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Saying goodbye to the van &
more thump for the max
My wife and I bought our van (a 1984 Chevy
conversion) shortly after we got married. It has been with us for
almost 10 years now. For the last couple of years, it has
primarily been a backup vehicle. I drive it so little that the
battery is nearly always dead, and I pretty much have to jump start it
every time I want to use it. The only time I really use it is when
we go on vacation, I tow our camping gear in a Uhaul trailer with it.
We finally decided this spring that it was time to get
rid of the van. My cousin, Chuck, is 23 years old now, and
although he has his drivers license, he has never owned a car.
After much consideration, I offered him the van. I told him that
he would have to be willing to lend it back to me if / when I needed to
use it, and that I would do all the maintenance work on it for him.
He agreed to take it, and so the van will be leaving us in early July.
I had no intention of giving Chuck the stereo system in
the van, so I began the process of pulling the system out of the van,
and putting it into the Maxima. So, without further delay, here is
the story of the stereo install!
The Sony Xplod head unit in the car was having issues,
so the Panasonic from the van was the first piece to go in. We
already had a small amplifier under the passengers side front seat
powering a 10" sub. The plan was to rewire that amp to power the
speakers in the front doors, then take out the 10" sub and box, and
replace that with the box out of the van, which houses a 12" Audiobahn
sub. The Audiobahn would be powered by a 400 watt Pyle amplifier,
and the Punch 200 a4 amp from the van would be bridged into 2 channel
mode to power the speakers on the back deck of the car.
This plan meant running a new power wire from the
battery to the trunk, rerouting the existing power wire for the small
amp into the trunk to tap power from the main lead there, routing new
RCA lines to the trunk, and running new speaker wires. Over the
course of several days my daughter Krystal and I removed seats, and trim
panels, and snaked various wires through the car. Finally, on
Sunday, June 10th, we finished the wiring, and got to test out the
system. All I can say is WOW! The car went from a crappy CD
player to an awesome CD/MP3 system with nearly 700 watts of power. |