Hi, I have a 1993 Del Sol and im starting to prewire for my amplifier that I had ordered off of crutchfield, I am having a hardtime finding a way to feed the wire from the trunk to the middle section of the car. I cannot seem to find any open holes in the "firewall" inside the trunk. any suggestions for that?


Thanks!

 

Well...my friend has a DS and i will ask him how he did it...and I will post it back up here...I could tell you how I ran mine but the body style is totally different. Sorry

 

Try posting this in the audio forum.

 

EDIT:

I just wrote how to for a civic, and completely bypassed the fact that you have a Del Sol. I said fold down the rear seats, but del sols dont have rear seats. I have reading problems I guess.

 

Amplifier install: For the amp install you may need to remove the cover off of the rear power window housing motor unit and run the wires through there. You will need to remove the trunk carpet on the back wall and almost all of the interior cabin rear plastic panels for the car including the rear portion of the center consol. It will take time but don't be intimidated. All you need is patience and a Phillips screw driver. Take your time and pay attention to which plastic panels/parts to pull first. The rear end fits together like a jigsaw puzzle and if you try to take a short cut you may mess up your interior parts. Also I would recommend taking out the seats while doing the job (only four bolts for each seat). That way you can run the RCA lines, amp turn on lead and power cables properly. Your amps ground wire should be connected directly to the chassis preferably with in 3 feet or less from the amp. Don't forget to run the RCA lines on the opposite side of the car from the power cable to avoid noise issues. It sounds like a pain but in the long run you will be happy you took the time to do the job properly.

My amp is installed over the motor box and I've had no problems over the past three years with it installed there. Also if anyone of you has had to replace the factory antenna you know that you have to take apart the whole rear interior to do the job properly. While you have all that rear panel stuff out you may want to upgrade/put in a new power antenna instead of the standard manual one.

Amp recommendations - For the amp I would recommend a four channel amplifier with built in active crossovers. I am still using my old Rockford Punch 160.4. Another brand/model I can vouch for is the Soundstream Extreme 360.4 which I just installed in my brothers pick-up. It is killer and I just bought it at Fry's for under $200! You also can't go wrong with an Orion amp. I would also recommend considering ARC audio amps which are designed by Robert Zeff(former founder of Zapco). Take a look at the FD 4100 and KAR 400.4 or the KAR 600.4. All of the above amps are very reputable companies that don't exaggerate their ratings. You may even find them more powerful than their spec sheet ratings.

Amp shopping tips: Even their entry level amps are nice. When shopping for amps look at the specs and try to find an amp that doubles its RMS power when the impedance drops down to half. Example: if the amp is rated at 20 watts RMS per channel at 4 Ohms it should also put out 40 watts RMS per channel at 2 Ohms. Also forget about THD ratings. Anything under 1% is inaudible. Some of the most expensive amps in the world have poor THD ratings. What you want to look for is the amps Signal to Noise ratio. Anything over 95% S/N ratio is going to sound great. Caution: There is a lot of BS out there coming from sales people putting down other brands saying they aren't made like they used to be made and that certain brands are really made by other companies etc... Some of it may be true but most of it is all BS. It's not always that the sales people are lying they actually believe what they are saying. Somewhere they got the wrong info and you know how things get distorted along the information chain. Others do misinform intentionally often criticizing one of their own lines to steer you to a particular product/brand they want to sell you.

Head unit(CD player)- The proper way to install the head unit involves removing the lower trim piece of the center consol (where the dust cover drop down door is) and the plastic unit of the center consol (where the shift boot is). First remove the center consol storage box piece located at the parking break lever, then remove shift knob (counter clockwise twist). After that you will need to remove the piece that surrounds the stereo (one with the dust cover drop down door is). In order to remove it you will need to pull apart (stretch) the left and right sides of the plastic housing and lift it up and towards you. Take your time in order not to damage the interior. The reason you have to do all of this is because the plastic dust cover door gets in the way when you want to slide in the head unit. Also by doing this you can gain better access to the wiring etc for the job.

Head unit wiring: the best way is to get a factory aftermarket harness from Crutchfield or local stereo shop. This will enable you to do almost all of the wiring in the comfort of your home and if you ever want to sell your car you can easily plug in and slide the factory receiver back in place. The proper way or should I say best way to do the wiring connections is to use soldier and heat shrink. A cheap $8 soldiering iron, rosin core soldier (I recommend narrow gauge soldier 1mm or so) and heatshrink. You'll want to slide the heat shrink on the wire housing first and slide it up out of the way while soldering. Twist the wires together, solder the connection then slide the heat shrink over the connection. Then you can apply a hot air dryer of use a cigarette lighter to shrink the shrink wrap. It may take a little more time but your connections will never go bad. Crimp type terminals can often come apart or short out. Naturally you won't want to connect the speaker terminals on the harness if you are running an external amp. An exception to soldering is the amp turn on lead which is just easier to do in the car with a crimp connector. Another tip is to use some electrical tape to wrap around the RCA connections and antenna leads to avoid any metal from those parts touching the chassis/or other parts.

Also I have noticed on a lot of other forums that people are not sure about the rear factory speaker size and what you can put back there. I went with the Kenwood XR 600 (now replaced by the XR 601). The XR 600 uses a special magnet technology that uses a magnet that is placed on the interior portion of the voice coil. As a result the diameter of the magnet is very small and also the depth of the speaker design is very shallow. The 6.5 speakers fit in the rear stack location without modification. These coaxial also have a tweeter bridge so there is no hole in the middle of the mid-woofer like most coaxils which enables smoother mid-bass. Finally the XR 600 and I believe the XR 601's as well have bi-amp connections. This enables you to access the tweeter and mid-woofer separately like a component set. I found a set of passive ADS two way 12db crossovers on e-bay for about $30. This a custom hifi upgrade option due to the biamp features of the Kenwood XR speakers. I also am running the XR 601's at 80 Hz using the active high pass x-over on my amp. Don't expect a ton of bass in that rear corner factory location. There isn't enough air back there in that tight corner. Most of you bass is going to come from the door panels. I'm currently running MB Quart PSD 216 Premium 6.5" components in the door and they go so low I don't need a subwoofer in the car. For those of you that must have a sub I would recommend the Stealth Box by JL audio. It is about $800 and has two 8" subs. The main benefit is the enclosure which is custom built to fit in the rear area of the Del Sol.

Hope some of you have found this information useful. In most cases I have found that doing the job myself always comes out better than the shop. Most shops can't afford to take the time to do a great job. Those that are will charge you for a competition quality install. If you have any questions feel free to send me an e-mail.