proaudio22

How the heck does the stock trim (door sills, rear by the seat) come off? What all exactly needs to come off to have acces all the way to the trunk? I would rather just know what to do then poke around and fock something up.

Also, the general consensus is that the factory rubber grommet is the best place for the wire to pass through right? Just drill a hole in it?

JetBlackAcuraCl

i didnt even have to drill a hole through the grommet to get my wires through...all i did was push the grommet open and threaded the wires through...just make sure the grommet doesnt come off or you might have a water problem

suXor

Going through gromets 101:

1. Get a wire coat hanger, and make it straight (an old whip antenna is better, but you have to cut the ball on the end off)
2. IF you have a bench grinder, sharpen the end of the hanger, antenna
3. About 6-8" up from the end, group your wires
4. Using electrical tape, start wraping the wires to the antenna/hanger going 3-4" past the wires towards the end, and 4-6" up the wires
5. Using silicon spray or WD40, spray the gromet from the side you will be going in at liberally. If the wires need to go from the engine to the interior, spray it from the engine side.
6. Pierce the gromet with the hanger/antenna and push it down towards the pedals inside (so you don't go into the back of the dash. Make sure you have inspected the inside and outside areas around the gromet so you know what direction to push through and not damage anything)
7. Pull the antenna/hanger into the interior enough to remove the tape.
8. then pull the wires through as much as you need, and pull the antenna/hanger back out the way you pushed it in (unless it's a hanger perfectly straight, you can pull it all the way through)

In some cases, you have to pre-slit the gromet to be a bit bigger. Get a razor knife from any hardware/auto store like this:



Make the slit bigger, or a cross. This may be necessary for large gauge wire, or large bunches of wire.

Be careful, too much pressure on some gromets (like ours) can shove the gromet out of the metal. Then you have to snap it back in, which can be a pain. Lubing it with spray helps make it go right in.

Good luck.

proaudio22

Eh, you must have some small power wire. I couldn't get a lubed fish tape though that grommet. No way 1/0 was going in there anyway.

Oh well, I found a spot ~2" right below that grommet where they had a prepunched cutout in the insulation. I removed the cutout, and they left a hole in one layer of the metal. I drilled right though the rest, piece of cake.

Now, where is my damn bag of grommets??? Fuck putting stuff in safe places, cuz you never remember where the damn safe place is.

BTW: our cars rock, the trim all came off easy once I figured otu how it worked. My Ford was a damn pain in the ass compared to this...

suXor

THis was a general instuction I wrote. If you are running 1/0, you will have to make a new hole.

But your the audio guy, you knew that BTW, why are you using 1/0? You drawing 300+ amps?

d5c5b

yaaa, youre the stereo guy right? you should know all this!?

baka_t

4ga will work fine with 2 decently powered amps. It makes me laugh at people that use big cable when running average setups to me it don't make sense. I mean do they think they'll get more power out of that big of a cable?? If your getting an alpine amp which is a class D why would you need that big of a cable? To me, it's just a waste of money.

Edit: What needs to come off is everything on the driver's side. I took off the lower kick panel, footrest, side plate, rear seat panel and that was it. Everything should come off just by pulling it. Becarefull tho, you dont want to break any clips.

rmh3093

most of the wire kits on ebay cost the same for 4 or 8 guage so why not get 4 guage, you never know if you might want to upgrage and add an amp in the future

proaudio22

It's all about voltage loss. Keeping in mind a 5% loss limit - at 100 amps, 4ga is only good for ~10 feet. 0ga is good to ~20ft.

With the Alpine setup I'm looking at, the amperage draw was ~70 amps. I'm also looking at some of the new Rockford stuff, it looks like twice that much. For a distance of ~20ft, it's recommended to step up to 1/0 when you pass 75 amps.

I only ran some 4ga I had for now. I just wanted to get something in there to play with. As far as wasting money goes, it's just $.25 vs $.50 /ft for me.

The rear panel next to the rear seats would NOT come off...it looks like there is a screw in the bottom part of it. I was able to slide a fish tape from the trunk up to the front, and pull the wire through easily without actually removing the panel.

BTW Chris, that was a good set of instructions on pulling through gromets. We should all write up a how to for first gen stereo stuff.

dustbuster4

The door sills just pull up. Be gentle, but firm when pulling them straight up.


To me, the rear seat bottom is much easier to remove than the rear seatback. There's one bolt that's between the bottom of the seatback and the seat bottom. Go to the center of the seat, then reach in between the seatback and seat bottom, more towards the driver's side. Undo that bolt with a socket.

Then, sit in the rear seat (either side). Reach down between your feet (where the seat bottom and the carpeting meet). If you pull the seat bottom up just a bit, you'll feel a "tab". Grab that tab with your fingers (or a set of needle nose pliers), and pull towards the front of the car. This will allow you to lift up on the seat bottom. Do the same thing on the other side of the seat bottom.

Good luck!

baka_t

That loss percent is at 12v the calcualtion needs to be @ 14.4 volts normal vehicle voltage operation. In that case it would be enough ft to carry the voltage under a 100amp load. Keep in mind that all alpines are class D amps which require less voltage. The 70 amp rating is at max load of the amp hardly achieved under normal conditions. Also using copper wire will keep the voltage loss to a minimum.

proaudio22

The sub amps are all class Ds, but it's the A/B 4ch that added up that rating. You are correct tho, it is a maximum rating. You could prob cut that number by 1/3 if you had the proper number of capacitors with the amps.

baka_t

If you're going for the rockfords the 1/0 you will need to run not to mention upgrading alternator/battery/cap. Im goin with all alpines too. My whole system is alpine so i am gonna stick to that and change my sub setup. An additional plus is being able to run the RUX-4280.

proaudio22

Hey, how do you like your in dash screen? You've got the CVA-1004 right? I'm thinking about that unit. The missing features is kinda turning me off tho.

baka_t

Well IMO alpine has the best picture it kicks the hell out of anything else. If i seen the iva-d900 i woulda picked that up but it came out after i bought the 1004. It does lack features but i only use it as a screen and nothing else. I use my 7995 as the main controll. I am thinking of replacing it with the dva-7996 tho. But if you get the expansion box kce-104v it adds all these features
• 3 Aux A/V Inputs
• 2 Aux A/V Outputs
• 3 4 Volt Outputs
• 1 Rear Camera Input
• Navi Mix
• Spectrum Analyzer
• Multi-Zone Visual Effector (30 patterns).

An awsome setup would the the cva-1004 w/expansion box and the DHA-S680 and the pxa-h700 processor. That be a bad ass setup.

rmh3093

anyone have any experience with that pioneer deck witht he dvd and screen, i sorta have grown to love pioneer and was look that that screen

proaudio22

Have you seen the new Alpine headunits? Three of them have the features of the RUX-4280 built in. I think it's the CDA9831, 9833, and 9835. They are pretty pimp, the 9835 has the BioLite display. I might end up with one of those if I pass on the screen -as long as it's black. I heard from one Alpine guy that it was supposed to be a gunmetal black, but the site says silver under the "more info". I may very well pass on the screen b/c I wanted it for navi, but I don't think I want to spend that kind of money on it (even at a discounted price) to use it just every once and a while. Those last two of the new units above also have 24db/octave x-overs built in which would alleviate me from having to buy a seperate one.

baka_t

Those new decks have some of the features but not all of the features of the RUX-4280 I'm not sure if you can run multiple amps off of the headunit also.

proaudio22

I'm pretty sure it does almost everything, we'll have to wait till Alpine gets their info ready. I do they can be used on up to eight amps.

baka_t

I seen all the eq and controll features but i didn't see anything about the headunit being able to show amp voltage and temp. Alpine is pretty vauge on their specs untill like spring.

sgidvani

hey guys..i seem to be having a difficulty removing the kick panel on the driver side...any tips on how to get it off? it just wont budge..

SupraManAG

i pulled mine right out
put some muscle into it

rajin_2.3cl

The DVA-7996 is a fucking bad ass deck

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

Too bad he sold his car