I finally got my 71 Riv up and in good running condition several days back. My intentions were to only install a vintage shaft radio in the original hole, but after driving the car around for a few days and listening to the crap that came from that old shaft system, I decided to go with a good sound system. The shaft radio was an old Pioneer which when new had all the noise isolators hanging on all power wires. Bad design and without the isolators, engine noise was usually terrible. I had plenty of engine noise and didn't want to start installing coils to remove it. The question was what type of equip. to install. Once upon a time I worked part time for a local stereo shop and had the best I could afford. This was near 20 years back when amps were US built and not over-rated. I still have several of those quality amps along with a host of newer components. I finally decided to go mostly vintage and use some older equip. along with a late model head unit and Sirius reciever. Newer head units are much better than the old ones I once used. They have more voltage output and many adjustments that eliminate a need for an eq in the non competition systems. I had a nice JVC motorized face cd player in stock (closet :laugh: ). It has a parametric eq built in with sub crossover and gains for everything. Very flexible and a brushed alum. faceplate that matches the dash on this model Riv very good. Most importantly, it has a seperate line input which works well with my Sirius reciever. Sound quality is much better with the input than using the fm station to pick up the reciever. My amps are old, big, power hogs but very good. The better older amps have a great sound and are very strong. I elected to go with a couple of vintage Earthquake amps I had in stock (closet :Brow: ). One is a 4 channel that I am running the front and rear Infinity speakers off of. The other is a big 2 channel that is powering 2 10" subs in the trunk. The subs and box are also several years old. I had 2 Hifonics SQ subs from the mid 90's in stock (you know). They have huge magnets and large voice coils, so they can handle the 450 watts per side produced by the big Earthquake. My friend still owns the stereo shop. So, I gave him a visit looking for a sub box to house these 2 Hifonics. He told me about one upstairs that he built several years back and never used. I crawled up there and found this never used old style round ported large cubic in. box that would fit the system perfectly. I took it to the shop and coated it inside and out with truck bed liner. I installed it all today and just got finished. After listening to it for about 45 mins, I can say it sounds great. No hair parting bass like I once required, but rather it's smooth and tight and doesn't over power the vocals. No engine noise and with the Sirius running through the aux. input., the sound quality is as good as a CD. I will hopefully be driving this car several days a week and now will enjoy my tunes as I drive. Well worth the work put in it. Anyone else have a good system in their ole Buicks???
I've got a system that turned out surprisingly good. I've got 2 3.5" speakers in the dash with bass blockers for mids & highs. I installed a WOOX powered subwoofer under the console for bass. The sound doesn't seem fractured or coming from different places. It's kinda cool when the subwoofer shakes the seats. Not enough power to be heard clearly on the highway, but around town it's full and clear. Future plans call for 4.5" speakers in the dash for a bit more mid range and a "Stealthbox" console sub for more substantial base. The best part of the system is the speakers are invisible. John
Under the console? Got some more info on that subwoofer, like where can I get one, and maybe a picture? I like the invisible part...
I've actually taken my interior out of the Skylark so I can get it painted and all the upholestery redone. With that, I (I do all my own installs) will dynamat the interior, doors and trunk before carpet. Along with that, I will layout a 2 gauge amp wire set-up to the trunk. The RCA's will also be laid in along with 8 gauge speaker wire. I'm upgrading the altenator to appr 150 ampers and running a yellow top Optima. Not sure whether I'm going MMats, Phoenix Gold or Soundstream for the Amp. I am going to drop in 12" JL's (2) in a custom enclosure.
There used to be a product on the market called Bass Shakers. They were very small and bolted to the body of the car where they produced a vibration. It actually was another way of producing the lower frequencies in music other than large subs. I installed a set under the front seats years back and thought they sounded pretty good.
The silver dynamat is awesome. It not only blocks noise, but heat as well. I have seen some good deals on ebay for it and similar products. I don't like their black dynamat. It is aggravating to bend. I once ran a yellow top also, but had problems with it running low after the car would sit for weeks. Reds and blues did the same thing. But, if I drove the car every couple weeks, the batteries would stay charged. JL makes a very good sub. Good choice. I used Soundstream many years back, but don't know about their new stuff. I am sure they are not as good as the old ones since nothing else is. I have installed the class D MMats amps and can say they had tons of power, but I never liked class D sound. I did use a class X amp one time that had pretty good SQ.
On my 71 stage 1 I used 2 4" speakers mounted to factory speaker assy (as per my website) for the front, 2 6x9's in the factory parcel shelf location, sony cd player under the front drivers seat and left the stock radio in the dash. 200 watt CD player has wireless remote so can change songs or whatever by aiming remote at my feet. Generally though I make my own cd's so not much need ever for that, just put cd in and go. Sounds good. Invisible. Front speaker mod: http://members.shaw.ca/ritc1/speaker.html later Tim
Kenwood Indash AM/FM/CD player with Remote Kenwood 400W Rear 6x9s Kenwood 160W Front Dash Speakers Kenwood 600W Amp. Coming soon: Kenwood 10 in. subs in rear seat enclosure
I installed a nice system in my car almost two years ago and its still kicking, and still underpowered. First off I installed the silver dynamat in the doors, kick panels, behind the rear seat, package tray, underneath the package tray and in the trunk. Total of like 60 square feet or so. It made a huge difference. I also sprayed 3 cans of dynamat spray on sound deadener in the trunk lid itself instead of covering it with mat and messing up the original finish. Still needs more though. Behind the kick panels there is a void with a metal strap across the center. I cut the strap out and widened the opening and dynamated/sealed the area up to make a box. I made the face of the box out of 1/4 inch thick wood and sealed it to the body. I installed resonant engineering RE6.5 component speakers in these boxes and modifed the stock kick panels to fit over them. These speakers use a new motor design that makes older style speakers obsolete. The clarity is amazing, and remains perfectly clear all the way up to max excursion, which for these speakers is 7 mm one way, huge for a 6.5 inch driver. Too bad they are only powered by the head unit. The tweeters from the component set are mounted in the drivers and passenger side air vents. Hidden from view, and they create good front imaging. In the trunk I have a adire audio DPL 12 subwoofer which has 16mm of excursion, and awesome sound quality as well. Its in a cheap 12 inch sealed box at 1 cubic foot volume and is powered by a cheap 160watt RMS 2 channel amp. eek. The head unit is a Pioneer Premier 750mp. It has some awesome features and programable EL display. I have a short video of my GS, my Ttype, several buick logos/advertisements(ie "wouldnt you really rather have a 1970 Buick?") and other graphics loaded onto the faceplate to impress the riders. I made a custom box for the head unit that mounts below the 8 track player under the dash. That way i can keep the 8 track and AM radio in the dash. Someday when I get some money ill purchase a nice 100w RMS x4 channel amplifier and another set of RE comps for the rear, as well as a 1000w RMS amp for the sub. I have pics if you want.
Oh yea dont forget the alternator I converted to a 135 amp internally regulated unit. No more dead batteries....
Where did you get the alternator, Jacob? Is it fairly easy to do that conversion? I've been thinking about doing that, too... :TU:
A high current alternator is one of the best mods you can make. In conjunction with an electronic ignition and the correct distributor timing curve, spark plugs with wires and proper gap, you can get a big performance boost as well as power for your stereo... Read this...http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.php?t=44117&highlight=12+si
What I ended up getting was all Diamond Audio. D61000.1amp, D6600.4 amp, S500a seps, S600a seps and two D610D4 subs. Looks like I'll have it ready to install in December (hoping for this month but body shops can screw everything up. I'll post pictures then.
First thing I did was use an 80amp Pont. ALT... that seemed fine. As for stereo compontes.. I kept it simple... Poineer Head unit Infinity 4in in the front 4x10 hole, with Pioneer surface mount tweets stuck to the dash in the corners. Pioneer 6x9 rears (used as the mids) Eclipse 10 sub. 2 Linear power amps.. 1 for the 6x9's and 1 for the Sub. That setup rocked... but wasn't loud enough to get me into trouble with 'Da Man. Was louder than headers and 3in exhaust w/flowmasters :grin: Don't forget to use new wireing... I didn't trust the 30 year old stuff to handle all the juice the new setup would need.
I bought the alternator off of ebay a year ago for somewhere around 70 bucks. It was the best deal for the money and was a "one wire" unit. I installed it and it didnt work, so i took a stock "three wire" regulator out of one of my spare turbo car alternators and got it working. Its a very simple swap. Only one wire of the original alt. plug is used and a jumper is installed between the brown and white(i think) wires on your old voltage regulator wiring harness which bypasses the original regulator. I kept my voltage regulator on my car and pushed the connector back on so it looks like its still original and can be converted back in a matter of minutes. Whats nice is that with these alternators you can somewhat adjust the voltage output by relocating the voltage sensing wire to a different location on your car, such as your headlights. This is really nice because it will compensate for voltage drop throughout the system and work to maintain 14.7 volts at whatever point you place the voltage sensing wire. If you want brighter headlights, hotter spark, etc this is a blessing in disguise.
Or just make a simple resistor voltage divider to fool the sense function to think the voltage is lower than it really is. Make that out of a potentiometer and you can adjust it as you like.
So I started looking in the electrical section today cos I'm sick of my battery dying, and lo and behold I find this thread. Funny, I figured that since the alternator puts out a solid 13.7V, and the battery is fairly new, and since there's a huge (1.5F) cap in my trunk, that I wouldn't have issues with dead batteries. As I write this, I have the charger hooked up to my battery. uzzled: I've yet to dynamat (or equivalent) so my car rattles a bit... Anyhow, I have a Blaupunkt Hamburg head unit which works wonderfully. I've yet to put in the front speakers, but they're going to go into the kick panels as soon as I fiberglass that up. For the fronts, I have 6.5" Infinity Kappa's from last year (I'm slow) o No: with passive x-overs and seperate tweeters which I'm not sure where I'll mount yet...either on the kick panels or up on the a-pillars. In the back I have Infinity refernence 9613i or something like that...they're brand new cos I blew the old infinities that were back there. These I have run off a Concept amp (50W x 2 RMS) that I got for free. :TU: I have an active xover connected to them, with the low pass going to a Kenwood (ebay for $40) 300Wrms bridged amp. That powers an Infinity reference 12"...I forgot the model #. It all sounds great together, the active xover making a huge difference. So what sucks is that my battery keeps dying, and I still have to put some sort of vibration dampener on the CD changer mounted on the rear deck, cos the 6x9's or sub vibrate it so much it skips.
Hey Romy, how many amps is your altenator? If you're running an 70 or 85 and your pumping the bass, even with a capacitor (all that does is help with deep notes to keep lights from dimming and less work on the battery) you're going to need to go with apprx 120 amps. I had a similar problem and that fixed it. Also a 1.5 farad cap is overkill. You need 1farad per 1000 watts. 500 watts, 1/2 a farad and so on. Also that's only for mono signals. Hope that helps. Chris
