paulguy

At least no one voted for Sony and JVC. Panasonic pulled out of car audio last year and I don't think it'll be long for these other guys that aren't solely car audio are gone. Don't get me wrong, they make some not bad cheap audio gear, but it's low end stuff for selling to people replacing bad head units or at box stores, IMO. I liked Panasonic decks, cheap, fairly reliable. Too bad their gone, but like most of the car audio industry, it's fading away. Bad time to be working in the industry, that's mainly why I recently retired.

So my truck started knocking a little while ago, and after reading many posts I figured it to be a bad catalytic converter. Crawled under the truck, beat on the exhaust, and sure enough, it rattles. Ok, now I know. I realized that my truck was just past the mileage for warranty on it, but i called GM anyway to see if I could get it covered, and they said I need it diagnosed before they can make a decision, take it to the dealer. Well not a big deal, I'm currently un-employed so I don't have alot(any) money to spend, but i figure if guys on the sss site know whats wrong, any tech should be able to take a listen and know what the problem is, Right? So I go there and tell them if think my cat is rattling and give them the code that i pulled from it (0300). He says $1500 for new cats...Ouch! So, a half hour later... He's how my conversation went with the service advisor ... SA - "Well we pulled a code from you truck it's 0300" ME- "Ya I mentioned that" SA - "Its a misfire and the tech thinks you have a bad valve" ME - "What?" SA - "We'll need to put it on the scope and diagnose further, gonna be a couple hours labor" ME - "What?" SA - "He thinks the converter is fine, your just hearing the valve misfire through the exhaust" ME - "What?" ME - "I was born at night, but it wasn't last night, I know the deference between a top end valve noise and a bottom end knock." SA - "That what the tech said and he's the professional(He does the quote hand signs)" SA - "That will be $70" ME - "Gee thanks" That's the 3rd time in 5 years that my trucks been to the dealer, and the last. So, drove home, put the truck on stands, went in the house on to the SSS site, found a post on gutting cats. By midnight cats were gutted, and I was test driving my truck, way more power than it's had in a long time and runs like dream. A little loud though... actually really loud, but I'll fix it later. I work on cars for a living and I understand the way shops charge out, the tech hooked up a tech II, pulled a code and that was it. He probably only spent like 1 min on my truck. Now I have charged customers a min shop charge for small stuff too, but I make sure that I know what the hell I'm doing and I only charge if I fix it, or find the problem. I'm thinking of going back to the dealer on Monday, and asking for my money back($70 is a lot of money to me being out of work, my girlfriend actually paid for it). It'll probably go over like a fart in church, but if it's busy enough, and I get loud enough...I don't know. My main point is thank you guys from SSS.com. There is a vast wealth of knowledge here and well as knowledgeable people. You guys sure saved my ass. I been lucking on this site for years before I even bought my truck, and I have gotten a crapload of useful info from this forum. From now on when I have something important to contribute, I will(I'm a really good stereo installer). I might help someone sometime too.

They've changed one or two of the harnesses since that model, it's viper equivalent is prob a 791xv. Ungo is just viper's last year getto models, You could make it work without changing too much to a sr9000(viper5900), but that model is old technology. The starter/alarm might be ok, could be the bypass acting up, and from 5 years ago, I guarantee they don't make that model anymore. What is it doing?

No there's lots of room in those doors, the windows don't roll down.

I run focal k2p separates up front off an old alpine amp... sounds good

Ya sorry, meant the sps500. Pretty tough to put separates back there unless you want to cut a hole in the panel for the tweeter. The grill is only 4x6. Those are nice speakers but way overkill IMO.

I though Quarts got bought out by the same company that owns hifonics and crunch. Now making their stuff in china. I was a huge fan of MB Quarts 10 - 15 years ago but the shops I was working in dropped them after they got bought out so I don't have access to their stuff anymore, and now I like Focal.

Just added audiobahn

Back when quart was made in Germany it was good stuff, now I've heard it went to s__t. But that just what i heard. Diamond and rainbow? Never heard of them. What is that candy?

Hold on now... Type S speakers are bottom of the line Alpine... Not a fair comparison IMO. They're are descent speakers, but I won't amp them. Type R's or even Type X's, now that's fair... ALPINE!!!

You can tell buy the order somewhat what I like... Except I would have put Clarion farther down but it as low as it car go, I hate that S__T! Oh and Focal would be towards the top more.

Ya that box is12w1's. I've done a few boxes with thin pioneer 12's, really good sounding subs but they are real power hungry, you really need to amp them huge to get any volume from them. you can always upgarde to a bigger amp, and try that, and if your still not happy you can prob modify the box to fit deeper subs.

What happened...? You guys still want to get together for some wings or something?

That sub should fit, it has 10.7 inch mount depth, so it's gonna be tight though. Just build a box so that the sub sits downfiring, maybe an inch, 1 /12, off the floor, position the sub on the drivers side(thats the side with more room). Build an enclosure that takes up the whole underneath the seat. I don't have my drawings here, but I think my boxes are 57" x 14 1/2", prob 5 1/2" high at the back and 8" high at the front. Cut a hole for the sub in the bottom of the box as close as to the back and inside to the hump as you can(because of the support bar in the seat that runs diagonal in the bottom of the seat in the outward edge of the seat). The sub is too deep to fit in the hole, so cut out the top of the box so the magnet fits through the top of it. Then you just have to seal the hole up, leaving a hump(tit) on the top with either wood, if it's not to high, or you should glass it if it's a big sub. One thing I haven't done myself is very many ported boxes in trucks. The air volume usually isn't there and I guy has trouble just getting the subs to fit, nevermind getting the right volume. In installer world, you have to fit what the customer(or what the salesman sells him) wants, not alway going to sound best. So a guy gets good at making speakers fit. Most subs require twice the amount of air for a vented enclosure. You can always cheat the box size a bit, also tuning for ported box when you have multiple angles is pretty tough, it's really easy to screw it up. I do what works, my boxes work so thats what I install. I run the orion hp10s, I should upgrade to the hcca's, pretty nice subs. But I have a hcca d2400(1200w@1 Ohm) running those 10's and they hit hard so i'm pretty happy, very punchy subs, feels like someone is hitting the back of my seat with a small baseball bat. Some pics of a box for 12's

To get 5 1/4's in the rear doors requires cutting out the 4x6 hole, its not bad only have to make it an inch wider and drill holes for the mounting screws. An air saw makes quick work of it. Rears aren't that important, we just call that rear fill, but if you have a good 4 channel you can amp them, 100w/ch isn't bad. But an amped 5 1/4 is sure a lot better then an amped 4x6, at least you can get some mid bass out of them.

Just did mine with leds. I ended up using 1500 ohm resistors to bring the voltage down so that the button lights weren't too bright. Worked great, and looks sweet in blue.

I'm a little late to your post, but after building underseat truck boxes for many years you can but a pretty big sub under there, you just need to have 'tits' on it, downfiring is the best. I built a box with 2 12w6v2's and it hammered, it was stupid loud. Lift up your seat and put your hand into the bottom side of it, you got at least 3,4 inches of play there, and in truck box building world, that huge! I just sold the box out of my truck, so I don't have any pics, but i have to build a new one soon. Maybe I should do a build thread?

Anybody know if you can buy a better blower resistor module? I've replaced two so far and I got a feeling this winter I'll blow that one too.

The more power the better, I run at least 150w/ch to my fronts. IMO a big power 4 channel amps are hard to come by(expensive). When someone brings me a 4channel I usually bridge it to the front speakers, it will at least double the power to them, if not quadruple (ex. my alpine amp runs... 40x4@4 ohms = 80x4@2 ohms = 160x2@2 ohms). The rears, especially 4x6s aren't gonna put out that much, only alot of tweet, which your ears aren't designed to hear from behind you anyway. Just run em deck power. Buy as big of a 2 channel amp as you can afford to run the 6 1/2s. or if you have a 4 channel, bridge it. And if you haven't bought speakers yet, look into getting 5 1/4 for the rear(sps600 are nice), it's not hard to cut out the rear doors to fit the 5 1/4, way better sound then the 4x6's.(I used to charge an extra hour labor to cut it out).

I would just take it to any local electronics repair place and ask. My old work used to be a gm radio service back when gm used to contract radio repairs out. Some radios had to be shipped out, some stuff was repaired in house. I'm not sure if we're allowed to post ebay links, but i did a search and found a couple amps under $100. Any 03-07 bose pickup non-luxury amp should work. I've run into blown amps a few times with nasty results. I'm an installer and a customer would come in and say 'my radio is acting funny'. So of course the salesmen are greedy (and dumb) and sell a customer a new deck, hand me a work order to install a new unit, and don't mention that the customers radio doesn't work properly. And of course the new deck doesn't work properly because their amp is bad, and I look like I don't know what I'm doing. Last time it happened, I asked the customer, 'didn't you tell the salesman that you had sound problems?' And of course he did... so guess who gets to rewire the truck? Lucky me. Sorry for the rant... p.s. I never listen to salesmen, I worked with way to many that didn't care about what you want, just interested in selling what is spiffed that day.

I'm in

The easiest option is to just get another factory one, since it's a five channel amp. If you go aftermarket your have to change all your speakers and you'll lose the sub. A repair shop should be able to fix it too, it doesn't hurt to get them to check it out.

The chances of all four speakers(mids and tweets) blowing all at once? Slim to none. Unless some speakers were gone and you didn't notice, sounds like an amp problem to me. Easy to test... pop off an a-pillar an hook a test speaker to the tweeter(the tweeter wiring is common with the doors). No sound, then bad amp. The deck only sends out a 2 channel output to the amp, and the amp controls the fader through data from the deck, so more then likely a bad amp. The amp outputs the chimes and onstar through the front speakers, no fronts... then no chimes. Good luck Paul

I'm in

I've gotten butt-loads of useful info on this site, and I figured I should try to help out since I haven't seen a fix for this anywhere and have heard about this problem before. I repaired my gear indicator display, it was just a bad solder on a resistor. I don't have a before pic, but it was really dim(maybe 1/2 the brightness of the dic), almost unreadable in the daytime. Sorry about the crappy pics