Jay H

You need at least 30 watts of power to each speaker in order to get some sort of head room. I'm running a new 50 x 50 watt Rockford Punch series amp in my '84 and it's just the right amount of power. I can't crank on it due to the limits of the small 5.25" speakers in the doors, but I'm never near clipping for most listening situations.

I don't feel 15 to 20 watts of power is adequate in these old, noisy cars.

Keep in mind that speaker sensitivity has a huge role in how much power you need. A speaker rated at 89 db (1 watt/1 meter) of sensitivity will play half as loud on 1 watt as a 92 db rated speaker. For every 3 db of increase in sensitivity, you'll get double the volume out of the same amount of power. The flip side is that high sensitivity can reduce the clarity/accuracy of the speaker. Most really good high end home speakers have relatively low sensitivity ratings.

There are probably some ways to hook up a CD player to your older deck, most likely with a cassette adapter with a 1/8" jack/pigtail going into a portable CD player.

I can completely relate to having a stock looking installation and having it look period correct. I fought the urge to remove the stock unit from my '84 for over a year. But, let's face it, if you enjoy music, the head units built today are quite a bit more advanced over the older stock units. Even a $99 Alpine CD player will sound much, much better than a fully functioning Monterey unit.

A fresh head unit from Alpine, a 50 x 2 power amp and a fresh set of door and rear deck speakers will do wonders for the sound in your 911. Bag the old gear, store it safely on your shelf and enjoy the new audio.

Good luck,

Jay
90 964, 84 3.2

rbuswell

Here's how I'm doing so far:

• Installed the Monterey head unit. It has good reception and I tested it with the cheap door speakers and it worked. With the power antenna plugged in but not raised, it actually picks up more stations, more clearly, than the much newer Sony unit the car came with. I'm sure it will be great when I get the power antenna to work (see below). I had to fabricate a strap to hitch up the back of the unit to a little bracket that was originally used by the factory. Got some scrap steel shipping strapping at Home Depot (free) and it worked perfectly. This was actually kind of fun and it looks original which was my objective. Noisy, scratchy volume switch but I think (hope) it will diminish once the 20+ year old dust burns off.
• Deleted the rear (terrible) Blaupunkt speakers and will put black cardboard in the grill to improve appearance.
• Sourced a hi-lo adapter by Peripheral called a SVENR (about $30 + shipping) that converts my high speaker signal to (low distortion) RCA. It also has a remote power up feature that will work with a Bosch relay (I'm told) to power up both the amp and the power antenna when I turn on the head unit.
• Bought a lightly used Denon DCA-500 40 W 2 channel amp off evilBay for about $60. It sold for over $200 new. It's old school heavy iron and it had great reviews in it's day. It will be installed along with the SVENR, the fuses and the relay in the trunk using a plywood deck system attached to the spare, like Ian McArthur's (Be sure you look at his install. It is really ingenious). No room in the car. Got gobs of 12 AWG wire for the speakers.
• Bought brand new Focal Access 165 CA1 speakers, also off evilBay for $132. Fabulous reviews. Should be here in a week.
• Ian is sending me some sound insulation left-over from his install. Don't have the final cost but it should be cheaper to me than buying from the manufacturer.

Lots of work to do but I'm stoked at how nice it will sound when it's done. By the way do any of you EEs out there know what I should get for the Bosch relay to make the antenna and power-on amp remote work? Also need to source the 4 gauge power cable and asundry install bits and pieces. Any recommendations?

Edward

Great, you got some good stuff, there! The old Denons are good ...large iron because there's a real transformer and serious capacitors in there ...prob good signal/noise ratio and low THD. Focals are cool, as well ...good catch.

You don't "need" 4-guage wire for the amp ...8-10 ga is plenty, and fuse it right at the battery. Keep the ground short as possible, and make sure it's a good, clean ground.

A garden-variety Bosch relay (black little 1" cube with 5 terminals) available at any Napa Auto (or PepBoys, Kragen, etc.) will do the pwr antenna duty.

Edward

martinfick

...[*]Bought a lightly used Denon DCA-500 .... It will be installed ... in the trunk using a plywood deck system attached to the spare, like Ian McArthur's (Be sure you look at his install. It is really ingenious).

Could you post a link to that, I searched the forum for about an hour yesterday trying to find his setup? Thanks, -Martin

martinfick

Do you have a suggestion of an amp that would be that small? Thanks, -Martin

rbuswell

Sorry for your frustration in finding Ian's website. If you scroll up on this thread until you find Ian McArthur's reply, you will notice a short reference to a link in his signature at the bottom. It will take you to his Rennlist-hosted website. From there you will need to go to the list of webpages and you will see one there about his stereo install.

imcarthur

Here's the amp link http://members.rennlist.com/imcarthur/amps.htm

Ian

LM3929

If you look at the back there are 2 large spade connectors and 4 smaller ones pin 5 goes to the anntenna

1986951

A pair of Blaupunkt 60W amps will just tuck in there nicely...

I can prolly find the specific model number if you can't find anything from Midwest Electronics...

They are one of the big Blaupunkt suppliers in the USA...