Broke EF

Yeah I vacumed it when I put it all together.

So that larger wire is the factory wire from the alternator huh, and that should be upgraded?!? I dont have that much power in my system, I would think that a wire that size should be fine. Mine was a little bigger than the stinger 4ga I had but I dont think it was quite 2ga. I should have measured it to see what size it actually is. Either way it seems large enough to keep up to me. I guess I should look at alternators

Sean

EmperorJJ1

iTrader: (5)

are u having dimming issues or what?

Broke EF

Yes I am It is MUCH better with the battery but if I really crank up the sub it will still dim. Mind you its about twice as loud before it dims now, but it still does. The only other issue I'm having that I'm not sure of is the sub amp turning off. Some songs with lots of bass (for example Andre 3000, Pink and Blue from The Love Below) will sound crazy and shake the **** out of my car. With that song I can go all the way to 25 on the head unit with the sub all the way up and have no issues. Other songs with a decent amount of bass (50 Cent, In My Hood from The Massacre) will make the amp turn off on the first hit with the volume at 20. Now if you don't know about the two songs I listed, the first one kind of has rolling bass (constant low tone that goes up and down), and the second song "Hits". It dosent pop any fuses, but I have to turn off the system and turn it back on before it comes back. I would think its "overloading" the amp and turning itself off except that other types of loud crazy bass have no effect. The only other thing I kind of think (I may be crazy) is that the quick hit drops the voltage to low and to quick and it shuts it down for saftey. I can use a lil advice

Thanks,
Sean

EmperorJJ1

iTrader: (5)

mmm thats an issue right there... do you have a multi meter? sounds like an issue with either sub or amp, do you happen to have a warranty with either?

i can walk you thru some testing to figure it out thou... what are your settings on the sub amp?

Broke EF

I do have a multimeter. Sub maybe, Amp no. I bought the amp used, thinking it was new so im SOL on that. Current settings (remember I still havent tweaked it) Gain ~3/4 of the way up, Crossover ~100htz, Boost ~3/8 of the way up. The amp may be up to high, but it dosent clip at all, and the sub dosent distort when cranked. IMO at the settings I have now its very close to MAX on the sub and the amp but not over if that makes sense. Youll have to let me know what to test and Ill have to either wait untill the weekend to do it, or Wendsday if my buddy comes by (hes an electrician thus will have a few multimeters with him). Or I guess I could do the testing at work if Im so inclined, but the amp under the seat may sway me from that.

Sean

EmperorJJ1

iTrader: (5)

turn the bass boost all the way off and see what happens

Broke EF

OK I think it’s done (for now) I fixed the wire for the sirius so now it has constant power like it needs. I also got both amps adjusted so no more turning off. I also got a look at the alternator wire; WOW is all I can say. On my car there is the 2-3GA wire going from the battery to the fuse box on the driver side, then there is ~8GA going to the starter, and from the starter (I don’t know why they routed it this way) to the alternator is a 10GA wire! I was going to change it yesterday but I dint have terminals so next week Ill take care of that. I’m just gonna add a 4GA from the alternator to the fuse block terminal and keep all the stock stuff as is.

Any way I also took a couple more pictures, and this time I vacuumed first

Interior amp finished


Sub amp finished


Rear speakers



And even though the box looks like complete **** and Im going to redo it soon, here is the sub

I’m embarrassed to even post that

Moving on here are the amps with the seats in and all the way forward


That’s all for now, I’ll probably keep this thread going when I re-do the box. Hopefully I can get that going and done before the real car comes back and Ill have 0 time for the daily.


Sean

EmperorJJ1

iTrader: (5)

looks nice. overall very clean. whats the real car if you dont mind me asking?

Broke EF

This is the real car, (with me behind the wheel)


We are waiting for it to come back from the chassis shop (Its been a LONG wait). If you want to see the build up of it so far you can see it here (lots of pics)
http://www.sidewayz.net/turbota
We did all the work ourselves so far including building the turbo kit with no prior experience.

Sean

Broke EF

Man, I know its not a Cobalt and it there is no pictures of the stereo (because there is none) but I'm suprised there has been no comments.

Sean

EmperorJJ1

iTrader: (5)

lol ya no one visits this part of the forum man. i was gonna say something but meh decided against it. My old car was a v6 01 maro and i loved it while i had it but the ss/sc is worlds better IMO. lol if i had a v8 i probably would have thought differently

looks good man!

Broke EF

Ok I’m bringing this back from the dead. I finally got around to upgrading the alternator wire; I ran 4ga straight from the alternator to the terminal on the fuse panel that has the larger wire that ties to the battery. I did this in addition to the factory wiring, so I didn’t take anything away just added. It almost seems that the dimming is worse now, but I never pay too much attention to it and I hardly ever have it loud enough to dim the lights anyway so it’s hard to say. Anyway I was really hoping that would solve it, and it didn’t. So now the plan (which may not fix it, but I will feel better anyway) is to put the stock battery back in, and hook up the kinetic battery in parallel. If you use the "power calc" on their web site going off I have a max RMS of 800 watts (I'm closer to 700 in reality) and I am keeping the factory battery, this is the recommended cell. If I say the same power and I'm replacing the stock battery I would need to go to a 1400 for my starting battery (replacing the stock) and adding the 800 in parallel to that. Since I don’t want to go that big, and don’t feel that I need to, I’ll throw the stocker back in.

I plan on wiring it where all of the factory connections go to the factory battery, with only the addition of the extra 4ga going to the kinetik battery. On the kinetik Ill have the wire coming from the stock battery, then on the positive will be the wire to the distribution block to the amps, and the ground will go to the added ground lug that is back there already. To be honest I don’t know if this will solve anything, but I am sure it will help. Since I changed out the battery, it doesn’t seem to crank as strong as it did which again could be just my imagination. But really ever since I did the battery (and I knew it should have been an addition) I have wanted to have both batteries in the car.

Anyway, sorry for the long post, but let me know what you all think. As always I will have pics of the whole process. I have already made a battery tray to hold the kinetik, now I am waiting on some terminals to go on the stock battery, and some more wire.


Sean

EmperorJJ1

iTrader: (5)

have you tried running a second wire from the fuse box back to the battery? i would also upgrade the ground to 1/0 instead of that 4g

Broke EF

Nah I havent dont that yet. I am going to try the battery thing first and if that doesnt work I will move on to that. I ordered enough wire to do both things, and I know we have some 0ga laying around but I dont think we have terminals. So if the batteries dont work I will inventory what we have around and order whatever I may need and go for that.

Sean