In 1990 a circa 1970 coupe da boat had an interesting install. An alphsonic 50 x 2 amp was located under the drivers seat. 12 guage power wire was used to feed it power. Fuses? He didn't need no stinkin' fuses. Running 4 6x9's. Recovered from a junk yard, and 2 10" MIC subs. The subs were in a roughly .2 cube plywood box built in shop class. They sat on the back seat.
One day our hero discovered that if christmas lights were wired in mono with the subs, the lights would blink when the bass hit. He proceeded to wrap christmas lights all around the roof of his car. While demonstrating his great intellect at such a feat, his amp started on fire, and burnt his car to an empty shell.
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OT: all this radio shack talk got me thinkging about a kid I new in highschool. his sytem was the best at school. better than the fosgate kids, the vega kids the orion/ppi kid. funny thing was he bought EVERYTHING from radio shack. he did an awesome install, the right way, and his results were awesome. just goes to show 80/20%
Posts: 105 | From: AZ | Registered: Sep 2001
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I just got done installing some killer Infinity 10's in my friends car but his interior set of 6.5 inch speakers were crap. So we used electrical tape to close the gap that the surround foam left. If works good but he got newer 6.5s like 3 days ago.
Another guy I know bought 2 Jensen 10's in a bandpass box and a California series amp. The plexiglass of the bandpass box was covered in punk rock stickers and the amp was mounted on top by 3 screws that were way too long. Each major wire was screwed on by screws that were either too short or too long and stuck out noticecably and he ran his power wire through the door jamb!
That is pretty much the most lax of anysystem I seen. I always take the time to pimp my stuff out even if it takes days
-------------------- 88 Silverado RCSB, 5/8 on 20's, shaved the f*** up, tinted, notched, but still not quite painted
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A buddy of mine had an 8" Jensen bass cannon tube thing. He connected the sub directly to his battery with speaker wire and a toggle switch. It wasn't a powered one either. He didn't know why it only made one thump when he flicked the switch. I don't know if this is true but I have a good laugh imagining him flipping the switch on and off in town trying to make a rhythem. Posts: 841 | From: Pennsylvania | Registered: Feb 2002
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me and one o my frinds got board one day and decided to "pimp" out my dads truk stereo, its a 86 dodge ram, and there was alredy some upgrades done to the rest o the truck. we had a small budget... ok we had no budget, but we had some stuff jus layin around, i had 2 of the 6.5 bass tubes i had bot from walmart for like 20 each awile bac(for sh!ts and giggles), and i also had a old clarion HU that i found layin around my grandpas car dealership. and the speakers that were in there were some walmart chepy prefap things that i think were actually made for a boat cus they sed waterproof (thot bout tryin that out but then relised they were the only speakers i wanted to waiste in there) so we wired in the HU and the speakers and then came the fun part, we had to put the tubes behind the seat but they wouldnt fit cus the seat had like a lip around the bottom, but the middle dipped in a bit, so we tied them the the springs in the seat so that they stayed elivated enough as not to hit the lip on the seat, but we didnt use string, not even duct tape, o no, better... speaker wire. it was great, and the cool thing is it sounds ok, especially for..... well almost free, and it aint loud but since the subs r touching the seat it feels cool, and it beats the crapola outa stock, so im happy, and it was a pretty funny day (for the easily amused)
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just walked by a berreta in the walmart parking lot with a 1 10" thump proped up on each side of his back window wish i hadn't taken my camera outta my truck earlier that day Posts: 3421 | From: Owosso MI, USA | Registered: Apr 2001
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OK, OK, it's my turn. This one kid I know had an older Blazer, 2 door, really rusty, right. First off, he bought my old clarion deck for an outrageous price. Thats not the bad part. Secondly, he has a Targa 600w 4 channel amp running 2 10 RF punches, like 6 years old, in a bandpass box, and 2 12" Xplodes, cones broke to sh!t, and he used hot glue to put the cones back together! Those Xplodes were also 'nail polished' because they surrounds were destroyed. Then, with that setup, he added 2 blown JL 12w0's to the mix, putting 6 sh!tty subs on 1 sh!tty 4 channel amp. When i saw his power wire, I stared to laugh. It was 10 gauge, run under the car, hanging almost to the ground, with a hole drilled in the floor in the back, and the wire pokig up through the floor. I think he hooked up a second amp, but i don't remember. The hot-glue part was the funnyest part though. All 3 pairs of subs were in separate boxes, so he had 3 boxes in hyis truch. Then, the ground was 16 gause speaker wire, ripped apart so there was only one part of it, grounded to the wheen well, carget in place, ring on top of carpet, bolt on top of ring. I'm still amazed to this day that it actually worked. Oh, ya, he also had a 15" RF Series 1 Tube setting in his back seat once too, bridgerd to the poor Targa amp, firing directly at the drivers seat. The other 2 channels were running the otehr 3 pairs of subs!
Posts: 13 | From: NY | Registered: Aug 2002
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Here's a good one. This was actually my first system. 76 gmc pickup standard cab, ancient Sony two knob tape deck, Kraco 5 1/4 or 6 1/2 (I don't remember) in the doors powered by a Clarion eq/booster under the dash, unbelievable alternator whine, Rockwood 800 watt (yah right more like 80 on a good day) four channel amp, this thing was really big, but you take the back plate off and theres this tiny board in the middle of a huge heatsink, power and ground were two wires I just happened to find under the dash probably 14 or 16 gauge. I used two channels bridged (i'm amazed i was able to figure that out) to power an old Kicker C12 in a really flimsy truck box behind the seat. That sub likes about 1.75 cubes and this box was about .5, needless to say it didn't sound too great. Oh and the other two channels of the amp weren't hooked up to anything. That amp got so hot that it melted the paint on top of the heatsink, suprisingly it played like that for at least six months before meeting its maker.
Posts: 28 | From: U.S. | Registered: Sep 2002
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About 8 years ago a friend of mine thought it would be a good idea to run all of his wires under the center console. Some of the wires must have been loose because everytime he put the car in reverse the whole stereo would cut out. We still rip on him about that to this day.
Posts: 28 | From: U.S. | Registered: Sep 2002
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nothing that great but i was working at a lube and tune and we bring in a nice new pickup. it has a stereo and seemed to have a pretty decent install. then i pop the hood to put in some oil and i notice he has 1/0 gauge power wire, but the funny thing is he has only about 5-10 strands of wire from the cable jammed under the battery terminal. i thought that was hilarious. might as well het some speaker wire for the power cable.
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I dont know if anyone has stated an install like this oh well. My unlce used to take power cables from home accesories ex: broken iron, tv,anything that had a powercord, and use that for his install in his 80' something ford truck. To top it off he would use out of date towerspeakers for home audio. It was so embarrassing but I still miss riding in that old junker.
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being the only installer in my neighborhood i have all kinds of kids ask me to fix there mistakes heres a few terror tales one day i was washin my truck when this guy who works at the mc donalds next to the carwash i was at asked me to take a look at his ''system'' he had a bostwick bass tube hooked up with no front or rear speakers and a legacy amp that was the size of my palm that he claims is a 300 w rms amp and by now you guys are thinkin this cant get any worse but listen i asked him what gauge power wire he was usin and he was usin 18 gauge speaker wire on all connections with no fuse at the battery and his next question almost made me fall down laughing he asked me to bridge his ''sub'' for him because the guy he bought it from said if you bridge it it would hit 140 db and worst of all this was in a 85 dodge ram takin up the passenger seat while his unhooked sanyo house speakers he also bought took up the floor board btw dude payed 150 bucks for that crap another time a kid came in to the shop with speaker wires that came off of his hu taped into his rca inputs wonderin why he got no sound upon further inspection i noticed that his power wire ran from his amp to his lighter with a 5 amp fuse in between the remote wire was in turn spliced into the power wire and it was grounded to the roof of the trunk after hooking up every thing the right way he proceeded to tell me about his kenford amp that apparently is what happened when ''kenwood and rockford companys merged ''i hope you get a laugh or scare out of these because i know i did
Posts: 41 | From: maryland | Registered: Nov 2002
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heres a good one: my friend has a 90 something tracker with 2 12" RFpunch and 2 10" kickers (old modles) with 2 pyrmiad 6x9"s (the "300W" 4 ways). he has the subs hooked up to a poor jensen 300W 2ch amp and the 6x9"s hooked up to a road gear 80W amp. he has wires running all over the place and it sounds like complete ass. the 12" RF sub is also in a homemade 1/4" plywood box the has a hole blown in it and patched with a couple stickers and glue. he also has a few neons with the wires running along the roof. now he want to hook the other 12" RF sub to his set up. its a mirarle that amp didnt die yet.
funny thing is i sold him those 12" RF amp. if i woulda known what he was gunna do with them i woulda kept em.
-------------------- 1993 F-150 XLT 4x4 300 I6/E4OD Alpine CDA-7894 Pioneer 3 ways all around Alpine MRV-F400 for mids/highs Infinity Perfect 12.1 1.0V3 custom sealed box Rockford Fosgate Power 450S for sub Posts: 464 | From: Coal Region | Registered: Sep 2002
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Listen to this one... a friend of mine has a '91 mustang, a Boss amp(550x2 max, 150x2 rms), and a sony home subwoofer(8", 120 watts max input power), a box (pretty big for an 8", about 3 or 4 cubic feet) and some spare wires. My friend... ok my friend is really me, took some huge home speaker wire and hooked both positive and negative sides up to the positive terminal on my battery (once I did that the wire was about = to 10 guage wire). I ran that out the side of my hood, across the body, and into my window. From there I ran it to my amp sitting on the folded down back seats. I had to put the passenger seat all the way up to get the box in the back, but I did it. I also put a graphic equalizer preamp and a spectrum analyser by the amp, just sitting on the seat, it was hard to not unhook the wires when messing with the preamp. It looked like a spider web back there. I have a stock radio, so I had to hook up the high inpuits of the amp to the rear speakers. I bridged the amp to the 8". I had some more big speaker wire, so I used that to hook up the sub. I had about 2 feet of ground cable (8 guage), and not enough wire to stretch everything to get the amp a solid ground... so I had to improvise. I took one of the screws that held on a plastic piece thats at the bottom of the door, just beside the driver's side seat. I hooked everything up, and it had good quality bass, up to about 135 dBs though, because the 8" would bottom out when it got louder. It was enough to blur my vision. I was supprised at how good it sounded. The only thing was that the trunk would rattle at notes about 35 hz to 20-something. It was funny as hell. I did it just to test all of my electronic stuff(equaliser, spectrum analyser, amp, etc.), not for looks, or quality.I brought it to the school and everybody was like 'damn, what you got in that thing'. That radio sounded better than anything else at my school. They thought I had 12"s and stuff in there. They didn't believe me that it was only an eight. There were people in there with 2 15" mtx thunder 3000s that weren't that loud. They are dumb as hell, they have no fuses whatsoever (even the ones on their amps are bypassed) and power wires like small speaker wire. Their amps are Jensen POSs, and everything is just wrong. They were pissed when they seen that what I did in an 8" and a sucky install was so much better than what they had. They especially hated me when I told them how much I payed for it all. Although I did get some geat deals, all in all I payed about $5! I wish I would have taken pictures, ya'll would have laughed soooo hard I took it out after a day or two, everything worked great.
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My personal favorite happened just a couple of months ago at work. I was sittign in a car in one bay and look over to see my manager and another installer in tears laughing so hard in a 98-ish honda accord. I walk over to check it out and they've pulled some homemade from around the radio to reveal the deck being held in place by a pack of cigarettes!
Posts: 21 | From: Orange County, CA | Registered: Nov 2002
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The funniest install I saw wasn't to funny after I heard it. It was an older 80's model Dodge Daytona. The kid told me he had the loudest system at has school and I knew there where ghetto setups (loud but dirty) and clean SPL setups in the parking lot everyday. SO I thought i'd give his car a listen. 2-15 pyramid super blues and a old 100 watt radio shack amp (palm sized). Low and behold he did back up his claim and let Bass Mekanic rip. Of course after being baffled long enough he showed me his hatch area and told me all he did was internally bridge the amp with alligator clips and thin led wire. GO FIGURE! Guess its just a Hatch Back thing !
-------------------- "You know it's loud when all of your seats are Port-O-Potty's!" 2001-02 251-500 trunk class champion. Coming back with a vengence! Posts: 20 | From: Knightdale, NC | Registered: Nov 2002
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I know a guy who's had 2 installs so far... he's now decided to do it himself... so he dumps his system.. gets two JL10W6s, and 1 12" MTX (unknown model) and a JBL 1200.1.... (have no clue how he wired them all to the amp)
now wiring: (clean and hidden) BUT... 16 ft long of 8guage wire, and a 30amp AGU fuse!!!
turn the volume up... the fuse pops... haha...
I convinced him to upgrade the fuse... he did... but now, when he turns it up, the JBL goes into protection, lol... now.... he knows he needs better wire... SO, I bring in JUST my old knukonceptx 4 guage wire, with 60amp fuse and fuse holder... (u know the $36 4 channel kit? that was just the wire from it) and I proceeded to sell it to him for $50 !!!!!!!!!!!!
well.... know he's happy... but the amp still goes into protection, my guess is that he has the ohm load too low for three subs, all DVC... now sure what type though.
-------------------- Posts: 128 | From: va beach, va | Registered: Dec 2001
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