Jeff928S4

So I finally got the car's stereo installed.

It was not easy.

I took it to a fella who is an electrical engineer (who also owns his own shop). The plan was to run the four corner speakers off the deck amp and re-wire the DIN plug so the pre-out RCA on the deck would run into the old amp and then run the 6.5" speakers.

Didn't quite work out that smoothly.

Let me preface this by saying originally, everything was "stock" - the only thing that had me somewhat curious was when I called Stefan and told him I had the "CD-2" in the car and he said it was odd that an 89' would have that stereo.

All the speakers worked - except one. It was the passenger-side 6.5" speaker....and if I turned the bass past the 1/4 mark on the deck, the driver-side 6.5" speaker would "razzzz" like crazy - I usually kept the base slider at zero or just above. There was literally no bass - just high end from the smaller speakers (you can see why I was so excited to get a new stereo). I had planned on re-foaming both 6.5" speakers (I figured if one "razzzed", the other one would too once I figured out why it wasn't working). Oddly enough - the rear tweeter/4" speakers did work on the same side that the 6.5" didn't. I figured maybe the speaker was either completely blown of had a loose connection.

All the wiring looked stock - no splicing anywhere.

So, the guy initially runs the new deck's speaker wires directly down to the amp area with new speaker wire. This is when I showed up.

He was having problems finding which wires in the DIN plug were for the 6.5" rears - he ran a multi-meter off each individual wire and they all came back the same - at both ends of the DIN plug. He kept tapping the spliced RCA wires against each individual wire and nothing would come through the 6.5" speakers. They would make a "pop" sound, but that was it. He was stumped.

So, I said, "well, let's not worry about the 6.5" speakers for now - when I get a new amp, we'll tackle it then" - I'll just run the four smaller corner speakers for now.

Problem was.....when he wired directly from the deck to the speaker wires - the rear 4" would not work - the tweeters worked, but not the 4". Huh??? I thought they ran off of one another?

He tried a bunch of different combos, but no matter what, unless he ran through the amp, those 4" speakers would not work.

I said, "well, how about we just wire the deck straight into the old wiring and just run it like the old deck - using the amp for all channels". Problems was, the DIN plug basically would not carry any signals from the new deck to the amp. He was stumped again.

So, I asked if there was any way to get all 10 speakers going. He said the only way to do it without buying another amp was to run the 6.5" in series with the rear 4"/tweeters. He swapped some wires around and got the 6.5" going (and then the 4" also worked). Puzzling.

Now, here is the thing - once he completely eliminated the amp and the DIN plug from the equation - the driver-side 6.5 "speaker no longer "razzzed" and the passenger side 6.5" started working again??? Does this sound like perhaps the DIN was shot or maybe the amp had some problems?

It is now hooked up with the deck's amp running all speakers - with the back speakers running in series. It now seems I get some bass in all speakers, minus the tweeters (where as before....no matter how loud I turned it up, the 4" speakers never pushed any air at all and now if you put you hand over them, you can feel them pushing some bass).

Also, the big white plug in my car only carried the power supply - all the speakers ran though the DIN plug (thus his problem in getting the new deck to send any signal to the amp).

I dunno - it seems to me like something was not right with the "stock" set-up. One 6.5" speaker not working and the other razzzing like crazy with any volume put to it at all. Seems like something was crossed up somewhere, yes? I have no clue.

Anywho - gonna get a 4-channel amp and new speakers and subs and get it all hooked up right.

...and those 6.5" speakers don't really give out a whole lot of bass (they way that one was "razzzing", I figured after I re-foamed it, it would be pumping bass) - but it is wayyyyy more bass than I had before. I can actually put the bass setting on +2 or +3 and get "razzz-free" bass (anything higher and you can hear them distort a bit).

So, what do ya's think? Did I have a bad DIN plug or was perhaps my old 6-channel stock amp not working right or something?

P.S. - thanks for all the help in this tread!!!

Jeff928S4

I wanted to add that when I say the driver-side 6.5" speaker "razzzed", I mean it would literally shake the car if I fed ANY bass to it from the original deck.

Another curious things was when he re-hooked the original deck back up, but unplugged the two speaker leads to the rear 6.5" speakers, the deck lost its fader control. Weird.

He did do a good job leaving everything so it could be returned to stock - he didn't cut any wires. The funky 80's speaker wires connectors are still there, as is the original white plug and DIN plug. He had to loop the power from where the old amp was to get power to the new deck once the old amp was removed though....and he added a fuse, just in case.

How the old amp area looks now...

New power hook-up....




New speaker wires......