Aydu

I just finished what I plan to be my last audio upgrade to my 02 ES. I hated the audio when I bought the car, but thought the rest of the car was an excellent combination of quality and fun.

I have the ES and I do admit that I really like the look of the red dash at night. I decided right upfront that I needed to upgrade the audio, but not at the cost of losing that coordinated light system in the car.

I started with the speakers. I wanted a sub and started there first. I added one 12" Kicker Comp sub in a sealed box, powered by a bridged 160 watt Coustic amp. The sub signal came from taps into the rear speaker leads. This gave me good low end, without rattling the rear spoiler. I was momentarily happy.

Soon, however, I started wondering how things would sound if I replaced those paper factory speakers. I ended up replacing all four speakers with Eclipse speakers from a local audio shop, I liked the sound and they had high efficiency, so I figured I would be getting the most sound my factory head unit's amps could pump out. Again, I was momentarily happy.

I kept reading on this board that upgraded speakers are a must, but that you have to amp them to get the full benefit. I then started my search for a medium power 4 channel amp for the task.

I ordered a JBL 80.4 from an on-line dealer. It had what I wanted feature wise and matched pretty well with the power limits of my new speakers. Unfortunately, the vendor could't actually deliver the amp at the advertised price, so I cancelled my order and looked further.

I was about to order a Coustic 4 channel amp from Ikesound when I came across an Ebay ad that interested me. The add offered the Coustic 3200E 4 channel amp (40 watts/channel) for a buy now price of $99. This was a good $50 cheaper than Ikesound - if you don't count the shipping charges.

The interesting part of the add was that it was by a vendor that is very local to me. I e-mailed the contact person shown in the add about picking one up at the Internet price. He e-mailed back saying "sure" and had one with my name on it for pick-up than night.

Having what I thought to be the final piece to the audio puzzle in hand, I planned the install. I used the reverse/standard wiring harness trick many on this board have used. I bought 2 reverse harnesses to extract the extra pins needed to keep the illumination and dimming features of the factory deck.

I bought 1 standard harness from Autotoys. They don't have the reverse harness, but their standard harness has the two extra wires needed to make the illumination and dimming connections. You still have to move a wire, but there are the right wires in the harness to make this easy - using the pin out descriptions from here on this board.

The two harnesses, some speaker wire, crimp connectors, and I was off and running with the install.

I made a Walmart run to pick up 2 sets of Ford radio tools and a roll of blue masking tape. I taped off the trim around the deck, as my biggest fear was leaving permenant reminders on the dash of my install. The blue tape leaves no residue for something like 7 days. It worked as advertised, no clean up of adhesive, no scratches on the dash.

The part of the install I most dreaded was removing the factory radio. The 2 sets of Ford tools made this one of the easiest things out of the whole process. I had read about how to remove the two slim trim pieces on next to the head unit, so that was no problem. I put the tools into the holes on the side of the head unit, one side at a time. When all 4 tools had clicked in, I pulled gently outward - towards the sides of the radio - and the head unit literally popped out about 1/2 inch. I used the tools to extract the radio and disconnected the antenna and wire harness leads.

It was surprisingly easy to click in my 2 new harnesses and route the speaker wire back to the trunk, where my new amp was going. All the wires for the amp (drivers' side) and speaker wires (passenger side) went under the trim pieces easily and completely.

I was starting to think that this was all going to be too easy.

I hooked up the power and ground leads to the amp with the battery disconnected. I pig tailed the remote start wire from my existing sub amp to my new one and hooked up the speaker inputs to the amp and back to the factory wire harness.

Firing up the system the first time was a disappointment. I started with all the amp gains fully down. If I raised them to the desired volume level (I know gains aren't a volume control) I ended up gettng some alternator whine with the sound. When I disconnected the signal to the amp, the whine went away, meaing that my amp grounds were ok. I was either getting alternator noise from the speaker wires routed through the car; the grounding of the head unit; or that the gains were just too high.

I tried another Walmart run for an adjustable LOC. It gave me a little more volume than the straight speaker conncetion, but I still was not getting the sound I wanted.

Back went the Walmart LOC.

I then checked with Dave Navone at his web site: http://www.davidnavone.com/index.htm

His recommendation was his N774V adaptor, which he claimed was designed to boost the signal of factory decks, without adding noise.

I ordered one and received the unit a few days later. I installed the unit to the speaker leads and the RCA outputs to my new 4 channel amp.

The 774V has dials on it to adjust the output level. It's specs say it will deliver an output between 0 and 10 volts. I had always read that signal amplification should be as early in the chain as possible, so I set the gains on the 774V to the max. With the amp gains on minimum, I got really good volume.

I wanted more, so I upped the gains on the amp to about 1/3. This gave me as much clean volume as I could tolerate with the factory head unit showing 3-4 marks on the volume scale. My goal was to have my desired listening level at the 1/2 way point on the volume scale, so I've bettered that - with no noise what so ever.

With any install you have to check your work. I adjusted the head unit fader and balance controls to ensure that each speaker was working. 3 of the 4 were, 1 was not. I rechecked the connections to the 774V, the amp RCAs and amp outputs. I connected a spare speaker I had laying around to the dead channel's speaker leads and there was signal coming to the 774V, just no sound coming out of the RCAs of the unit itself.

After disconnecting the 774V altogether, I used my handy multimeter to check for continuity between the speaker leads into the unit and the RCAs out. I found continuity on the three channels that produced sound, nothing on what seemed to be the bad channel.

To be sure, I reconnected the unit again and had the same dead channel. I immediately e-mailed Navone Engineering, requesting a replacement unit. I don't expect to hear back from them until Monday.

I had an extra Y connector from my house stereo, so I split the front output from the 774V to input sound to the front and back channels of the amp, filling in for the dead RCA connection.

This is where the magic started. Excellent crisp, clear sound with not the slightest hint of alternator or other noise in the signal. Bass was outstanding as was detail in the music.

I ran the car with the maximum load on the alternator I could think of. Lights on, fog lamps, air, rear defroster, and wipers all going - still no noise in the signal at all.

I think I'm done with my upgrades. I do need to get a fully functional 774V from Navone and install that; anchor the unit; and tape off butt connectors. Other than that, I don't see upgrading any more in this car.

It has been a fun and rewarding experience. The car is truly easy to work on. Once you get over the apprehension of messing around with a new car, you get the satisfaction of knowing the care that was taken with the install.

I am not even gong to think about how a set of add on tweeters would sound on the triangles next to the rear view mirrors I'm not - I'm not - I'm not...

demoninvictus

*give you your Burger King style paper crown*
you have now graduated Prince Aydu, you are officially now known as an AUDIOPHILE. GREAT job i must say, the same **** that i battled with (and still battle with from time to time....ok, every two days at least). you've done it and greatest thing is, you did the work yourself, you didn't have to pay some jerk to do it for you. trust me, you have 4 eclipse speakers in your car right? just LEAVE THEM ALONE, don't worry about imagining, don't even THINK how great adding another sub would be, just leave it be until it doesn't work for some reason. correct the problem with having to use the y-splitter and whatnot, and you should be fine. eitherwise, we're going to have to force you into Audiophiles Anonymous!!!
peace bro and great work!