I have a 1995 altima which has been passed down through both my brothers and I was wondering if someone can point me in the right direction of what I should buy to get this car's sound system to work.
One problem is I don't know the watts of the subwoofer. It's a box with 2 10? inch JL Audio subs.
The amp is a Olympus VIII 440watt 4 channel amplifier. Seen here
The speakers in the car one day died out on me when I was blasting music. The speakers inside the car now sound like a shitty 1950s radio. Yet the subwoofer is still working.
So I opened up the hood to check the inline fuse holder for the gauge wire? or whatever it's called. The fuse holder had been melted and damaged.
Should I get a new gauge wire? with the fuse holder and what kind of wire should I get because I am not sure of the watts of the sub. I also have a really old battery that's corroding, should that be replaced also?
Okay...
First tell us... what is the Head Unit? The HU is the stereo in your dashboard?
Those cables are called RCA's. They take a line level signal from the HU to the amplifier. They come in pairs, one for right, one for left signal. That is a four channel amp so you can hook up two pairs. In your case you would drive the Left and Right component speakers with the first 2 channels, then the subs with the 3rd and 4th channels. Which on your amp are called "A", meaning a pair, and "B" pair. "A" is channels 1&2, "B" is channels 3&4.
Did your brother have another amp for the sub?
The first thing you should do is disconnect the negative terminal from your main battery. Always keep this disconnected when working on your cars electrical or stereo. Then install the speakers and amp where you want them. Read the stickies at the top of the installation forum on how to install them correctly. Good installation makes the difference between bad and good sound quality and reliablity. Solder and heatshrink all connections. Learn how to make good crimps in 4 gauge wire, etc. Do not connect power yet.
Second. Run speaker cables from the speakers to the outputs of the amps. Left and right to channels 1&2 (A pair) outputs, and the subs to channels 3&4 (B pair) outputs. (Look at the back side of the amp for the speaker outputs.) Show me a pic of the back of the amp.
Next run an RCA cable from the the HU to the amp crossover inputs (on the far right). Does your HU have more than one pair of outputs? Many now have several pairs. Tell us what they say. If you have a SUBwoofer output, then run another RCA cable from that to the "B" channels.
If not, then you will run a short RCA from the crossover HIGH outputs, to the "A" channel inputs and another RCA cable from the LOW outputs to the "B" channel inputs. "A"'s are your front/main speakers, and "B"s are your subs.
There are 2 buttons on the left. They should both be in the "in" position. Not in the out position. Using a small screwdriver, gently turn the dials counter clockwise all the way until they stop. You will turn them back up later after you get everything hooked up.
The crossover dial on the right is set a little high just above 150hz, that's fine, or I would turn it counter clockwise a little more to just above 75 hz. This adjusts the frequency point where your main speakers are crossed off to stop the bass from the main speakers and directs the bass to subs.
There should also be a "Remote" wire input on the back of the amp. Hopefully your head unit also has a remote wire output. Install a small 1/2 amp fuse in a small inline fuse holder (less than 1 dollar) near the HU and run a wire the HU remote out to the amp remote input. A thin 18 gauge wire run along next to your RCA wires is fine.
Only once you have all this hooked up correctly, then you can run power. You will need a good guality heavy 4 gauge copper wire and 80 amp fuse holder and some crimp type rings. Buy a 4 gauge amp wire kit off of
ebay or from
http://www.knukonceptz.com/ . It may or may not come with some more RCA wires. If you do get RCA's they may already have the remote wire built into the RCA cable.
Hook up a short piece of the 4 gauge wire to a bolt into the chassis of the car or install a new screw with washer into the metal of the car within 2 feet of the amplifier. Scrape away the paint to be sure you are well connected to bare metal. Be carefull not to drill into anything important like a brake line or gas tank. This is the "ground" or negative connection for the amp. Then run a 4 gauge wire to the main car battery. When you pass thru sheet metal, like thru a whole in the fire wall, or sharp corners you will need to add rubber grommets, to the wire, to protect the metal from cutting into the wire. It could set fire to your car, so this is really important. Just 12 inches before you get to the battery, you will install that 80 amp fuse holder, but leave the fuse out. Then run another short peice of the 4 gauge wire from the fuse to the battery terminal.
Now everything should be hooked up, except the main car battery is disconnected and your main fuse is missing. Reconect your main car battery. Turn the car on and test the radio. It should work normally, except your new amp is not working. If everything is working and nothing is smoking, turn the radio volume down and then off, turn off the car and disconnect the main battery negative terminal again, install your main 80 amp fuse, then reconnect the main battery terminal. Turn the car on, turn the radio on, slowly turn up the volume to about 3/4 full volume.
Now take that same small screw driver and slowly turn up the gain dials on the left side of the amp. Turn up the first one until you hear the main speakers distort, then turn it back down a little. Then turn up the second dial until you hear the subs distort, then turn it back down a little. Now listen to all the speakers and make sure everything is working right.
Done.
ETA:
If you show me a pic of the back of the amp I can tell you if you can bridge the subs, which would give you a little more power.
