ICE FAQ - work in progress

All, please feel free to add links etc to this thread and then I will tify it up into the one ICE FAQ.

Here goes:-
General

Most coupes came equipped with Clarion Radio Cassettes. A fair few also had CD changers in 6 or 12 disk configuration.

Note that the Clarion CD changers are not compatible with ANY other manufacturer head units. And they are not compatible with newer Clarion head units either (without an expensive adapter).

Head Unit Connection

The head unit slots is a standard ISO 1 slot
The wires are set out like this

Standard Clarion Headunit FAQ


Standard Clarion units wre the 7310 or the 7373 (confirmation reqd)

Getting rid of news alerts:-
Push the TA button so that TA is not lit to get rid of the traffic reports and hold down PTY for longer than 2 seconds so that PTY is not lit to lose the news

The wiring is via two DIN standard sockets.

One caries the power and electric Aerial feed (used to power the aerial booster)
The other carries all the speaker wires.

There are two power wires. One permanent (to maintain the Head unit memory) and another which on most cars is switched but in standard form on the coupe this is permanent too.

A popular mod is to change the second feed to be switched and this prevents accidentally leaving the radio on and flattening the battery.

Front Speakers

Size 16.5cm

Here is a nice Front speaker install and has a great how to for a discreet boot sub.


Rear speakers

Standard units are terrible and mounted to the trim card. They can be replaced with 6x9s mounted quickly like this.

Or by making some MDF panels you can also fit 16.5cms two way units.

Or if you add edead or dynamat they will look like these:- pic 1 pic 2


Routing power wire to the amp in the boot:-

see here

Speaker wire

Top tip is to buy from Richer sounds and get a reasonable quality cable. Cheaper than specialist car shops Clicky

Installs

Here is a nice set of install pics from the Swedish Coupe site. No need to speak the lingo either.

Sub Install

Alistairs sub box here


John

Things you might want to mention about:

- Standard HU has multiple outputs, including front/rear aux cables, subwoofer adjustment, external equaliser (although I've never met anyone that had one)
- Install a good thick gauge power cable for an amp (and it can also be used as a feed for fuel pump mods.
- Installing dynamat(or other products) in boot, door cards, rear panels. My coupe has a large subwooder (think its 15 but could be bigger ) and suffers slightly from boot vibration.
- The boot can house a large sub and amp, but the hatch is quite small, and access to the spare wheel might be compromised with semi permanent installs.

Oh you also mention about the integrated aerial (in rear windscreen) with booster - which is a bit pants.

At the South E meet a few weeks back we were talking about cars with external aerials. Can't remember exactly what the conclusion was, but Webbo definately had an external one.

UK cars have these std fitted Clarion's. Other markets had none or other head units.

General housekeeping rules when installing a sound system:

1) Run the power cables and the RCA cables on separate sides of the car.
2) The remote cable (usually blue / white stripe) runs from the HU to tell the amp to turn on. This cable is usually attached to the RCA cables in your amp wiring kit. Detach it from the RCA's and run the remote cable along side the main power cable.
3) The Coupe does not have a switched ignition wire to the HU. Simple solution was to spliced the HU switched live into the cig lighter switched live (red / yellow cable).


I've recently installed a second amp in my car and had two problems.

Alternator whine - caused by a ground loop.
This was a loud whine in which increased with the speed of the engine. A ground loop is when more than one earthing point is used in the car.

To remove this problem I applied the following:
1) Tightened the ground on the amp
2) Increased the amount of ground cable which was in contact with the bare metal of the chassis.
3) Ran a separate ground wire from the amp and spliced it into the ground wire at the headunit.

Speakers popped with the ignition turning on.
This is caused by the amps getting power the instant the ignition is on, rather than when the HU is turned on.

The problem was I spliced the remote cable into the cig lighter ignition switched live. I removed the remote cable from the cig lighter ignition switch and used the correct cable from the back of the HU.

Now I have a whine and pop free set up.

It took me a few days of searching to find the solution to these two problems, so I thought I'd post them up for all to see. This website was very helpful.

Sound proofing makes quite a lot of difference, inside and out. Not only do you have less rattles, road noise and better sound quality but from the outside your not advertising to everyone that you have an expensive stereo. I used two layers in mine one layer on the body panels and a second layer on the inner 'skin' of the doors and rear quarter panels.



I used this stuff, silent coat it was pretty easy to use and a fair bit cheaper than dynamat.

This is a good place for cross overs when using component speakers

I'll ask the guys who are fitting my stereo to take some pics of my setup, as I believe I'm doing a few things others have done, but arent usually mentioned on here.

Ross

Ok couple of things from my install completed today.

I've installed genesis 6x9 subs in the rear quarters, surrounded by silent coat to create a surround for each sub.

I've ran an alpine 4 channel bridged for my 2 front powerbass speakers.

When I say I've, I mean Audiowise installed the stuff I supplied. They fitted an alpine sub amp under the drivers seat also. Means there is no extra space utilised. Means I still have my full boot and plenty of bass and front sound.

Im really really happy with this. In comparison to having a 10' sub in the boot, it's not got the teeth rattling effect, but as it's in the cabin the bass is very sufficient for listening to anything from rock to dance.

Here is some pics of the amps. Didn't get pics of the rear quarters. Will sort some pics when I get a chance to remove rear trim.

Here is pics of front amps.




Ross