCA pair, remote, pwr and gnd for my amp) and run the fronts and rears off my deck only with the HPF on (JVC Arsenal KD-A805, HPF is internal in the preamp stage and adjustable on the fly).

I ordered a Metra Wire Harness and Dash Bezel online today to continue with the install of the HU, and will get another amp install kit (8 gauge).

Once I get my Photobucket working again, I will add pics to this thread.

L8tz
 
#3 ·
I put the molex connector for the stock Panasonic sub back together as best I could, wrapped it in electrical tape, loomed the wires shut, and zap-strapped it to the underside of the rear deck to keep it away from everything and causing a new ground fault (that's what made the stock deck fail in the firstplace when I broke it and the leads touched together).

I had a successful visit to the wrecking yard (going to go back for other perfomance parts that are on a Spec and an SER that are still out there), and got the brackets I needed to properly reinstall the dash. My wire harness adapter and bezel came, and I installed them with great success as well. I had to take a while to figure out how to make the wiring work for the component set (the tweets are on a straight run off the crossovers, but the woofers are using the stock wiring from the doors to the harness for the deck). I powered up the JVC deck and started to test all of my connections and fool around with it's settings, when I noticed that the front right channel started to drop in and out. I double checked my connections (which were all sound), and the right front speakers stopped working outright.

I wasn't thrilled that this had happened, and I am worried that the channel in the internal amp is possibly blown. I did some research online, as well as talked to the shop the deck came from back in 2010, and apparently, sometimes there is nothing wrong with a deck, but the female portion of the molex 16-pin connector can fail (due to age or being removed and reinstalled from multiple vehicles during it's lifespan). I have since ordered a replacement connector from amazon with the hope that it will be the fix I need, and don't need to replace the deck...a $15.00 fix is obviously cheaper than a new deck. In the meantime, I have put the factory deck back in for now to have some tunes, as it's not blown like I thought it was.

I also I pulled my amplifier wiring kit (Power Acoustik) out of my pickup truck and installed it into the Spec V with new connectors and wire loom and a fresh fuseable link for under the hood, and now I just need to put a speaker wire from the amp to the sub box. I put the amp (Power Acoustik OV2-300) under the driver's seat, and plan to suspend or mount it so that the floor vents can clear underneath it. This amp will put an honest clean 175 watts RMS @ 4ohms into the sub (which is rated for 200 max nominal anyways).

On a positive note, the Pioneer 6.5's (TS-D161R) are REALLY loud, even just off the stock deck (which is a Clarion). They play a lot of bass, and play fairly deep, and the soundstage they create is one of the largest I have heard in a long time from coaxials. They actually sound cleaner than the MB Quarts (the woofers are running full-range off the stock deck right now, bypassing the crossovers and not using the tweeters at all) for the time being. I am confident that if I drive the fronts and rears off my deck with the internal HPF on, all of them will be more than loud enough (20w RMS, 50 peak), and the cabinet can handle everything from 80Hz down (after some tuning).

Might be only another hour's worth of work away from having a decent budget stereo in this thing, finally...

L8tz
 
#4 ·
Another update:

Replacement molex connector came, and it was the wrong one (meant for a lower mobile series model that doesn't have all of the features that mine needed). I ordered another one, they shipped dash removal keys by mistake and sent me the harness about a week later (this was from a 2nd vendor). I installed that harness, and unfortunately, the front right corner still didn't work.

My parents decided that it wasn't fair that I gave them a working JVC KW-NT1 double DIN sat/nav/dvd deck from our old vehicle, and the A805 they gave me doesn't work properly. So, they bought me a JVC Arsenal KD-A65 to replace it with, and I am going to make the swap in the next few days.

I have since kept the old defunct deck in the car after buying a piece of 12 gauge speaker wire from Walmart to connect my sub to the amp.

The Pioneer TS-SWX251 10" shallow sub cabinet I installed sounds fantastic. It thumps the car when I want it to, plays relatively deep for being in a trunk, and I don't have to beat the tar out of it to get the amount of bass that I need on a daily basis. I would certainly recommend this kind of sub to anyone wanting something small, lightweight, and user-friendly.

I will post proper pics of everything once I swap to the new deck.

L8tz
 
#5 ·
New deck is in as of yesterday afternoon, still have some tweaks to do to the setup and tuning of the options and features, but I have a fully functional deck now with all 4 channels playing loud and clear.

I installed the bluetooth kit, and fished the 2x rear usb drops and axillary cables through the dash into the glove box, with all 3 hanging down into it from the top, and protected by wire loom. I am amazed that I got everything to fit in the dash, as there is a hell of a lot of cabling in there for the crossovers and other stuff.
 
#6 ·
Alright, so here are some of the pics of what I was upto...

Here is the dash taken apart, and one of the crossovers pulled out...




Here is all of what I removed from the previous stereo system...




Next 2 pics show what I found in the dash and the front doors (didn't take a picture of the tweets though)...







Here is the subwoofer cabinet (10" Driver faces into the seat back)...




I will get some pictures of the deck, amp and other stuff this week to help show the finished product.

Stereo does pretty much what I want, and I did it on a super low budget.

Oh yeah, I also changed the HVAC knobs out to Graphite ones from an 02 SE-R that was in the wrecking yard since these pictures were taken too...

L8tz
 
#7 ·
Here is the deck I put in (JVC Arsenal KD-A65) with the Metra bezel and wire harnesses I mentioned, also I have 2K2 SE-R HVAC knobs in the car now too...



Here are the extra accessory inputs that I routed to the glove box, complete with Bluetooth USB and Stereo Aux Mini cable...



And here is my amp that I am using to drive that sub box with...PowerAcoustik OV2-300 that's 175 watts RMS/300 peak, which is plenty for my application...



Yes, I know that the underside of the seat is a bad place to put this, but when I never move my seat from it's position, and where I live it's cold during the winter, and hot during the summer, I figure it's best to give it warm or cool ventilation, plus I couldn't find an easy way to mount it in the trunk where it wasn't in the way, or blocking me from getting at the spare tire, or taking up cargo space.
 
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