88 Town Car Stereo Build

[marquis_82_withneons]

tjc78 posted a buildup of his stereo ideas and what not.. so it gave me the idea to do so too

will get more detailed as we do the build. but the basic specs are as follows

Kenwood single din headunit with bluetooth and color variation

infinity kappa series 5.25 for the front doors

infinity kappa series 6x9 for the rear

Kenwood 1800w monoblock class D amp mounted in trunk

dual 15" Kicker CVR's in a sealed box.


future plans.

infinity kappa series 3.5 for dash

Kenwood 4 channel amp also trunk mounted

[L1011tristar17]

That sounds like a good setup right there. Do you know if the car has a factory amp in it? Apparently mine does and in the two and a half years of ownership I only discovered this last weekend. If the car does have it you could probably wire it to run the speakers off of that until you get the 4 channel amp.

[tjc78]

Sounds like a nice base there. FYI you can get most 6.5" speakers into the front doors and maybe even a 5 1/4 into the dash (or at least a 4").

TC probably has a Premium Sound amp. This actually saves a lot of time as you don't have to run any speaker wires as they are already in the trunk. If you buy an "Amp Bypass Cable" you can use the plugs on that to connect to all the speakers in the car. I did this on my 89 MGM and it worked great.

[marquis_82_withneons]

it does have the amp in the trunk. however the wires coming and going on it look pretty small. so were running 14ga speaker wire throughout for the 4 primary ones.

my Merc was factory optioned with no stereo in the car. no wire no speakers nothing. so i made cutouts in the door panel and used those instead of the dash. i dont like dash pads.. theyre not very kind to me lol. i ran thick wire and all that. so my plan was to just do the same with the lincoln until we figure out what we wanna do with the dash ones.

either way were gutting the factory stereo stuff for all new i believe.. i dont know.. its his car his call

[L1011tristar17]

I believe the 6.5" speakers fit in the doors if you remove the white plastic piece that the 5.25" mounts to.

[tjc78]

Nothing wrong with wiring it all from scratch. It certainly can do no harm. IMHO 14G is probably overkill for the short runs, I'm using 16G twisted pair in my setup. Don't scrimp on the RCA cables either, it all helps to keep the noise level down. In other words no $3.99 Ebay special.

Be sure to run three sets of RCAs while you are there, even if you aren't using them right away. It will save you lots of time later.

[marquis_82_withneons]

problem is with the RCA cables is that nice little $40 price tag that comes with the 25ft monster cables.. haha

[L1011tristar17]

I bought a wiring kit from Crutchfield for $40 when I did my sub install: ~20ft RCA, 5ft ground cable, 25ft power cable with fuse and fuse holder, remote turn-on lead wire and a bunch of connectors. Crutchfield is normally more on the overpriced side so I'm sure you could find a better deal than I did. You could also try Craigslist and see if anyone is getting rid of their sound system and doesn't need their RCA cables anymore.

[sxcpotatoes]

I'd buy all my wires from Monoprice.com, holy shit are they quality, and cheap, but since you add shipping, you need to batch order a shitload of HDMI RCA DVI Cat5/6 cables and all kinds of adapters to make it cost effective. 30' hdmi cables for $28 and change..

[sly]

I avoid monster cable at all costs because they cost so dang much. Even if you are an audiophile... and I'm into overkill for sure, monster charges monster prices. Too spendy for me. Your basic walmart specials will work fine for RCA cables. If you want some better quality ones... get anything else that looks like it's got some meat to it. should still be half the price of monster. (if not less)

[gadget73]

The feed to the amplifier is very small because its line level, effectively the same sort of thing an RCA cable carries to your amp. With a little creativity, you can use that factory cable to feed your amps in the trunk, and use the factory wiring back from the trunk to the speakers. Its 18 ga or so. Not hugely thick, but the wire run isn't nearly long enough to be a problem at that gauge. Considering you're running subs, there shouldn't be much bass info, and thats where all the power actually is. Makes for a nice clean install if you only need to run a power cable back there. My 86 used something else, so I had to run RCA cables. I am using the factory wiring from the trunk back up to the front speakers though. Got a bunch of extra wiring out of the dashboard when I did that.

[marquis_82_withneons]

we do the factory amp for a temp install.. but all in all id like to do a complete fresh install with all the components and wiring

[Ike Clanton]

I'm seriously thinking about doing a custom double-DIN in my TC. Need to take some measurements.

[marquis_82_withneons]

if it didnt come with one.. i wouldnt personaly. simply because youd have to cut the dash trim which is hard enough to find

[L1011tristar17]

Could you use dash trim from an early 80's Mark VI as a template? I know they came with the larger opening for the stereo than the later Town Cars, so that may be closer to the size of the opening you would need for the double DIN.