Bginvestor's Audio Install Day #3

[bginvestor]

Made a lot of progress in the last week! I’ll call it Day #3 since it pretty much took a full working day to get to this point.

I got the system running! I don’t have my door speakers yet (back ordered), but I was able to test the 10” Infinity Kappa woofers out. Nice clean and power bass! The subthump box is awesome. Fits and sounds great.

Got the 3Sixty.1 programmed with the laptop and I have no buzzing, popping, or alternator noise. The ultimate test will be when I have my Infinity door speakers installed.

Overall, so far, so good, very happy.

On to the pics!

The correct way to run door wires.

Of course this is my opinion, but the secret to running the wires painlessly is to take as much harness out of the vehicle so there is no bend in the rubber boots!

Below, shows the passenger front door. I removed the connector from the door jab and removed the white retaining clip that holds the boot. Once when the rubber boot is STRAIGHT, is was very easy to run wire through it. It takes some time to remove the harness from the vehicle since there’s several clips, but it was worth it!

In the second pic, I show the rear passenger door. I actually used a different method that was mentioned in a ROC thread, but I did not like it that much. I jammed a hollow plastic tube (as shown in the pic) in the boot to straighten it out. Than you can run the wires through it, however, this was dangerous because I could have damaged some of the wires. To do this right, you need some kinda of lubricant to gently slide the tube in, however, I didn’t know what to use without causing some potential wire material degradation issues.

Note: The plastic clip is not too difficult to remove, but easy to damage. I broke one of the four tabs because I used too much force. Be patient and gently use a screw driver to bend the tabs to remove.

Once when the boot was straight, it was easy to run wire, no problem!

I’m dreading the front driver’s side door and have not done this one yet. This can be a whole different animal since the connectors are different. I plan to remove as much harness away from the vehicle before running the wire. I’ll report on that later.

[bginvestor]

Here’s the naked front passenger door, with the cheap a$$ speakers. I’ll show before and after pics when I get the mat, speakers, and Insolite installed.

Any suggestions on best mounting locations for the component speaker cross-overs?

[bginvestor]

The FAST-1721 (part bought directly by www.bazooka.com) connector did not fit the 2007 RTS Ridge with CD. I was warned about this from another thread on the ROC, however, I had no idea how painful it was going to be to modify it. I spent over an hour with a Dremel shaving down 8 edges and creating two slots. The overall connector pattern was correct, however, the alignment edges were all honked up. I was really nervous that I would damage a pin in the HU. There goes a $500 part! If I had to do this again, I would have to say it’s not worth it to avoid splicing the OEM harness. Not the best approach. I think the only other option is the Parrot T-harness used for their products.

I will contact Bazooka’s tech support about this. It was a pain.

In addition, Bazooka said that their connector only had 16 pins out of 20. Actually, its 20 pins out of 20. Why doesn’t Bazooka know their own product?

At least everything works. I slid the modified connector into the HU the first time and prayed to the Audio gods while doing it. I think a couple of drops of sweat dropped onto my new seats.

[bginvestor]

Finished harness and completed a continuity check. It was perfect! (as long as you didn’t see my solder work)

I kept cracking my self up because half the time I forgot to add the shrink tubing to the wire before soldering! Arghh.

[bginvestor]

Either it’s the manuals or reading all of the ROC threads, but working on the Ridge has not been that bad. I think I only wanted to beat the truck up only a couple of times. Removing the dash panel was straightforward, I take a screw driver and lift up on some notches on the lower edge of the panel and gently pop the clips around the circumference. The HU removes easily with five fasteners.

The second pic shows my installed T-harness. Notice I have my wires going to two separate connectors. Those wires (only two) will be used by the 3sixty.1 for high level Sub inputs. The other purple wires going to the other main harness are for front and rear high level inputs.

I made sure to use some Insolite to wrap the wires up from moving around. Of course everything is wired tied to keep the harness in place.

Last pic shows the rear view of the CD HU out of my RTS.

[bginvestor]

The chosen ground location. Just a few inches from the AMP and you never have to remove it again.

The last pic is my new box with the Kappa speaker. I lov,lov this box and speaker. I can tell that the Raammat is working, I have zero rattles in the truck. The bass is very clean, I’m impressed.

[bginvestor]

The 3sixty.1 performed like a champ! I will write more about the tuning process and add more pics but I wanted to sneak in a picture of the “before and after” frequency response of the front outputs. The software automatically eq’ed the FRF to have as flat response (from 20-<20 KHz) as possible. Check out the pic below. Big improvement.

If I had money to burn I would buy the 3sixty.2 since you have much more control, but it appears the 3sixty.1 is perfect for a clean OEM signal conversion.

So far, it sounds great considering the old stock speakers are installed. I am so happy that there are no buzzing sounds, the careful wire layout helped.

The Bluetooth is awesome, connects very quickly. After I put the back seat in again, I should be able to use the Bluetooth without any problems.

Note: One comment about access to audio equipment behind the seat, I found out that you can take apart the top portion of the middle plastic panel of the back seat and be able to pull it back and to give you access to the back space area. The 3sixty.1 is close to this area, but if I had an Amplifier mounted just right, I could adjust the cross-overs very easily without taking out the back seat. I’ll post a pic to illustrate.

So, to finish the project I basically have to run wire to the driver’s side doors, install all door speakers, mat, wrap up with Insolite, install some of the panels, and I’m basically finished.

Any questions?

[shovelhd]

Originally Posted by bginvestor

Note: One comment about access to audio equipment behind the seat, I found out that you can take apart the top portion of the middle plastic panel of the back seat and be able to pull it back and to give you access to the back space area. The 3sixty.1 is close to this area, but if I had an Amplifier mounted just right, I could adjust the cross-overs very easily without taking out the back seat. I’ll post a pic to illustrate.

I hear ya. I can adjust the gains for my Eclipse amp by squeezing a long blade #1 screwdriver between the seat and the seat back. I have a remote gain up front for the sub.

How did you route the driver's side speaker wire through the door sill?

That's a nice looking response curve. Once you get the door speakers in and you run the program again, how much can you tweak the response?

Nice work!

[bginvestor]

Originally Posted by shovelhd

I hear ya. I can adjust the gains for my Eclipse amp by squeezing a long blade #1 screwdriver between the seat and the seat back. I have a remote gain up front for the sub.

How did you route the driver's side speaker wire through the door sill?

That's a nice looking response curve. Once you get the door speakers in and you run the program again, how much can you tweak the response?

Nice work!

Shovelhd,

I plan to run the driver's door this Friday, hopefully it goes well.

For 3sixty.1, the features are below. I may run the OEM process again because I assumed that 30 power would distort speakers.

15 wide Q filters (user adjustable)

6-channel high-level input

6-channel RCA level inputs (FR/FL/RR/RL/Center/Sub)

153 bands of equalization for OEM Integration

Auto equalization with auto sum capability

Auxiliary RCA inputs

Digital Signal Processor with OEM integration capabilities (patent pending)

Remote programmable master volume/aux volume control

Wireless Bluetooth®

Take care

[shovelhd]

When you get the rubber boot off of the driver's side door sill, you'll find a large white molex connector. To get the speaker wire through, you basically have two choices. Drill or notch the door edge near the connector and use a grommet, or drill out the blank spaces in the connector and fish each half of the wire through each new hole. It's a PITA.

That's good that you can tweak the filters after the auto-eq. You may find that you don't like the flat response. I don't, so I eq flat and tweak it from there.

Good luck, and great pics!