Stereo in 5kcstq

[Eric_R_Kissell@email.whirlpool.com]

I just put a Sony CDX-C680 in my 1986 5kcstq. 

A look at the stock system made me decide to run all new wires. It was easy 
to pull the front and back seats and carpet along the sills and tunnel to 
route all of the wires I ran and keep low level separate from power and 
speakers except one point where I had to cross the speaker wires with the 
low level ones. It did take me a while, though, but I did a few things like 
fixing some broken power window wires in the hinge area of the right front 
door. Window works fine now.

Of course, I went a little more complex than just a new radio. 

>From the receiver's low level front outputs, I wired a 4x50 watts amp to 
the front dash and door speakers, using an electronic crossover at a high 
pass of 120 HZ and used the crossover output level controls to adjust the 
dash speakers so they are not too loud. I used 5.25" separate components in 
both doors and dash with tweeters on the door panels just below the door 
release handle and the other tweeters on the corners of the dash aimed to 
give good angles and somewhat equal path lengths. 

For the deck, I just wanted fill, so I used 6.5" woofers driven off of the 
19 watts per channel rear speaker outputs from the Sony head unit and a 
passive 12db 120Hz-3500Hz bandpass filter. The way I have it set up I can 
use the head unit to adjust front vs. back and left vs. right and subwoofer 
level, while the electronic crossover allows me to adjust dash vs. door 
levels.

Bass comes from a 6.5 Bazooka tube at a lowpass freq of 80 Hz, which fills 
the low end nicely when driven by a 2x50 watt amp bridged to 1x100 watts.

Why do you want to use 6x9 speakers? For the rear deck, 6.5 speakers are a 
drop-in and will give a more linear sound as well. Why cut steel? Do you 
really want a lot of high end and sound from the rear? If you want imaging, 
I suggest more sound up front and less from behind you, although I 
recognize that most people are used to car audio originating from behind 
them, because that is the easiest place to put larger speakers. If you want 
bass, consider a single 10" or 12" woofer in the middle of the deck 
(reinforced) and drive it below 120 Hz.

Bad news on my system. My 4x50 amp developed an intermittent turn-on 
problem right after I hooked it up, so I have not yet had a chance to 
really evaluate things yet. It sounded good for the one time it came to 
life. I guess that's what I get for recycling used amps removed from my old 
1984 VW Rabbit (OK, so it was a GTI wearing a Rabbit VIN) that I stripped 
before I sold it 2 years ago. I loved having an old Rabbit in decent shape 
with 250,000 miles and a stereo that was worth more that the rest of the 
car. With a couple of nice mountain bikes hung on the back, the value of 
the car was approaching negligible.

More bad news. I get to pull the just-installed receiver to replace my 
apparently leaking heater core in the 1985 5kcstq. I was really hoping that 
the heater core would not fail anytime soon. For some jobs, I just do not 
have pleasant expectations. 

Eric R. Kissell
1986 5000cstq, 1.8 bar, k24