C4 '96 Full Install Part II
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Safety Car
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 4,129
Likes: 1
From: Pasadena CA
C4 '96 Full Install Part II
Part I here: http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show...194&highlight=
No essay this time, I'll just get straight on with it
REAR SPEAKERS
This didn't require nearly as much work. The Infinity Reference 6x9s I bought as a temporary fix would fit perfectly well into the stock rear enclosures. I did need to redrill 4 small holes in each of the car's mounting plates as the stock holes didn't match up. I liked the sound of these speakers in the store and they sounded like they had more bass than the Kappas or any of the other ones on display. This is what I wanted from the rears - the plan was to use these 6x9s as subs and cut the high freqs with the amp. I ran them with the stock system for a couple of weeks breaking them in while I waited for the other components to arrive.
Running wires
It was very easy to peel back the carpet and hide the wires.
The stock wires ran through a rubber grommet in the mounting plate that I wanted to reuse.
You have to cut the wire out of the grommet - see blue wires at bottom of pic. I made a square hole that would fit the speaker wire. Where the new wire reached the grommet I wrapped electrical tape around the wire to make a decent seal. I used the 12ga speaker wire from the amp kit which was enough to do the rears. I had bought a big roll of 14 ga from Home Depot. I figured use this thicker wire for the rears which would later be subs.
Once the new wires were run under the carpet and I got the length right, I pulled them back out and crimped and soldered the connectors that came with the kit.
My first solder - doing a crappy job
I learned from past experience that botching wires with poor cuts and electrical tape is not the way to go. Soldering ensures strength with great conductivity.
My soldering skills improved 1000% while doing this project. The trick is to not use too much solder, be quick and don't linger with the iron. Try and get it right first time. It takes some patience but you get the feel for how the molten metal acts.
I got a pair of mechanics gloves from Sears (another Fathers day prezzie
). These really became useful doing the soldering and saved me from a couple of nasty burns!
I started twisting wires together like you would when using crimp caps, but I soon realised the best way was twist them together horizontally so the joined wire is in one nice straight line. Then solder it. You might need to do one side, then turn it over and do the other. Also remember to slip the shrink wrap on before you join them together!
WIRING
The amp kit
The amp kit I got from SonicElectronix.com - there are lots of choices but this one had good reviews and was a good price. Don't get ripped off in the wiring department.
The only problems I found were there was only one RCA cable when my HU and amp required 2 (front output and rear output). The amp could have worked with only one set of inputs, but I wanted to do this right. The kit was also short of speaker wire to do all 4, and the ground lead was just a tad too short to get it to where I wanted. More on that later. Other than that, a great quality kit with nice gold plated connectors included.
Came with a huge fuse and fuse holder
I followed previous posters' experiences making their own loom to hook up the head unit. You are basically connecting the car's loom that runs to the stock receiver in the rear, back to the front to the HU. Sounds weird but is very simple once you understand what's going on.
For the loom I just followed what others had done. I checked, double checked, then triple checked the wiring chart in the HU manual and the wiring charts I had downloaded from
http://www.corvetteradios.com/Page.html
You want the colored chart.
I took 5 wires in red, yellow, black and blue for the connections to the stock receiver and white for the connection to amp power on.
I measured 7ft of each, put the ends in a cordless drill, got the wife to hold the other ends and then twist those puppies!
Measuring loom
After taping
Taping the bundle at short intervals helps keep it together. It will want to unwind itself so I left it overnight in this position.
I later found I had to pull the amp power on wire out from about halfway along as it took a slightly different route than the others.
Plan of action - I later added quite a bit to the list!
It helps to write down your plan in stages, especially if you're doing it over a long period, then tick off as you go.
the amp with tuning panel removed
OK the nitty gritty of that receiver business
Once you've got your crap-tray out of the driver side bin, you can see very clearly the metal receiver box and several wires coming out in their own looms. I started removing the jack but realised it doesn't need to come out, and neither does the receiver. If you want to save weight by all means disconnect everything and chuck it. This requires removing the foam though and I chose not to go to the trouble.
This is the loom you need.
In my 96 the colors were black, orange, yellow and green. This is where the GM stuff gets funky and I made a mistake. They stand for ground, battery, ignition and antenna motor.
Everywhere else in the world yellow is battery and ignition is red.
I got the battery and ignition the wrong way round - the HU worked fine but every time it was turned off it forgot all the saved settings.
I checked the chart again and realised I had them the wrong way around and it was easy to fix.
Anyway, just cut the stock plastic plug off. Be sure to snip the wires the same length and giving you as much to work with as possible.
Joining each wire to the receiver loom.
Each connection was soldered, wrapped with electrical tape and then the whole thing bundled together with thicker tape.
Meanwhile back to woodwork.
I had been thinking about how to mount the amp for a while. The original plan was to fix it to the inside back wall of the trunk area, like I'd seen in other C4s. After measuring the car I found mine wouldn't fit that way. Plus the more I thought about having the weight of the amp on the wrong side of the rear axle, the less I liked the idea.
I didn't want to go to the trouble of building an amp box and didn't want the extra weight of that either. So I decided on mounting it to the floor of the hatch area, behind the passenger seat (to offset the driver's weight) and behind the storage compartment so it was still useable (I like my crap-tray
). I cut a square of MDF, drilled holes, and put it under the carpet under one layer of insulation. I then laid the carpet over it and screwed the amp into the wood through the carpet. It's very secure.
I later plan on fitting some matching carpet material to cover it when parked.
Measuring out the mounting board
The next step was to join the other end of the custom loom to the loom that came with the HU. This is easy if you wrote down your color connections (and didn't make the same mistake I did)
This became my workbench - the back of the car, sitting on a stool.
Just be careful with the soldering iron - that thing can do a lot of damage instantly on contact with anything melty!
Joined and taped up
At this point I was joining the wires nice and straight so was able to use heat shrink on each one.
The next job was to start pulling interior out and routing wires to the HU and the amp. I'll save that for Part III !
-cheers
No essay this time, I'll just get straight on with it
REAR SPEAKERS
This didn't require nearly as much work. The Infinity Reference 6x9s I bought as a temporary fix would fit perfectly well into the stock rear enclosures. I did need to redrill 4 small holes in each of the car's mounting plates as the stock holes didn't match up. I liked the sound of these speakers in the store and they sounded like they had more bass than the Kappas or any of the other ones on display. This is what I wanted from the rears - the plan was to use these 6x9s as subs and cut the high freqs with the amp. I ran them with the stock system for a couple of weeks breaking them in while I waited for the other components to arrive.
Running wires
It was very easy to peel back the carpet and hide the wires.
The stock wires ran through a rubber grommet in the mounting plate that I wanted to reuse.
You have to cut the wire out of the grommet - see blue wires at bottom of pic. I made a square hole that would fit the speaker wire. Where the new wire reached the grommet I wrapped electrical tape around the wire to make a decent seal. I used the 12ga speaker wire from the amp kit which was enough to do the rears. I had bought a big roll of 14 ga from Home Depot. I figured use this thicker wire for the rears which would later be subs.
Once the new wires were run under the carpet and I got the length right, I pulled them back out and crimped and soldered the connectors that came with the kit.
My first solder - doing a crappy job
I learned from past experience that botching wires with poor cuts and electrical tape is not the way to go. Soldering ensures strength with great conductivity.
My soldering skills improved 1000% while doing this project. The trick is to not use too much solder, be quick and don't linger with the iron. Try and get it right first time. It takes some patience but you get the feel for how the molten metal acts.
I got a pair of mechanics gloves from Sears (another Fathers day prezzie
). These really became useful doing the soldering and saved me from a couple of nasty burns!I started twisting wires together like you would when using crimp caps, but I soon realised the best way was twist them together horizontally so the joined wire is in one nice straight line. Then solder it. You might need to do one side, then turn it over and do the other. Also remember to slip the shrink wrap on before you join them together!
WIRING
The amp kit
The amp kit I got from SonicElectronix.com - there are lots of choices but this one had good reviews and was a good price. Don't get ripped off in the wiring department.
The only problems I found were there was only one RCA cable when my HU and amp required 2 (front output and rear output). The amp could have worked with only one set of inputs, but I wanted to do this right. The kit was also short of speaker wire to do all 4, and the ground lead was just a tad too short to get it to where I wanted. More on that later. Other than that, a great quality kit with nice gold plated connectors included.
Came with a huge fuse and fuse holder
I followed previous posters' experiences making their own loom to hook up the head unit. You are basically connecting the car's loom that runs to the stock receiver in the rear, back to the front to the HU. Sounds weird but is very simple once you understand what's going on.
For the loom I just followed what others had done. I checked, double checked, then triple checked the wiring chart in the HU manual and the wiring charts I had downloaded from
http://www.corvetteradios.com/Page.html
You want the colored chart.
I took 5 wires in red, yellow, black and blue for the connections to the stock receiver and white for the connection to amp power on.
I measured 7ft of each, put the ends in a cordless drill, got the wife to hold the other ends and then twist those puppies!
Measuring loom
After taping
Taping the bundle at short intervals helps keep it together. It will want to unwind itself so I left it overnight in this position.
I later found I had to pull the amp power on wire out from about halfway along as it took a slightly different route than the others.
Plan of action - I later added quite a bit to the list!
It helps to write down your plan in stages, especially if you're doing it over a long period, then tick off as you go.
the amp with tuning panel removed
OK the nitty gritty of that receiver business
Once you've got your crap-tray out of the driver side bin, you can see very clearly the metal receiver box and several wires coming out in their own looms. I started removing the jack but realised it doesn't need to come out, and neither does the receiver. If you want to save weight by all means disconnect everything and chuck it. This requires removing the foam though and I chose not to go to the trouble.
This is the loom you need.
In my 96 the colors were black, orange, yellow and green. This is where the GM stuff gets funky and I made a mistake. They stand for ground, battery, ignition and antenna motor.
Everywhere else in the world yellow is battery and ignition is red.
I got the battery and ignition the wrong way round - the HU worked fine but every time it was turned off it forgot all the saved settings.
I checked the chart again and realised I had them the wrong way around and it was easy to fix.
Anyway, just cut the stock plastic plug off. Be sure to snip the wires the same length and giving you as much to work with as possible.
Joining each wire to the receiver loom.
Each connection was soldered, wrapped with electrical tape and then the whole thing bundled together with thicker tape.
Meanwhile back to woodwork.
I had been thinking about how to mount the amp for a while. The original plan was to fix it to the inside back wall of the trunk area, like I'd seen in other C4s. After measuring the car I found mine wouldn't fit that way. Plus the more I thought about having the weight of the amp on the wrong side of the rear axle, the less I liked the idea.
I didn't want to go to the trouble of building an amp box and didn't want the extra weight of that either. So I decided on mounting it to the floor of the hatch area, behind the passenger seat (to offset the driver's weight) and behind the storage compartment so it was still useable (I like my crap-tray
). I cut a square of MDF, drilled holes, and put it under the carpet under one layer of insulation. I then laid the carpet over it and screwed the amp into the wood through the carpet. It's very secure.I later plan on fitting some matching carpet material to cover it when parked.
Measuring out the mounting board
The next step was to join the other end of the custom loom to the loom that came with the HU. This is easy if you wrote down your color connections (and didn't make the same mistake I did)
This became my workbench - the back of the car, sitting on a stool.
Just be careful with the soldering iron - that thing can do a lot of damage instantly on contact with anything melty!
Joined and taped up
At this point I was joining the wires nice and straight so was able to use heat shrink on each one.
The next job was to start pulling interior out and routing wires to the HU and the amp. I'll save that for Part III !
-cheers
Safety Car
Joined: Jan 2006
Posts: 3,566
Likes: 4
From: Mt Laurel NJ
St. Jude Donor '06-'07
Looks real good, I am starting on my car soon, and will be sound deadening while installing new speakers and amp.
Keep up the good work, can't wait to see the rest.
Randy
Keep up the good work, can't wait to see the rest.
Randy
