jronald

Small amount of fab, but a whole bunch of ingenuity and time:

Some may remember that I installed High End audio, primarily in German autos in my youth. I had some decent equipment left over after all these years, so with a blank slate 93 ZJ, I decided to see what I could come up with.

To start off, I pulled the upper dash pad and disconnected the factory tweeters from the lines that also run the front doors. I then soldered on new speaker wires and ran them to the center of the dash, near the defrost vents. Behind the passenger defrost vent I was able to squeeze in a 20X20 watt amplifier just to drive the tweeters. Routed the cables down to the console. The RCA cables are "Y"ed off of the back of the EQ (see below)

After yanking the console and figuring out where I could stash stuff, I built a small box that contains a 4 pole, double throw 12 volt relay. 1 side of the relay goes to ground and the other side goes to the antenna lead power wire off of the Head unit. Off of half of the 4 contacts I have a 5 amp fused line going to the fuse box. The other half of the contacts go to 4 amplifiers, an XM Radio SkyFi2 and a equalizer. By doing this I have taken all of the standby load off of the antennae power line of the head unit, and have accomplished the same thing. Switch the head unit on, it pulls in the relay, the relay powers the standby circuit and everything else turns on!

I pulled a fused 40 amp circuit off of the positive battery post, and have it routed through the fire wall, under the carpet, into the console area, back under the carpet and then under the back seat. As well as this 40 amp circuit, I have the 5 amp standby circuit, a ground circuit and 2 sets of RCA patch cables as well as 2 sets of speaker wires, all tucked and then snaked to under the back seat. I was very careful to locate the RCA cables about 1/2 way down the transmission hump, to avoid the foot traffic. The speaker wires are in the same position on the other side of the hump. The voltage wiring I used was industrial 10 gauge, rated for 100c, gasoline and abrasion resistant. I was less careful where I placed this wire because frankly it was a PITA to run all of these wires under the carpet and keep them separate.

Also under the console I was able to locate a LM317 Voltage regulator to power the SkyFi2. Im sick of the cigarette lighter adapter that I'm using with the existing AudioVox Express XM unit I now have. $7.00 worth of silicone, heat shrink tube and carbon resistors, and I would up with a rock solid 6.03 volt supply to drive the SkyFi2! even with the attached heat-sink, its tiny, out of the way, and works perfectly.

Flip up the back seat and under the passenger side is a 100 watt amplifier driving a dual voice coil sub-woofer located in the wasted cubby space at the passenger side rear of the GC. I covered the whole assembly with padding and some tan vinyl to make it match the rest of the interior. I simply Yed the RCA inputs off of the rear door amp. I need to work on the retention mechanism though. What Im using works fine but is monkey butt ugly, if I say so myself.

Under the drivers side are two 50 watt amplifiers, these drive the front and rear door 6 1/2 inch poly covered speakers. All of the amps are fed from the EQ located near the ash tray, via the RCA cables mentioned above. I was very careful to ground everything together, and then home run them all to a bolt under the console. No ground loop hum in this system.

Overall Im pleased with the results, looks stone stock but rocks your world. All told I probably have close to 40 hours involved reusing/modifying the factory where I could. Its a stealth install. If it were not for the SkyFi2 you would be hard pressed to see anything. The EQ tucks down between the ashtray and the console in the 3/4 inch space between them so it's hardly noticeable. The sub in the back is built into the side panel so there are not bigash sub boxes floating around taking up precious little cargo space.

I started this whole car thing 30 years ago in a Hot Rod shop, in a non descript town on the SC line. Pops (the owner) always said "Chrome don't go". After all these years I still take that statement to heart.

Ron

xj^REMY

very nice... sounds like a very well "tuned" set up for tunes

why'd you wire in an EQ? still have the factory head unit, or for comfortable frequency tuning abilities for the amps??

in your post you said 4 amplifiers were wired off the relay, but explained the installation of 3.... how'd you decide on the 4PDT relay? amperage capacity? continuous/constant duty? i'm very firmiliar with electric systems, but still brushin up on electronics (capacitors, resistors, relays, etc)..... assuming 3 amps (1x 100W - sub, 2x 50W - F&R) mathematically speaking, all together your amplifiers total draw is ~15A (50W= ~5A, 100W= ~10A).... did you double each amps draw, then combine those to get total 40A draw??