...and no clue.

Hello, there. This will count as my second thread ever. (Yay me!) And I friggin' love my car. I lived underfoot of my father and learned a lot, as it turns out. Enough to not be scared of getting a little dirty from time to time in the name of saving all the money. Plus, I like making broke stuff unbroken. It's pretty satisfying when everything turns out right.

Anyway, as told in my title, I got a new generic android HU for christmas and a crunch 1500.4 amplifier, then santa decided to bestow a set of Blaupunkt 360watt 4 way coaxials as well. Having never so much as installed a single thing electrical beyond a dome light in a vehicle in my life, but being extremely tech savvy in the ways of building arduino/esp32 microcontroller gadgets and PCs, I was not very intimidated if only just inexperienced, so I started with the radio.

And I take it back! I "stole" the stereo out of the hot tub so I'd at least have an aux input, but was foiled by it being ultra staticky, so I opted to leave it in and order a fancy BT transmitter which held me over for a couple months till it croaked in a disappointingly UNTIMELY way. So putting in the new android unit wasn't completely foreign to me when I did it. everything worked great, except, for whatever reason, it would only work if my headlight switch was clicked in any setting. Weird, but whatever. it worked. I would figure out the issue as I continued to build my system. Hindsight tells me, in light of the knowledge I have gained thus far, that I had the wrong remote wire, but in my defense, I didnt even know there was an amplifier at the time, nor what a remote wire even was.

Then, after about a month or so, and coincidentally directly after doing and oil and filter change, I had no sound whatsoever. I don't know if it had anything to do with it being dependent upon my headlight switch, or the fact that the stereo was insistant upon auto bluetoothing. Even hostile about taking over my phone when I was trying to learn how to reset the oil change mileage counter and I was getting aggro, so I deleted all the connection memory in my phone to the stereo to make it stop. With extreme hostility in return. LOL

Whatever the case, nothing I checked, fuses, wire connections, nothing would make my speakers work, so I pulled the stereo and did an external connection to one of the new speakers to see if the HU was still good and I got sound from all outputs, concluding that it must've been the amp. I could have pulled out the circuit tester and methodically checked voltages and continuities, but figured heck with it. I have that crunch amp, so I started gathering all the wire diagrams and read all the threads I could get my eyeballs on till I felt ready, and commenced install the first several free minutes I had in a row.Then lather, rinse, repeat, as this would be ongoing and not straightforward despite doing my homework.

I never realized how much of my mood relied on having that music playing on my drive to work. And it was an uphill both ways in the snow carring my siblings on my back barefoot battle to get the amp installed, fused, powered, grounded, connected (CORRECTLY! Emphasis on this bit.) and the new door speakers blasting beautiful death metal. And this time around I had to intentionally split a fuse port in the internal fuse panel, opting to use my headlight switch to manually send power signal to the amp because the damned blue wire on the head unit DIDN'T FRIGGIN WORK. I troubleshot that till the cows came home and thought I was losing my mind. (I am, but this has been ongoing since long before the stereo came along). I then found out others had similar issues with the remote wire not working out of the box on different models, but similar. I mean, it's cheap, rebranded chinese hardware. Not my first rodeo with this stuff by far. So I made my own fix, and chose this way because I was already used to having to turn the headlights on, and it was an easy solution to having to reset the amp when it would go into protection mode, another issue I was trying to work out. And I did . (Yay me again!) And it just occurred to me why I had a different wire connected to turn on the stereo. The correct one didn't work and I must've found one that did. Derp!

It really warmed my heart to have that cookie monster vocal growling through my bitchen speakers like crushed glass in my ear holes. I "skillfully" *cough* managed to stereo bridge getting the full power out of them reducing 4 to 2 ohm and even heard the difference between straight stereo and bridged. Major power boost, and could now violate my eardrums at will on my way to work and anyone else's who foolishly chose to use an adjacent lane to mine, since I was driving topless today. (No, the convertible top.) It really got things off on the right foot, but my current problem now is I cannot wrap my tiny mind around how to connect the dual subs with their 4 wires per channel. I understand the dual voice coils, the concept of bridging or can fake my way through it well enough. I have a bridgeable amp and two whole channels just for the subs. I have the pinout of the 18 pin output connector. In fact, I have two versions of it. One just says right rear 1(+) left rear 2(-), left rear 1(-), etc. And the service manual has some of them labeled differently like right rear amplified (+) and left rear gnd, left rear voltage, left rear (-), etc and the diagram doesn't show anything special about how to run them, just pin numbers, wire colors and all 4 going to the speaker. I cannot figure out what the heck to do with these to make noise come out of them if you paid me. Do I jump pin ports?

If I can be given a hint that would allow me to use the 18pin connector, as I have purchased the female version of it and its crimpy pins so I can build a custom bypass and right now have 2.3mm spades crimped on the ends of the speaker wire temporarily till concept can be proven, your hints would save me from self inflicted baldness. And I kinda like my hair. And I would prefer to use the existing wire since I have already run the connecting wire from the amp to the 18pin port, if at all possible. I have been at this a while, and I am pretty proud of what I have done so far, how I have hidden the wires and broken very little plastic, (rewelded or printed that which I did break, none the wiser) but if I have to rip out my interior yet again for the umpteenth time because of my crash course diy methodology (it's how I learn best) I am gonna lose my cool. And likely some hair, as well. lol

Your wisdom is MUCH appreciated. Sorry for the novella. Just wanted to make sure it was understood that I did my due diligence before asking for help. While thoroughly detailing the situation. I know how some forums can be, particularly tech head forums. Lemmy forbid you should omit a detail in your setup you don't believe to be relevant. But I get a good feeling here. People are kinder here. Anyhow, Thanks again for whatever wise car audio words you can generously bestow upon me. And for the record, I am not totally against direct wiring, but I'm here now and would prefer not to rip more of my car apart. I kind of miss it looking pretty, instead of pretty hoopty. ya know?

Amaris

 

When you say the 18 pin connector you are referring to the connector that goes to the back of the head unit? And you are making an adapter to go from your power amp to the existing wiring?




BTW, I pulled out your most quotable quotes as I found your very long post quite amusing.

I too have a goal of making people regret picking the lane next to me while I play punk music or classical beats. I want my revenge on lame hip hop while sitting at a gas station. LOL

 

I'm referring to the OEM 18pin amplifier output connector. There is also the 12pin input, if that has any significance. It's possible I may even use that if the 375watt per channel on the new amp is too much and I can't reduce it properly. The HU as a digital preamp of 50watts per channel, supposedly. I already have the front speakers tapped into the 18pin oem output connector through the new amp which is connected to the headunit via a single pair of RCAs. The HU has only one pair of left right outputs, although it recognizes left, right, front, and rear fading and stereo is in fact stereo. There is also a single RCA for mono sub, two single RCA video inputs, one triggered by the reverse lights, one for dashcam, and one video output I'm guessing for an alternative external recording device, because it has also a USB port on the back, I assume, for expanded storage. Oh and a mic input. I have yet to get to all these features as every spare moment I have for this has gone to the music. And the instruction manual was pitiful. 4 pages of microscopic text in poorly translated English. It's also missing, but was useless for my needs anyway.

 

Also, sorry about the length. I've had my head bitten off enough times for not enough information which I always found to be counterproductive to a HELP forum, but you live, you learn and eventually it conditions a person into pedantic detailing so I thought I could at least try to make it worth reading. Thanks, by the way.

 

OK there is a lot to unpack in the above. While words are great, sometimes it's better to speak in pictures. And, more specifically, when it comes to wiring diagrams. I think it would help me and other who might help on this thread to have a your new AMP and HU wiring diagrams.

The head unit will have several outputs. Typically I have seen the RCA to the power AMP as well as the 4 pairs directly to the speakers giving you stereo and front back fade.

As for the 375 amps, more power is great, but there comes a point you can over drive the speakers. Why you need the amps? It's not to drive the speakers loud, it's to drive the speakers correctly. A lot people think the amps (power) are there to make it loud, yes it's true, but the amps are there to move the speaker cone correctly to follow the music waveform. Music is just an analog signal that moves very quickly. For example middle A is at 400Hz. That means the speaker cone has move back and forth quickly (vibrate) and each stroke of that movement can be measured. Just one vibration at 400Hz is 2.5 milliseconds. So it take power to move the speaker cone from from front to back. Distortion comes from not having enough power to move the speaker when it switches direction. So when you are driving the speaker very loud, that means the cone is moving further and those direction changes are hard. Just imaged hitting the accelerator in your car full on, then hitting the brake right away and putting it reverse at full speed.

 

Apologies for the late reply. We shut down our food truck business and had a block party to see it off. It was more work than work. Here's to my new future in welding. Anyway.... Here is the back of the stereo. As well as both ends of the amp. I am also aware of how the amp works, Ohms resistance in both max and average. (I build gadgets in my spare time from base components and pcbs, so I understand quite a bit about electronics and computers, just not engineering levels of understanding) As you can see, 3 of the RCAs are video-- 2 in, 1 out. 1 for sub, and 2 for left and right audio output. Then a mic for voice control, antenna, and the typical wiring harnesses A and B, each 8 pin








Here is my setup thus far. I Have two speaker wires (L/R) coming off my amp for each side, but the dual coils come out as 4 wires, then the wires (all 4) go through the oem amp (RIP) via the 18pin connector, they come out as pairs via the 12pin to the stereo. Whatever happens inside the amp, I don't know and haven't had the motivation to crack it open even to see what its problem is. I will, but I have like twenty (+/-) gadget projects and repairs pending parts as it is. I would prefer to tap into the existing 18pin wiring harness so I don't have to rip out the carpeting again. Plus I already ran the wires to the front. I'm not totally against re running it straight from the amp, but would really not prefer it. It's already in triple digit temps here in Vegas. BUT the amp has limiting in both frequency range (high pass/ low pass) and power level if I had to. Or I can use the A or B harness, whichever one it is, on the back of the stereo, but I still won't know how to do that with the 4 wires each side due to conflicting information. The names of the wires are labeled in the diagram as per the car's repair manual. This image is quite large if you need to open it in another window to view it.


I hope I have addressed everything. Thanks again.
side note after previewing post, apparently, my resizing of the photos didn't stick and I haven't used old school forum tools in ages, (not since my online radio station) but I worked on this post for a couple hours, so I'm done lol

 

I also realize I describe the wiring from speakers to stereo backwards. The amp splits the signal to go to each coil, so it outputs as 4 wires. not outputs to stereo as pairs.