Dave84

Hi everyone. I would like to replace all the speakers in my 1984 corvette since they are sounding like static. I would also like to buy a new deck for the car. The car is getting a new paintjob since lightning hit the house and all the lights crashed down on the car so I figure now is a good time to play around with the car without worrying about the paint. The car is lowered so access to some areas is very hard which is why I want to install the speakers before it goes for paint in the spring. I have some questions and would like to do my research ahead of time. I would greatly appreciate your help.

1. I really like the sound of Infinity Kappa speakers so I would like to go with them. I have in mind 4" speakers for the doors or possibly a 5.25" component set. Will these speakers fit and will some modifications have to be done to the mounts?

2. For the back I would like 6X9. Any problems to fit these in? I would like to put the old bose speaker cover back over it to hide an exposed speaker. Again any modifications that need to be done and would it be difficult?

3. What would you recommend as a good deck? I read some threads and really liked the Pioneer FH-P4200MP. Would this fit in an '84 and can you recommend some other brands or models that you feel would easily fit the 84 dash? I would prefer not to have to do any physical modifications here.

4. Would a deck be sufficient to run the 4 speakers and possibly two tweeters or would I have to get an amplifier? If so what size do you recommend?

5. Here's my main question. Since the '84 is an older car, when I unplug the old speakers will the wiring fit into a newer model speaker or do I have to use new wiring to connect the deck and possibly amp to all the speakers? Is this a difficult job if it has to be done and what guage of wire would have to be used?

I will get all the information together to make sure I buy the right equipment and have it so it's a relatively stress free job.

Thank you for all your help.

Square

If you don't have the Bose system, I believe that the rear speakers are 6X9's from the factory, so putting in new 6X9's should be quite easy.


I think you will at least have to have a spacer plate if you install a standard DIN size reciever in a C4. The GM radio is 1.5 DIN sizes if I remember correctly.

Pioneer makes a good radio as does Sony, Alpine, Clarion and a few others. A deck with 20watts RMS per channel will be enough to hear your music, but if you want a true big, full sound you will need an amp and sub(s) to get the job done. In a car as small as a C4 you could get a 4X40-60 watt amp, use the deck to run the front speakers (with bass blockers on them to keep them from distorting) and use 2 channels of the amp for the 6X9's and 2 channels for the sub(s). You can bridge the 2 sub channels together if you are using one single voice coil sub. You won't win any stereo competitions, but it should be plenty for non competition use.

As for wiring adapters and such, I have had good luck buying from Crutchfield (Crutchfield.com). They aren't the cheapest, but they give you all the wiring harnesses, adapters, brackets, instructions, etc you need for a painless install for free with your purchase. I have tried Best Buy's and Circuit City's adapers, brackets, etc, but I did not find them to be of the same quality as the stuff that Crutchfield gave me.

I don't work for Crutchfield, but I have had consistantly good experiences with them.

nelson84

I have a pioneer deck(they can fit just about any deck in that large hole where the bose was) you should get an amp and a sub box in the back. I also got some small tweeters I think they call them and they fit perfect in the front corners of the dash between the dash and window. They also put speakers under all the original places too.

MrRenoman

Better off posting in the Audio section of this forum. Here's a link...

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=20

Dave84

Thanks for the response. The car does have Bose. Can this make it a problem for the 6X9s. Also is replacing the dash speakers even worth it, it looks like a pain to even get to them? I figure a 5.1 component set and 6X9s with new deck and amplifier will sound just fine. I was also thinking to disconnect the dash speakers with the new steup.

I did post in the audio section but there is more traffic here.

Thanks again

tnrover

You might try Crutchfield. They have a web site and can tell you what will fit your car. They also send instructions for instalation and sell adapter kits. The last time I bought speakers from them, they came with there own enclosure. I have had good luck with them.

Saisling

You are going to need to rewire for the new speakers... not too much of a big deal.

I am running Infinity Kappa 6x9's in the rear. They were no problem at all. Stock grills cover them nicely. I'm running 5" Infinity Kappa's in the doors... I'm pretty happy with those too, but it is possible for teh 6x9's to over power them.

I belive a 6" would likely squeeze into the door, though I haven't tried it. If so, that might help to balance out front to back a little better.

The factory grills for teh doors wouldn't fit on my 5" speakers, so I went with a plain black cloth grill... looks decent.

I've also got a 250w Viper Amp behind the passenger seat and a JVC head w/ pre out....

All in all I'm pretty happy with it.

Saisling

Oh, and by the way... if I'm wrong someone can correc tme, but I don't believe the dash speakers were used for the Bose installations... the grills are there, but the space is empty. If you want to put something up there, more power to you, but it looked like a PITA to me

Dave84

Does Crutchfield ship to Canada? I couldn't find anything on their website for shipping internationally. What about putting infinity 4" speakers in the doors? The deck should have some buttons to balance them out. I'm not looking for competition sound but something clean for sunday driving. My car is loud as hell so I need something that can be heard over the exhaust.

Thanks

Saisling

It's not really a question of "balance"... I guess I should have been more clear.

It's a problem with over powering... with the volume up, the 6x9's overpower my door speakers... It doesn't help with their location either... The balance feature of teh head unit won't really help with that. Not a big deal though.. it still sounds good.

I was worried about excessive noise as well. (I wanted no trouble hearing the radio when the top was out.) That was the reason for the amp....

Dave84

When the car gets rewired can the old wires stay inside the car instead of pulling everything out? Also is there anything else that can be affected by pulling out the deck like antenna or other electronically controlled devices?

Saisling

Well... it wouldn't hurt to leave th old wiring in, I guess... I pulled mine out.

No problem on the antenna... I did replace mine, but not becasue I had to. The antenna's that came on teh crossfire vettes were noisy as heck going up and down... drove me nuts!

Click...click...click...click...click...

Square

I called Crutchfield and was told that they do NOT ship to Canada. Sorry about that.

flannel_man

i have a single din cd player run to a changer in the hatch area. I have a 1/2 din equalizer monted directly to the cd/player which fits perfetly snug in the bezel, which really helps with the equalizing and fine tuning (i think so anyways). I'm not certain but i've heard you can fit 8" subs in the rear spots if you want. I have tweeters on the halo. If you can i would actually suggest running all new wire and not using the stock wire harness. Infinity's are awesome, love em.

Dave84

Thank you for calling. Is there any chance they have a name for the kit? I can probably ask around locally. Would Corvette Fever or Mid America sell these kits? Once I get the entire kit and everything ready to go, any ideas on how many hours it might take to do the job so I have an idea?

Thanks again

MrRenoman

Since the car was Bose equipped there are a couple of options. You can remove the speaker housing in the rear, remove the bose amp/speaker unit from the mounting frame and install 6x9s in the old frame. In the dash are dummy grilles, the bose cars had dummy grilles. Non-bose cars had holes in the grille covered by cloth. If you remove the dash pad and inspect the covers you'll see they are solid. I guess if you wanted to drill some holes and mount some 4x6s you could since the bosses for the screws to mount the speakers are there. Choice is yours but I'd skip the dash speakers. In the doors are bose speaker housings. There's a couple of things you can do here. You can re-use the housings and install some 4" speakers. I've seen the adapters on Ebay. Bose speakers use 3 screws to mount them to the housing, aftermarket use 4 screws. The adapters make it easy to at least mount the aftermarket speaker to the housing. The problem is with the wiring, you can't re-use it because it's coming from an amp that's inside the housing. You can run some new speaker wire to the new speaker but you'll have to drill a hole to get it to the new speaker. You can also remove the entire housing from the door to remove the speaker, amp, and run new wiring to it but it requires removing the door panel and unbolting the inner aluminum door panel to remove the housing. The other option is to go ahead and remove the entire bose housing and leave it out which leaves a square hole about 5" x 5" in the door. You can mount a speaker here but when you install the door panel you end up with a square hole that your new speaker grille (if it's round) won't cover. I installed a piece of plywood to the inside of the door as a plate. Before screwing the plate on I routered the wood so the speaker would fit flush with the plywood then screwed the plate to the door with wood screws. Since I used 6" speakers I had to cut a little curve on each straight side of the square hole so the cone wouldn't touch the door. After installing the door panel I was able to screw the stock grille back through the door panel and into the wood plate with wood screws. It looks stock but behind the grilles are some nice 6" speakers. So I've got 6x9s in the rear and 6" speakers in the doors and it looks bone stock. In the dash I used a 1-1/2 din radio and used a GM adapter to plug the new radio into the cars wiring. This provides the power to the radio and I believe it still operated the antenna with no mods. Since you can't use the Bose wiring, you can cut the speaker output wires out of the adapter between the new radio and the car wiring connector and run them to the speakers. This is if you want to use the new radio's amplifier which is probably 20 watts per channel. Using the GM radio adapter eliminates hacking your stock wiring. I installed a 4 channel 400 watt amp and wired the rca coax outputs of the aftermarket radio to the amp. Each channel output is 100watts so I wired the amp to the speakers. I like the way it sounds. Some guys might comment that 6x9s don't sound good in the rear and subwoofers sound better but I didn't want to modify the car too much with custom boxes and use up any more room in the rear or the compartments. I did have to trim some material from the doors but it can always be put back to stock with the bose system if someone wanted to. Besides I left the stock bose wiring in place and just tucked it aside with zip ties in the doors and just left them aside in the rears out of the way. Good luck with your install and choice.

Art

MrRenoman

I'd just like to also add that WalMart and other lowend stores should have the GM radio wiring adapters and the GM 1-1/2 din to 1 din radio adapters and wiring including the coax cable and speaker wiring. There's no need to search for these items on Ebay or Crutchfield. They are pretty much basic items. If you trying to stay on a budget you don't need monster cable and gold plated connectors. If you can't find them at Walmart or Kmart any radio installation shop will sell them to you. I used a 1-1/2 din radio but the 1 din radios available now are far better. Just use an adapter kit for the GM cars. The kit comes with all kinds of adapters for different GM cars including the Vet.

Art

Dave84

Thanks Art and to everyone who put their knowlege into this. I look forward to the install and will certainly post progress along the way. Spring time isn't very far away so I will start purchasing the equipment. I have one more question. My deck of choice looks to be the Pioneer
FH-P4200MP. Any idea how I know how many Dins this is, if that is how they are measured, and how this will fit? If I need adapters where can these be purchased.

Thanks

Dave84

Just found out that the above model is double DIN and the '84 Corvette is 1.5 DIN. I guess when the dekc is bigger that's a problem but Pioneer does make some 1.5 DIN models for GM and Chrysler so I think that will be the way to go.

MrRenoman

There's only a few 1.5 Din radios available. The 1 Din radios offer more flexiblility and features the 1.5 Din radios offer. Pioneer makes a 1.5 Din radio some guys have bought. You can make just about any 1 Din radio fit. Some trimming of the radio bezel may be required so the removable faceplate can be removed. Trimming usually involves making the opening wider.