4th New Stereo in my 2002 Hyundai Accent

[goraman]

I bought my Accent new in Sept.2002 They removed the stock stereo 1. and added a Clarion cassette deck with a 5 CD changer in the hatch 2. It sounded awful and the changer was a CD scratching device. So I took it to the stereo store and had my Trusty old Alpine CDA7837 installed from my last car,BTW it still works great after 12 years.I just got a new Kenwood eXcelon X695 with blue tooth and more important an Ipod interface 24 bit DAC ect...
In removing my loved old Alpine Very hard to do as you have to take apart all the A/C and heater cables and controls to get the front cover off,I discovered they hacked up the factory harness and did a real hack job.When removing the factory radio I would guess.

So I stopped to have a beer and a break, today I hope to repair and install the new unit but my butt doesn't want to leave the recliner to walk into a nightmare.


Anyone else run into a Car audio hack job like mine?
How can someone hack up the wiring so bad in what was a bran new car so bad and still keep there job?

[Alex_UK]

Anyone else run into a Car audio hack job like mine?

Only the ones I did myself to my '79 Cortina or '82 Renault 5. Oh, and '52 Series 1 Land Rover, come to think of it. I've left it to the experts since about 1988... Sorry I can't help Jeff, but hope you get it sorted.

[Macca]

I fitted some old 3 way Philips speakers to the parcel shelf of a Datsun Cherry once. The cable was proper 129 strand and ran from under the dash, between the front seats and up to the speakers. I figured 'why use crappy 3'' full range drivers stuck in the doors when I have these proper speakers lying around?'

It was a lash up but it worked! - I was more than happy but it was my girlfriend's car and she 'didn't really like it'. Still... Happy days:)

[Reid Malenfant]

There are proper adapter leads for these things these days ;) Back in the day though it'd have had to have been a splicing job. That still doesn't excuse shoddy & potentially dangerous connectors.

Hopefully things won't be too bad, i can't remember how many in car installs i have done :scratch: Never again though :eyebrows:

[Jac Hawk]

i've replaced a few car stereos in my time, back in the day there wasn't a choice and you had to chop the factory connectors off so you could fit the new stereo, nowadays though you simply get a wiring adapter, most new replacement car stereos come with standard DIN connections and you plug the wiring harness from the car into the adaptor and then from the adaptor into the stereo harness, unfortunately this adds a lot of extra cables that need to be hidden away, and sometimes there just isn't the room behind the stereo for all that extra cable so in some cases you just have to chop the ends off and join each cable individually, so it may not be that the people who replaced your car stereo did a bodge up jeff, it may be that there wasn't enough room for an adaptor.

[Marco]

It was a lash up but it worked! - I was more than happy but it was my girlfriend's car and she 'didn't really like it'.

I guess she didn't get much opportunity to appreciate the soundstaging, spending most of her time on the back seat looking up at the roof! :bonk:

:eyebrows: :eyebrows:

Marco.

[goraman]

i've replaced a few car stereos in my time, back in the day there wasn't a choice and you had to chop the factory connectors off so you could fit the new stereo, nowadays though you simply get a wiring adapter, most new replacement car stereos come with standard DIN connections and you plug the wiring harness from the car into the adaptor and then from the adaptor into the stereo harness, unfortunately this adds a lot of extra cables that need to be hidden away, and sometimes there just isn't the room behind the stereo for all that extra cable so in some cases you just have to chop the ends off and join each cable individually, so it may not be that the people who replaced your car stereo did a bodge up jeff, it may be that there wasn't enough room for an adaptor.

A rat could have gnawed the insulation off cleaner and a spastic retard could have done a better job at terminating connections.
Not to mention a complete failure to route wire around the heating controls.

[Macca]

I guess she didn't get much opportunity to appreciate the soundstaging, spending most of her time on the back seat looking up at the roof! :bonk:

:eyebrows: :eyebrows:

Marco.


I Wish!:rolleyes:

[goraman]

I was able to clean things up pretty well, I removed the Alpine and cleaned up all the old splices.
As for the new stereo,it needs an pair of brackets (not included) and routing the Blue tooth mic and all the programing it to my phone ect...
I will let the same shop that did my wife's car do the rest it's only $60.00 because I bought everything from them. Well worth it.
They are rated the no.1 stereo shop in Northern Ca. and most of the cars they do are worth far more than my 9 year old Hyundai.
I was so upset to see such a hack job,at least they won't have to deal with that.

[goraman]

Here it is my new Kenwood with Ipod interface and blue tooth.
As you can see all my speaker cables have been sleeved and properly terminated What you cant see is that I used Italian Audison wire and my power cable to the deck has a audio capacitor filter and 3 large hand wound RF chokes and even the ant has a low pass filter in line and a chassis ground strap so the background is Black even turned all the way up in AUX with no impute signal and the motor running!(0 noisefloor).
Im not good at setting up bluetooth stuff and sub menus so I let the stereo shop do the rest.They where impressed at the wireing and how quite the noise floor was.
If you are using a apple ipod cable this one is a huge upgrade and it's cheap too.

http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_12037_Kenwood-KCA-iP100.html


I am not running an amp, Behind my speakers there is polyester dampening and Dynomat to reduce cabnet ring from the flimsy steel car body.
These are my speakers They sound good and get loud because they are 92db. sensitive @1watt. There is 4 of them.
http://www.crutchfield.com/p_500SPS13C2/Alpine-SPS-13C2.html?tp=97
Not much deep bass but the mid bass to around 40 hz. is punchy and the midrange is outstanding for car audio.

This stuff is awesome at deadening rattles and stopping unwanted vibration.
http://www.dynamat.com/

This is the speaker wire under the sleeves,It's Audison silver.
http://www.connection.eu/index.php?category=3&family=9&tipo=21&prodotto=273&submit=Go&link=accessories

Audison makes the worlds best car amps the Theises is over $10,000 U.S.
http://www.audison.eu/index_main.php?Section=HVVENTI

[goraman]

I was going down the road and got completely lost in Janes Adiction's nothing shocking album fed in apple loss-less via the ipod interface when I realized the new mos-fet head unite was so musical and pleasant.
It is very enjoyable and open sounding,I have not been so deeply involved in listening with any other car stereo as this one.

Is this a common experience with mos fet based amps?