AirtekHVAC

As usual, my stereo died, again…on the way to SITM, so I had enough…I had been collecting upgraded components over the last year to refresh the system when I refurbed the dash and pod, but enough was enough! upon my return, I stripped out all the old stereo equipment and started over. The only wires I kept were the RCA to amp, and wires from amp to speakers.






Got rid of the Chinese android,
Removed the Amp
Removed the powered sub
removed the board I had it mounted on, and all associated wiring

AirtekHVAC

Added an Alpine CarPlay radio
Alpine compact Amp
Cerwin Vega subwoofer
A new cover / mounting board
new wiring
















don’t mind the crappy dash carpet. It will be gone eventually. And I also did not dust before I took the pics.

AirtekHVAC

Well, as usual for me…as soon as I got it all buttoned up, the radio died!!

I was about to loose my immortal 💩!!!

Began testing and found that I had really low voltage from the power lead to the ground lead




I also had found a splice connector on the power lead. I removed that for good measure





Turned out that I used a new ground wire, but the same ground point….to the aluminum bracket behind the center console.

ran a ground from the main ground point under the steering wheel to the stereo, and that solved that problem!





It was probably my issue for the last three years!

All solved and put back together.

Had a group meet yesterday morning, a (4) Hour round trip for me, and the stereo performed flawlessly!

AirtekHVAC

And….again…took her for a quick spin last weekend, sound went out!!! WTF! I’m at wits end!

Pulled radio out and effed with all wires and connections…nothing!

started to mess with all wires in the hatch and found the plug for the new amp was hanging out. Pushed it in, and sound came on!…but plug popped out…bent the clip up on it and pushed it back in, and got a nice “click” this time! Sound is back! Hopefully it is finally all sorted and I will retain audio on the 7hr trip to Frenzy!

Flinstigator

Always something!

AirtekHVAC

Well, reading back through my thread, not too much to update with “Whitey”. She has become my road beast. Not much pampering, just a lot of driving. I did finally get the sound sorted. It started dropping out on me again, so I tore back into the audio the night before Frenzy. Quite frustrating. Long story short…turns out the (2) years I had problems it was a poor ground point. I originally grounded the radio to the cruise brain bracket, and left the meter hooked to the ground while the radio was playing, and was sitting in the seat frustrated, wires hanging everywhere, trying to squeeze juice out of the steering wheel in frustration, and the radio dropped out, and my eyes caught 7volts on the meter, and then it slowly climbed back to 12 and the radio came back on. Say what!?, A quick test wire to another ground point got me a steady 12v.

That was it. Simple. And I blamed all those cheap but neat android head units I had purchased…my bad.

I recently stole the Cerwin Vega sun out, to put into my 85, and put the original Kenwood sun I had back into her. She didn’t seem to mind…