How To Fit An Amp In A V36 Coupe

[The Max]

From what I can see in the FSM, it appears that connectors M5 and M124 are integral to the main harness which was why my initial thoughts were (and remain) that it's not interchangeable.

I've looked up the connector on Google but Sumitomo don't have a record of it in their catalogue. I could at least then obtain the male and female crimp pins and plug them into the connectors to solve all of my problems.

Therefore, the one possibility could be to drill carefully with a pin vice a couple of the holes for the larger pins on both connectors to allow a couple of wires to slip through (albeit with the need to cut them if the doors have to ever come off for anything). Otherwise, I'll have to stick to the original plan of using the step lamp wires instead. It would leave a bad feeling for me knowing there's something incomplete about the vehicle but it'd be the lesser of two evils.

[Chris Rogers]

Pin able though. Yazaki or amp make the connector .

[The Max]

They have the equivalent? If so, then great. I'll buy a bunch of crimps and call it a good day.

Cheers Chris!

[The Max]

Man it sure has been a long time between updates and I must apologise. The last month and a half has been a very busy one and I've been moving full steam ahead with whatever time I have on the weekends. This has meant no time taken to snap some photos of what I did for the front door speakers but what I can say is that finding the terminals to suit the Sumitomo connectors in the doors proved to be highly unsuccessful. I couldn't even find a supplier who could make available a "sample" pack of 100 terminals at least.

So, I took the unfortunate solution of getting a carbide cutting bit for my Dremel and cut out two of the existing unused pin holes to pass through my 18AWG speaker cable. It's not a friendly plug/socket solution like I hoped but I had to ask myself just how often would those doors have to come off and reason with myself for a bit. That said, I left 40cm slack inside the cabin to allow for the plug to be disconnected and cleared sufficiently to allow for the need to cut the cable and re-terminate it in the cabin if that need should ever arise. This cable was terminated to the woofers (from the splicing box residing at the top grommet) to allow the speakers to remain connectorised. The parallel wires left intact were then spliced into the AV unit's harness for the front speakers and used to power the tweeters since they consume less power than the woofers. These wires were intercepted, meaning I cut them completely, leaving sufficient length from the connector itself as the ones from the connector (i.e. the AV unit) needed to be connected to the JBL MS-8 DSP via the 4-core speaker cable laid in on the passenger side.

Again, I remind anyone who is looking to pass cables through grommets, rubber boots and existing conduit, always use a good wire lubricant to avoid friction burning the insulation on all wires that your cable may rub up against. I don't like the idea of removing all tape from the factory looms and re-taping it after. I take off the minimum to allow the cable to enter and exit and then just feed it with a thin coating of wire lube. Wipe the cable off, tape up the ends, done.

Investigating the functionality of the AV unit was difficult in my effort to see if pin 1 on these units still provided a remote signal or not. With a little creativity, I managed to terminate a probe for pin 1 and found that it had nothing - not even the minimum 4V the JBL is happy to operate with. Shit. It's not ideal but I ended up wiring up the remote wire to the Accessories circuit from that same connector. Logically, I'm always playing music anyway and if not that, it'll be a phone call on the Bluetooth component.

So with the front end wrapped up, I eventually got the chance to get started in the boot and finish wiring up the crossovers.

Here is the complete set of front (SPZ60) and rear (ProSeries 6.5x) crossovers, wired up using my favourite Klotz cable. The colour order I chose was based on resistor colour coding, though I had to start it from the -ve terminations because black is the first colour. Forgive the white spooge on one of the ProSeries 6.5x crossovers. I got careless in my younger days with this in the Maxima and cracked the housing. According to Boston Acoustics' local supplier here, I couldn't get a replacement housing. I had to get a whole new crossover. Yeah, wasn't going to happen. I just needed something to protect the internals and the rest was out of sight, out of mind. Of course, we have two Klotz 8-core cables leaving the crossovers for their respective front and rear destinations. The one in the spiral loom is for the fronts, where unfortunately we couldn't pass the cable down the driver's side channel with the outer sheath intact from the middle of the doorway back to the boot. The solution here was to strip off the outer sheath, cut out the 4 nylon ropes within to eliminate further bulk and re-wrap the wires with spiral loom. In the first metre within the boot, I added some more protection by reusing a portion of the removed outer sheath in order to be able to safely anchor the cable to the GPS unit's framework.

The second Klotz cable, which is completely intact, is for the ProSeries speakers mounted in the rear shelf. I'll have some photos of the wiring for this one as soon as I get the chance to hopefully work on that part next weekend.

A top view of the crossovers reveals how they were mounted. The ProSeries were bolted from underneath to a sheet of 0.9mm galvanised steel U-shaped to perfectly take the place of where an XM satellite receiver would normally reside in the US models. The collective unit was then bolted in from the sides using the existing holes from the Nissan frame and using short length coarse thread self-tapping screws to ensure that we had a good grip but without risking any damage to the internals. The larger SPZ60 crossovers were mounted on 1.6mm galvanised steel sheet, with an L-shaped sheet spot welded in 8 places to form a sandwich plate. The crossovers have a reasonably thick aluminium base which allowed me to tap an M4 thread into their existing mounting holes. The sandwich plate had four mounting holes drilled to match and the crossovers were effectively bolted together with spring washers and 20mm hex cap screws given there was only enough clearance for the screw head, requiring an allen key arrangement to mechanically affix them.

The completed assembly, after being wired up, was then bolted to the one factory M6 bolt in the boot floor with a machine washer and nyloc nut. There is another M6 bolt underneath the left crossover but of course, there was no feasible way to accommodate it and bolt a nut down. The plate was lined with neoprene foam tape to kill off any possible unwanted vibration from that stray M6 bolt and the assembly passed the vibration test.

Here, you see the Klotz cable attached by the existing cable tie mounts, following along to where the amp lives. I haven't yet tried to mount the left side spacer yet to be sure that the cable coming down to the strain-relief point in the amp stack isn't going to interfere with it. Should it prove to be a problem, I'll be moving the cable rather than cutting anything out of the plastic spacer. Let's wait and see what we might discover next week.

And here is the other end of that cable, connecting the crossover inputs to the amp's outputs.

And here we have the plastic spacer fitted over the crossover bank. This is a very nice fit with centimetres of room to spare all around.

By the end of all this, my legs and neck were getting a little tired from all the contorting about, much like this one...

Stay tuned for hopefully next week's installment, where I hope to complete the set up - terminating the rear speakers and figure out how to safely mount the power distribution blocks.

Edited May 12, 2013 by The Max

[The Max]

It has been a while since I last provided any sort of update for this project and I've just realised this after putting the boot back together again!! To be perfectly honest, I'm not inclined to go through the labour of removing trim pieces to take photos so my apologies for neglecting you some visual examples. I'll do my best to put it in words instead.

To describe what I did with the power distribution, I mounted my positive and negative distribution blocks on opposite sides of a 3mm thick polyester plate. The 2GA positive cable was cable tied directly to the plate through a couple small holes to ensure no movement of the cable even if it should ever come loose from its termination in the block.

The negative 2GA feed was terminated via a ring crimp terminal to the central grounding point in the picture above showing the routing of the speaker cable along the rear of the boot. It's convenient and an excellent grounding point without having to drill any further holes into the vehicle. Perfect.

Both pairs of 8GA and the one pair of 4GA cables were then routed along the left channel of the boot, behind the HICAS unit, which is mounted slightly elevated on its brackets. This also afforded me the ability to pass under it the CAT5 cable for the future remote control panel Arc Audio are yet to release for their DSP. Yes, I changed DSPs because the JBL MS-8 was really disappointing. I had no end of trouble with the JBL MS-8 DSP as it simply didn't meet my needs and actually produced a very average sound for what it was meant to be capable of. I blame myself for not doing enough research on the product at the time.

In its place, thanks to Marty from FHRX, is an Arc Audio PS8 DSP. A much smaller unit with way more flexibility, I was able to take advantage of the reduced height by lowering the height of the amplifier mounting plate, buying me even more air under the plastic flooring to keep the amp cool. After much testing at high volumes for a couple hours on the road, the plastic is barely warm, which means no need for forced ventilation. A less complex design is a better one. There were some teething problems with getting a good sound at first but it was soon discovered that I had a couple of faulty crossover switches in the Rockford Fosgate amp which were supposed to be bypassing the crossover circuits but somehow managed to create a massive amount of gain in the amp and therefore raised the noise floor considerably. Although it's installed in there for now and sounds fantastic, on the basis of the noise floor, I'll be inclined to replace that amp one day in the future with a better quality amp. They've never been an audiophile's amp but for a car which isn't a Rolls Royce, they've always served their purpose well in previous vehicles for me. If the cabin was dead silent, yes, I would be aiming much higher. At least I don't have alternator whine, thanks to the unit being class AD and loaded with capacitors in the power supply stage.

I've now got the task of cutting out a small rectangular section of the boot carpet which will reveal the Harting connector as well as the USB port which I have mounted in the plastic floor shroud. The Harting connector is for the removable subwoofer box while the USB port is actually an extension of the USB port on the PS8 DSP. It's a Neutrik panel mount USB port which has a reversible A/B-type connector. So in this case, there's a short 30cm A-B USB lead which conencts to the A-side of the Neutrik connector and that leaves us with a B-side up top for plugging in a longer USB lead for the laptop in the cabin while tuning. It's pointless for firmware upgrades, should any be later required, as one needs to access the reset button on the DSP unit itself, which means having to remove half of the damn boot trim to get to it. Ah well, c'est la vie.

Once I've done my work with the carpet knife, I'll take a few photos to show what the end result is ... a boring looking factory standard boot with a couple of connectors exposed on the left side.

At least I've got my music back as well as my bluetooth!

[The Max]

With the Aussie dollar continuing its steady decline against the US greenback, I figured it was now or never. Stay tuned. I'm replacing the shitty sounding Rockford Fosgate amp with this equally brutal (but cleaner) puppy.

[colin.ssc]

Interested to see what sort of SQ you'll get out of this. Don't know how I missed this whole thread as well.

Edited July 31, 2015 by colin.ssc

[The Max]

After hearing this amp in action, albeit driving a different set of speakers, I expect the top end to lack that DC-offset type of white noise that's chained to the higher notes played.

At the end of the day, a car is a harsh environment for audio but even my old Maxima sounded better, so I'm aiming for that old standard.

[colin.ssc]

Will that be due to the signal from the head unit being crap? It was for my car when I installed aftermarket speakers and amps....we compared the SQ from the 36 headunit and an aftermarket one.....same song source different player.....made a big difference. Being so amped up as well, I had a lot of white noise, had to use a processor (bit ten) to clear it up.

Even now with the bit ten, the sound from the headunit is relatively softer comparing to if i play directly using the AUX from the bit ten.

Edited July 31, 2015 by colin.ssc

[The Max]

The headunit is definitely partly to blame but I've done side-by-side testing of this amp against my Rockford and the difference is chalk and cheese so I can only imagine the improvement it will be when installed.

Edited July 31, 2015 by The Max

[colin.ssc]

yea....get a bit ten even more improvements!!

[The Max]

I don't trust Italian electronics. I'm sticking to my PS8.

[colin.ssc]

Any reason in particular why you don't trust Italian electronics?

[The Max]

I've worked with Italian electrical engineers, as in their home country of Italy, and it's safe to say that laziness is well ingrained in their work culture - half-arsed efforts, arrogance getting in the way of support. Cruise the forums and you'll find that people who have questions to ask about their Audison products either go unanswered or eventually, though poorly, answered. The processor is a bit of an unfinished piece of work, in my opinion. The Bit Play HD is an excellent example of how they got really close but not quite, considering they didn't even incorporate something as fundamental as gapless playback with FLAC files!

What won me over with the Arc Audio PS8 was that there is a greater amount of adjustments available to the end user, particularly in the way of more crossover options and a parametric EQ as opposed to only a 31-band graphic EQ. The more options I have available to me, the more control I have over my sound and the happier that makes my ears. Furthermore, while the op-amps chosen in the original design are excellent to begin with, the designer has gone to the extent where he allows the discerning user to even replace the op-amps with something else that's pin compatible, all without voiding warranties. There aren't many players in the market that I know who will allow you to do this.

My only disappointment with the PS8, the f**kers still haven't produced a remote display/control surface so I can perform adjustments on the fly without a laptop plugged in. That said, it's not a deal breaker and they're always quick to respond to any support emails, happy to get as technical as one can handle, no trade secrets, as was the case when I was initially setting up the unit. Along with their firmware update which was in response to all the bugs found out in the field, I'm impressed with how well they back their product.

Edited July 31, 2015 by The Max

[colin.ssc]

There you go.....learn something new every day. Never knew this about them. Interesting to know little things like these...may change my mind about what I am using then Will take a look into PS8.

Edited August 1, 2015 by colin.ssc

[The Max]

Put it to you this way. If you like how it sounds right now and it's working as it should, there's no reason for my opinion to change yours after the fact. Stick with it, trust your ears.

[colin.ssc]

Nah dw not changing my mind cause of what you've said. I am always trying new gear and have been looking to try another processor to see if there is much difference or better ones. I have tried Alpine one which is so crap compared to the Audison. That said the PS8 is a little on the higher end compared to the Bit Ten.

Edited August 2, 2015 by colin.ssc

[The Max]

Got it all in today and as expected, it sounds significantly better than the old Rockford Fosgate amp. Much cleaner noise floor, no rough edges in the top end of the audio. I wish I had done this in the first place but then again, these newer v2 amps are reportedly a vast improvement over the v1, so perhaps it was worth the wait. Photos of the install coming soon.

Edited August 8, 2015 by The Max

[The Max]

As promised, here is a photo giving a fairly general view of the install. Towards the back seat, you will see I have installed a 3mm polycarbonate sheet which has the positive power distribution block on the top side and the negative distribution block on the underside. The blocks are bolted to each other to minimise any likelihood of them breaking free from one another, even if the polycarbonate were to deteriorate over time. The 2GA cable is cable tied at the entry point of the block on the polycarbonate sheet for that extra safeguard.

What you're seeing with the cabling is before I covered everything back up in mesh for neatness. The white connectors you see in the middle are part of the Han industrial connector for the external subwoofer enclosure connection. The larger is the 100A power connector, the smaller carries the remote turn on wire (green) and mono line audio output to feed the sub amp attached to the enclosure. The short USB lead is for the Neutrik USB panel mount socket that's part of the plastic flooring.

The amp is significantly smaller than the Rockford Fosgate, which was held in place by those four studs still poking out. The reason why they were welded in place was because the plate would have to be affixed atop the other plate first before bolting in the amp as it covered the entire surface of the plate and the access holes for the fixing nuts. The power and speaker cables were shortened as they're located on opposite ends between the two amps. Ferrules had to be used on the 4GA power cables going into the amp because the one thing Arc Audio screwed up was the power connector block. The holes are sized with little tolerance for only the wire to just slip in if you can keep all the strands straight. Otherwise, shaggy copper mops will ensue. Pain in the arse. Besides which, I like for the insulation to slide in as well for more bite and friction. At any rate, using ferrules sorted that out. The length of the cable was cut such that with a little hot air to set the PVC sheathing at a right angle, it allows for the cable to push against the grommet, effectively sandwiching it between the amp and the grommet to ensure the cables stay in place and don't vibrate or wiggle their way out.

Another gland is in place to clamp the speaker cable in place, terminated to the Phoenix connectors. Simple enough.

Nothing moves, nothing vibrates, nothing about this is unreliable because nothing is less fun than having to take things apart again! Especially after I seem to have misplaced the flange nuts that hold down the plastic well. I thought I had everything sitting safely on the boot floor but as long as they're lost outside of the car and not going to be found rattling inside the boot, I'm happy enough to replace them. I sniffed around with a magnetic pickup tool and came up with nothing so let's hope.

I'll have another photo next weekend when I finally get the covers back on to show the final product.

[colin.ssc]

Does it heat up a lot during usage? And will it be covered by the carpet, if so, cooling aids?