Australian Subaru Liberty(Legacy) '99 Install

[russkev]

Hi guys

I'm currently in the process of upgrading the sound system in my Subaru Liberty RX.

I bought a Alpine X-305 head unit which I have installed already. I'll give a quick run-down on my thoughts on that model now that I've been using it for a week.

Good

• Sound quality is great, definitely a step up from the stock Clarion head unit.
  
• Navigation is top notch, well thought out and has all the sorting options I want.
  
• Cover art is great, I really like being able to know what album I'm listening to at a glance.
  
• Songs load quickly and usually play from where I left off.
  

Bad

• I'm not keen on the chrome, would prefer it if it was all black.
  
• Colour screen is on the right, if I'm sitting in a normal driving position, my hand blocks the screen (see photo). Obviously this won't apply to people in the US.
  
• Sometimes I can't get any audio when playing songs from my iPhone. Last time it happened I tried turning off the deck, the car, changing the source, etc. after doing this in different combinations for a few minutes the sound finally started working again.
  
• Sometimes the head unit doesn't play from where I left off
  

Okay, back to my install log.

I also bought an Alpine MRP F300 amp. My original plan was to power all four speakers with this amp. However, after talking to various people at Tonkins and CarGear, I'm thinking I might just get two good quality splits for the front (instead of fronts and rears) and bridge the amp to power them. I'll keep the rears stock and power them off the head unit.

I want to keep the car looking as stock as possible so I plan to make a circular base out of MDF that fits snuggly inside the spare wheel (see pic). I'll screw the amp to that and use the bolt that holds the wheel down as a grounding point. I saw some pics of a similar setup whilst trawling through the internet and it seemed like a good idea... put the boot carpet back down and there's no sign of any amp.

Pro: I don't have to drill any holes into the car or cut any carpet.
Con: If you do lift up the carpet, it's gonna look pretty messy and I want to try to keep this all as neat as possible.
Now I'll admit I'm not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to car audio, so this might not be the best idea. The guy at CarGear suggested I one of the bolts that hold the rear seat down.

Despite the fact that I'm not really a fan of Sony's car audio gear, I bought a Sony 8 gauge wiring kit. The RCAs looked better quality then anything else in the store and it seems more complete then the other brands (i.e. it comes with cable ties, speaker wire, etc.).

I like pictures so I thought I'd post these up.

My next step will be to get some decent front component speakers. I was going to go with the Focal 165VRs but then I read through more forums and the Boston Pro60s started looking pretty tempting. Apparently the sound quality is on par but they have better mid-bass. The thing is, it seems the only way I can get the Boston Pro60s is via the internet. This means no testing before hand. I can go out and try Focals at my local Tonkins on the other hand. (I've done this and they do sound pretty amazing).

Later I want to get (in no particular order):

PTX-H100 Imprint sound processor.

Higher capacity ipod

KTX-550iD to neatly store my ipod

Dynamat

Small sub

Amp for small sub.

I intend to post pictures of the installation in progress and I'm keen to get some input from you guys.

Click to read more...

 

[IDSkoT 5,000+ posts]

You have mail. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/fyi.gif.9f1f679348da7204ce960cfc74bca8e0.gif

 

[DB-Audio 10+ year member]

nice head unit forgot for a sec that you guys are right side drivers

 

[caps]

subscribed

 

[russkev]

Okay, I kept my mate up till 4am helping me install the amp but it was definitely worth it (for me anyway), there is a significant improvement in sound quality even though I'm running stock speakers. I took lots of work in progress photos to show the steps I took so watch out if you're on dial-up.

First I had to find a suitable route for the power wire. After looking around on the internet I found that there were to good options: I could either route the wire around the engine bay and through a grommet on the opposite side of the battery or I could pull the mud guard off and route the wire behind it. I chose the latter because I wanted to make the power wire as short as possible.

Power wire with in-line fuse. I cable tied the fuse to another conduit, it feels pretty secure.

Where the wire exits the engine bay behind the mud guard. Red wire is the power wire visible behind the plastic conduit. The surround for the hole is green.

The hole where a grommet usually sits. I fed the wire through and it was easy to grab from the other side after pulling back the carpet.

The advantage of using 8 gauge wire: it snaps perfectly into clips already available in the car. I simply removed the trim at the appropriate places and clipped the wire in.

I removed the lower section of the back seat and fed the wire up into the boot. Now it was simply a matter of crimping a ring terminal to the end of the wire, ready for the amp.

I didn't check but I remember reading something about the fuel pump wire running down the other side of the car so I chose the center line. Simply a matter of unscrewing/unclipping all the center bits and running the wires (remote turn on, RCAs and speaker wires) down. The hardest part was feeding the wires underneath the carpet near the back seats, it was pretty tight.

Pulling the ski port down made it easy feed the wires to the boot. I soldered the new speaker wire to the stock speaker wire where it came out at the deck. I decided that I would re-wire the speakers properly when I got new ones.

It was getting late and I had to cut and re-solder the bloody remote turn-on wire four times because of stupid mistakes... not fun.

 

[russkev]

I took the door trim off before deciding it was too late and not really worth wiring the new speaker wire all the way. Those yellow clips were the most difficult to remove the trim from. I'll have to take the panel off again soon because I can hear something rolling around in there.

After cable tying everything, the amp fits pretty snugly into the spare wheel. Sitting on top of an old jumper for now, will buy some MDF later.

I'm happy with the wiring, it's not too messy but I can remove the amp easily if I need to get to the spare wheel.

This is where NOT to ground the amp, it turns out that the hole is for a plastic clip that holds in the boot trim.

This is better.

The amp works beautifully now, next step is some MDF to screw the amp to, then new speakers.