well after years of delibration (3 to be exact) ive started a stereo install in the TL!
ill keep ya informed as i go

 

.

 

looks scary...

 

yea im plastic welding some imperfections in the kit, and then smoothing it out like the factory dash finish

 

its done, for now

 

wow that looks like a pretty good match... what did you use to smooth it out.. also what color did you paint it..

 

well after sanding the filler down, and smoothing it all out with 600 grit, the metra kit finish was almost identical in color. co i kept sanding till all the fill was gone and kept sanding till i smoothed the whole kit (no imperfections) and smoothed it all out with 800 grit. no paint

 

Sweet Kris! Good job on making the metra kit color fit perfectly! What's up next?

 

door speakers and a good amp!
even though the factory speakers sound better now, there still lacking.

 

:wow:
dude you connected factory speakers to an aftermarket HU?

Ok, i know the threads havent surfaced in a while about this, but your gunna blow your sh!t up...

The factory speakers are Bose 1ohm garbage, with no tweaters. the factory HU is 1ohm and has offboard EQ to boost highs. How EXACTALY did you tap the factory harness? and get new speakers soon dude, your gunna pop yours in no time. DO a search for the username "iggy" and read through the 20+ pages of goodness that is our POS factory sound system.

Otherwise dude, looks great! Im getting a KVT-910DVD from a buddie soon otherwise i would use the same kit you did, but it mounts the HU too high and with the screen open it covers A/C controls.

But yours looks nice, good work!

 

yea my headunit died on me so it was a last min install. the factory speakers are POS's. i just used a wire harness for a accord to get me through for a week or 2 till i get the new speakers and amp. the speakers do sound better now though

 

yeah im sure they do.

Reason im asking how you have it wired is because if you have the new HU outputting to the offboard EQ and not direct to the speakers, thats a problem. The way the factory HU works is that a low level output leaves the HU and enters the EQ, where the highs are boosted, then exits the EQ, reenters the HU, and is converted to a high level output, then exits the HU to the speakers.

So, did you tap the high level output or the low level output?

 

?? i just used the wire harness kit and pluged it in. i was told that using that harness will bypass the eq??? it sounded really flat untill i adjusted all the eq settings in the headunit

 

oh ok yeah see the little harness that plugs in to the OEM HU is the EQ, the larger one is the high level output. so you should be good.

Im surpised it sounds better, usually bypassing the OEM EQ and keeping the factory speakers results in a worse tone...

Just keep in mind now that your pumping more power and the wrong OHM output to the factory speakers, clock is ticking till they blow.

BTW what is the JVC monitor you have on the dash?

 

yea they speakers sounded like crap till i played with the headunits EQ. the kenwood has a pretty nice built in eq, and after spending about a hour changing the frequencies and such they sound better than factory (not much but better) ill be tossing some new speakers in in a couple weeks.
the jvc monitor is for the vcr i have in the trunk and an occasionaly when i hook up the PS2. the nice thing is that the new headunit has imputs for audio, so im no longer RF'ed

 

On the Tl the factory EQ is essentially nothing more than a high pass and a low pass filter, so by taking out of the equation does nothing more than open the speaker up to full range output. as far as the ohm load on the speaker, the HU and the amp and the speakers are built for a 4ohm load so if one wants to replace to headunit your not going to run into any problems there. as far as the powr goes the signal is still going through the factory amp (unless you go through the trouble of bypassing it) so the speakers are still seeing the same power that they were with the factory headunit. the only downside is b/c it is now able to run true full range sound, you can easily over work them if you pump the music at high output for too loang and subsequently blow the speakers.

 

hmmm.... no, not so much...

 

negative there scott p... when you take out the factory headunit you lose the factory amp.. since it is located inside the headunit itself.. the stock system works like this.. the signal is sent out of the headunit thru the eq where the low signals are then transfered to the stock sub amp behind the rear seat... and the high signals are routed back to the headunit where they are amplified and sent out to the door speakers.. and darkshear i dont understand how you figure that the stock speakers will blow since they are 1ohm and the headunit is 4ohms.. if anything this will cause problems in the headunit since it is now powering a load alot lower than the 4ohms it was designed for..... but i can assure you that nothing will happen except for maybe some distortion because the headunit is overdriving the speakers.. i had my aftermarket headunit hooked up to my stock speakers for about a year and no problems..

 

yeah thats basically what i wanted to explain to Scott P but didnt have the energy... been a long weekend.


Oh and your right, i tottaly had it backwards. risk is to the HU not the speakers. my bad.

 

That leaves several questions then. first on my 99 tl, when i took out the factory headunit i had to hook up the remote turn on wire to get any sound of the stock speakers, and when i tested the stock bose speakers they read 4 ohms.

 

That is odd Scott. When I first replaced my head unit with an Alpine 7893, all I did was use the Accord wiring adapter and the speakers worked fine. Really did not sound that bad either. Unless there is something different about the 99 over the 00 model, then you may have a problem somewhere. Not sure about the ohms. Really though, if you are powering them with a head unit, the ohms is not going to matter. It would be hard to damage anything with 15-20 watts that a head unit puts out.

 

Scott is correct, from what I have read and actually heard from a few installers. The speakers are about 4 ohms....I know everyone wants to believe the 1 ohm story, but its just a story. You will not damage your aftermarket HU at all....

how do you explain people putting in the Polk DX6's in the door and keeping the factory HU and Amps then if the bose speakers are 1 ohm????

 

I thought it was just the subwoofer than was 1 ohm..it's labeled that way anyway.

 

ok, if this does not clear it up, simply nothing will. this is from 2 years ago when iggy and southbound invented audio modding as we know it on this site.

its longer than a bible. enjoy.

http://www.acura-tl.com/forum/showth...threadid=41715

 

...more

http://www.acura-tl.com/forum/showth...threadid=43080

http://www.acura-tl.com/forum/showth...threadid=41406

 

.... still more.....

http://www.acura-tl.com/forum/showth...threadid=42849

http://www.acura-tl.com/forum/showth...threadid=42907

http://www.acura-tl.com/forum/showth...threadid=42872

http://www.acura-tl.com/forum/showth...threadid=42797

 

one more.... ok im done.

http://www.acura-tl.com/forum/showth...threadid=42890

 

Darkshear, Im happy that you can read alot of posts, but I dont want to read for hours. I just gutted my whole system to avoid everything, but one question, are you actually claiming that the Bose speakers are in fact 1 ohm???
If you are then putting in the 4 ohm Polks that numerous people did, would only pull like 3 watts from the factory amp. This wouldnt work at all for the most part. This is why I believe that the bose door speakers are around 4 ohm...

 

I understand that the bose system in our car is a unique system having multiple impedences as a stock system, but it is not that uncommon to have 1 ohm, 2 ohm, or even 4 ohm systems from bose. I'm not trying to be a **** about it, but I, as do a few people here put this stuff in for a living, so I know I am reading every test that I have done on my own car right (to be fair i never bother testing the stock sub since it sucked so bad that i didn't even bother thinking about what it would test at.) To be precise though, the speakers read at about 3.7 ohms, which is standard for most all 4ohm speakers that I have ever accounted. As for the amp, it's an easy test, try connecting thesolid blue wire from the aftermarket radio's harness to the blue with a white stripe on the honda harness and then put in a cd. in most all cases (depending on the cd player) you'll lose all sound in the car.

 

just get rid of everything!!!! and start from scratch. The sound improvement is so much better. the only thing I could see keeping stock is the HU, if you want to keep the stock look. You will have to get the adapter for aftermarket amps, you will be feeding them a low quality signal, compared to a good aftermarket HU, but it will keep the stock look.


It was a ***** with mine cause I have NAVI. The NAVI goes through the stock HU so we relocated it in the glovebox for now, I think there is an adapter for this also, so I can get rid of the Stock HU...anyone know for sure??? thanks

 

What a great tip! sanding down the metra to make it match. If you please, what brand of filler did you use to smooth it out?

Thanks so much. I was wondering how I was going to do that...

 

well i started out with plastic weld, and was going to paint it but as soon as i started sanding it and i saw how it was coming out i kept sanding it til sanded off the plastic weld and worked out the imperfections in the kit. i started out wit 200 grit for a little bit then went to 400 wet and then 600 (or 800 what ever you can find ) wet till i got it to the finish you see.

 

I kept the stock HU cause i didnt have the extra $$$ for a KVT-911DVD after dumping $3,000 on the system... But i use JL amps and they have a built in converter and filter so they took the input from the HU just great. The Boston Z6's are the best speakers ive ever heard, and coming from an audiophile, thats saying a lot. I like them so much better than the QSD's even.

Why would you need to keep the factory HU in the glove box? Last time i checked, the only connection between the HU and the navi is for the audio directions form the navi... maby im wrong?

Oh, sorry we all jacked your thread FSTTYMS, you know how it goes.

 

Ya thats what I orignially thought, but I talked to multiple installers and they said that the NAVI is integrated into the HU. If you totally get rid of the HU then the NAVI wont even work. Now I am not totally sure, cause we didnt actually try this. I had them put it in the glove box just to make sure. I figgured that I would loose the voice - I didnt care cause I dont even use it, but they said that I could loose the NAVI all together. Some cars even have the AC and everything going through the factory HU, so some cars arent even possible to upgrade - without serrious modification.
One of the installers' wife had a '01 with NAVI and he said thats what he ran into. I wonder if there is a way to totally get rid of the stock HU and keep the NAVI? Like I said, I think that there is a company that does this...who knows. Im like you, after I dropped so much $$$ on the system itself, my extra money was gone~!!!

 

im callin BS on this one, OU... i know for a fact the navi will function without the stock HU connected. your installer is misinformed. multiple people on this site have aftermarket HU's and navi... BS BS BS!!!!

 

yes but did they have to do anything special, a wiring harness or anything? I would like to be able to take that thing out of the glove box and not worry about it. They claim that they whole system is integrated. I wonder if that installer that said he had problems with his wife's car, is just too scared of installing in our cars....probably the actuall case.

 

thats ok.

but i agree on the BS. i would try unhooking the factory headunit. that and or trying a different installer

 

nothing special to do.

i double checked, the only link between the OEM HU and the Navi is the voice from the navi. yank it.

 

Hey mon, I just checked out your gallery. Are any of those dash pics with the so improved backlight your car? Is so, where did you get the kit, how much, was it hard to install?

also, where can I get the original (uncensored) pic for the "Acura, think different" ad?

...and, to keep on subject, Nice Work with the metra kit! I finally found my previous post that said the same but wtf.

BTW, please post back in a month or so if you experience any discoloration on the metra kit. Seems to me that the 800 grit should do the trick unless the plastic is pourous. In that case, I may spray mine with some flat or satin clear.

I grew up in wisconsin, your pics reminded me of what life was like then. I live in Atlanta now. I'll stop complaining about the rain

Later

 

Hell ya, thats what I kinda thought, but I just wanted to play it safe. I will soon have a glove box again!!!