Install questions of new deck and/or speakers

[mrsteve]

Okay when I installed my Pioneer 4100 the stock amp was not bypassed. Turner I am assuming you have a Pioneer deck cause they put out 45x4 peak. If you turn it up past like 12-13 you will hear lots of distortion. That's cause the pioneer is sending more power to the stock amp the the amp puts out. I bypassed the the stock amp about 3 months after I got the head unit because I was putting in new speakers. I could get a much higher volume after the bypass and the sound was much clearer.

Brian you are considering the Pioneer 1100. That headunit doesn't have the MOSFET chip so it only puts out 17x4 RMS and 40x4 peak. I would consider the Pioneer 2100 to get more power especially because you want to install those Alpines. They can take 50 watts RMS. That's more than both of those decks put out at peak power. The problem with this is that your bass response will not be great or not as good as it would be with an aftermarket amp. Now I am pretty sure you don't want to spend the money for that so I don't know if I would recomend putting in the Alpines. They'll sound better than the stock speakers but when you turn it up you will hear more of the woofer actually moving than you will hear and feel the bass because the speaker is being under powered. Under powering the speaker will also shorten it's life.

 

[Brian1]

I am now going to go with a Kenwood CD deck. It has 45 watts x4. The guy at Circuit City said it would probably be around $30 extra for parts. I am going to get it installed probably tomorrow. Later on I will probably bypass the factory amp myself but first I will see what the sound is like.

Mrsteve, I will take your advice for now about the Alpine speakers (they were free anyway) so I won't install em'.

[Edited by Brian1 on 08-10-2000 at 03:09 PM]

 

[wabbit]

Brian,
If Circuit City has their "poop in a group", they will probably do the factory amp bypass during your install.
Check with them and see... That harness and the in-dash adapter harness are probably the extra parts they are referring to.
Bypassing the factory amp is nothing mystical or magical. It is just making sure your in-dash unit's "however many watts RMS or peak" are going directly to the speakers...
Good luck.

 

[Turner55]

i think i'm gonna try it just to give me something to do...one more question to make sure...the amp is located in the rear on the passenger side...right? like in the wayy back

hey if it is in the way back i have no idea how to get the paneling off...i just took a look at it and it has all these things that arent screws but little...i dont know how to describe them...they look like they help hold the panel on but they arent screws...i dont know how to get those off
plus, if i have to take it off it looks like the whole rear side on the two door is one panel...there's no way i could take that off
hey i really appreciate the help guys

(as usual)

[Edited by Turner55 on 08-10-2000 at 08:14 PM]

 

[Skippman]

Skippman to the rescue!

Ok, here's the deal. The factory amp is located over the passangers side rear wheel well under the panelling. You can remove the panelling with somthing called a "Panel Pulling Tool". Whats that? Glad you asked. It's a big, forked screwdriver. I used a really big Klien regular screwdriver. The plastic "rivits" for lack of a better term, will pop free with some upward presure. This holds true for most of the panels in the Explorer. When your done, they pop right back. No big deal.

 

[Brian1]

It's installed!

I had the Kenwood KDC215S installed by Circuit City. It took the guy 30 minutes to install it. The factory amp was not bypassed and the sound is great. He said I would need to bypass the factory amp if I installed better speakers so I am going to leave it as is.

 

[Turner55]

cool brian...i like those kenwoods
skip, so do i have to take the whole panel off? the panel's like as big as from right behind the front seat all the way to the back as far as i can tell...do i have to take the whole thing off or can i just pop a few rivets and reach under there?
thanks for the help

 

[Skippman]

It's been a little while since I worked back there, I did it all at one time (removing the factory amp, installing my 2 new amps, and the MTX Thunderform) but if I'm not mistaken the whole thing has to come off because of how far to the center of the pannel it is. Sorry

 

[Turner55]

holy crap...that's a lot of panel!
how do you get around the seat belts?

 

[wabbit]

panel removal....

You'll need to remove the bolt that hold the seat belt shoulder strap. It's a torx 50 but you can probably get it with vise grips or channel locks. Also, remove the cargo cover mount bracket. Find the screws just under the carpet along the bottom edge of the panel. Also, unscrew the hook above the door. After you're sure you got all the screws, the plastic rivets should just pop out.

 

[Turner55]

alright, i've got it now...i'll get around to it whenever i have a lot of time on my hands...thanks for the help skip and wabbit...i appreciate it

 

[JTang]

Extra cost for the install stuff will run you about $30. $15 for the wiring harness and $15 for the mounting plate, unless you're lucky enough to have a radio thats face fits perfectly like the Alpines. However, regardless, if you go to one of those big name places, they'll probably sell it to you anyway. This is because the people out front don't really know what fits and what doesn't like the installers, so they're usually just going to sell it to you anyway.

They SHOULD bypass the factory amp, but they probably won't. Those free installs are usually whatever gets you out the fastest. However, there seems to be some confusion. The problem is with the various RMS values that each person has in their radio and going to or bypassing their amplifier. The harness that you will buy (or get free from Crutchfield) simply connects your powered outs directly into the amplifier signal inputs.

The difference in replies to if you should bypass, or if it doesn't matter depends on the output of your head unit. This is because if your amp is NOT bypassed, it's amplifying an already amplified signal. In many cases, people are buying higher powered RMS output head units, and because of this, like most free installs, the amp is not bypassed, and therefore, the sound is greatly distorted because it's amplifying a highly amplified signal. This is when bypassing the amp is more important. For people like me who have a head unit with a really low RMS value, that hardly puts out any power, yes it's still an amplified signal that's going to be reamplified a second time, but the signal is so low, it's closer to an RCA level signal (relatively). Therefore, because my signal is so weak from the head unit, I have had no real problems with distortion.

As a reminder, too high of an input signal into an amplifier can shorten its lifespan, besides the possibility that you might get distortion at higher levels. But that would just give you a good reason to buy a new amp anyway!

 

[RobbieJ]

Hey Brian In Albuquerque I'd reccomend Ultimate Electronics I buy all of my electronics there including the stuff of my explorer. I have an Alpine Deck Infinity kappa 5x7's in the doors a kenwood amp and a 10" bass tube with a soundstream sub. It sounds good. I know more then most guys about this stuff so if you need any help let me know.
Robbie J BarJ44@aol.com
Albuquerque NM

 

[Byrd91]

Hey guys, here is some stuff to think about.

1. I installed my own Pioneer head unit about a year ago, with factory speakers, and did not bypass the factory amp. The unit was 45x4 max power. When I turned it up to about 20 (out of 30) I started getting distortion, thought maybe I should bypass amp.

2. I manually bypassed amp(pain in the ass)using the wire diagram somewhere on this site. What I found was that I could now turn my head unit all the way up with no distortion. BUT, the volume was much lower than when the speakers were driven by the factory amp. And the door speakers were now supplying bass, not the sub in the rear. I seemed the head unit was also working much much harder now(display flickering when bass thumped). This sounds different than what some have experienced, maybe my head unit is weak, but that's what I experienced.

Any input back would be appreciated.

 

[Mike 92 XLT]

Hey Jason

From your reference to "the sub in the back," I'm assuming you have the JBL system. For the JBL system, you need to utilize the factory amps, not bypass them. Peripheral Electronics makes an adapter specifically for the Ford/JBL system that takes the speaker level outputs of your aftermarket head unit and converts that into a line level signal that it sends to the factory amps. Most car stereo places have this adapter. It looks like a standard wiring harness but has a little gray box with gain controls attached to it. This is what I did when I put in my CD player a few years ago, before I totally redid the system.

peace

Mike