Vintage Car Stereo Quetstion

First thing's first:

I know about as much about car stereos as I do about computers.

Also, my car audio needs are fairly simple: in the morning, I need to get Howard 100 to my speakers and in the evening, baseball. Other times, I enjoy the sounds of the engine. I like music, but high fidelity is not important to me.

My 87 Porsche has its original Blaupunkt Reno cassette player in the dash, which is fine as far as I'm concerned. When isolating each corner, it sounded like I had a bad (original) speaker in the left rear. Today, I dropped in some new speakers and it still sounds bad in that corner.

Should I suspect a problem with the wiring to that speaker or an internal problem with my 22 year old German stereo?

I'm going with blown amp in the stereo. I probably have the same stereo in pieces somewhere in a box marked "LOTUS." Chuck it and get an Alpine.

First guess would be the wiring - most likely a connector gone bad or the insulation worn off on a wire.

The easiest way to check would normally be to swap the wires around (if it's wiring then the problem would stay on the speaker, if it's the radio it'll "follow" you around) but if it's factory wiring that'll probably mean making some cuts into the wiring, which I'd be reluctant to do.

Nevertheless, upgrading factory wiring is a good idea in 99.9% of cases.

I had a braunpunk in my car and put an alpine in its place. The blaupunk never worked, it was donated to the goodwill. I'm think about finding a becker mexico core to have refurbished. I think your best bet if something is broken is to get the thing repaired. I don't know what that entails but there are people who fix old car radios.

good luck

I would suspect the wiring in the car first, if you have already changed our the speakers, if you can get hold of a multimeter just test the wires for resistance and also check to make sure they aren't grounding out by switching the unit to continuity mode and grounding one lead and attaching the other lead to the speaker wire.

I have also seen on some cars were the frame of the speaker grounds to the chassis and it causes a bad cracking from the unit.

Just run a wire from the head unit to the speak to check the continuity, if it fixes it wiring is bad, if not its the amp.

Lulz. I just rplaced my rears iwth 6.5 inch rounds. I had to make a bracket but no big deal.

I took eth 4x6s fromt eh rear and put them in the front. My fronts looked like this:

I just got one of these for the 911: http://www.retrosoundusa.com/

It also has an iPod/USB hookup. Not the least expensive head unit out there, but it should look right.

I'm going the stealth route in my 70 Volvo. Cheap amp, 4 speakers and my Zune. 30gigs of music/video, FM tuner, and it comes with me when I exit the car.

In reply to Woody: Did you remove the rear panel the speaker fits in? My 86 Carrera has some kind of separator or something the tweeter and regular speaker are both plugged onto. A loose connection there would make them sound lousy.

Rad Capz are you talking about the fader?

benzbaron wrote: Rad Capz are you talking about the fader?

I'm not a stereo guy but I put a bolt in rollbar in my 911 a few months ago and had to take out the rear panels and was surprised to find a little box attached to the back of the panel which was connected to the speaker wires from the stereo and both speakers in the panel. So thats 6 connections instead of a usual 2. Mines a ROW car, don't know if that makes a difference.

I don't know anything about 911s but it sounds llike you are talking about a junction or something where all the wires meet. My car has a fader in the center console, last time it worked I fried the front speaker wires. I guess that is part of the fun of a funky old car.

I've removed the panel before but not this time. I'll check it out.

And Hess: Wouldn't a blown amp take down all four speakers, not just one?

@Rad_capz - you've most likely encountered are the crossovers which ensure that the speakers only get those frequencies they're actually supposed to reproduce.

@Woody - you're normally have a four-channel power amp on a head unit with four outputs. It's feasible that one of them has gone bad.

BoxheadTim wrote: @Rad_capz - you've most likely encountered are the crossovers which ensure that the speakers only get those frequencies they're actually supposed to reproduce. @Woody - you're normally have a four-channel power amp on a head unit with four outputs. It's feasible that one of them has gone bad.

Tim, YA YA YA thats it! CROSSOVERS! Thanks for rattling my brain! I just couldn't think of the word last night.

The Blaupunkt I took out of the Esprit was really weird. The left front channel wouldn't work unless the power antennae was plugged in. Of course, the power antennae went bad, specifically the "stop" circuit, so it would just keep running all the time. Disconnect the motor and the head unit wouldn't play 1 channel. I pulled that sucker out and put the Alpine in and it's great. Then I looked at the Blaupunkt and hooked it up on the bench and it worked fine there, all 4 channels. Just weird. I think the car wanted an Alpine instead of a Blaupunkt and that's all there was to it.

It probably was the German electronics rejecting the Lotus wiring

All I can say is that the cheap discontinued JVC CD player & Sony 4x6s I picked up at Wally-World (combined with some ancient Planet Audio 4" door speakers laying around my garage) sounds a lot better than any of the car systems I spent so much money on back when I was in college (Kenwood/Alpine/Blaupunkt).

Car audio's come a long way in the last 25yrs. It's not tough, or expensive to put good sound in the car, unless you want to be one of those guys who want to make jailhouse gang-rape garbage loud enough to blast the trunk lid off the thing.

I would just add in to same the same thing several others have. When you have a problem in car audio you start at the speaker. What I mean by this is if one speaker is crackling, you swap speakers with the other side. If the crackling goes with the speaker, the speaker is bad. If not, swap the wiring between chanenls at the head unit. If the crackle goes with the wiring, the wiring is bad. If not, then you have isolated the crackling to the head unit and the channel is bad and you will need to repair or replace it. I'd recommend replacing it. Car stereos have come a long way in the past couple decades.

Just make sure your speakers and your new head unit are all compatible. Some factory systems use weird resistances such as 2 ohms or 8 ohms whereas most aftermarket (and by far, most OEM speakers too) use 4 ohms impedance.

And old paper cone factory speakers combined with a new 30wx4 aftermarket receiver with bass boost will equal blown speakers in about 15 mins. From experience.

andrave wrote: I would just add in to same the same thing several others have. When you have a problem in car audio you start at the speaker. What I mean by this is if one speaker is crackling, you swap speakers with the other side. If the crackling goes with the speaker, the speaker is bad. If not, swap the wiring between chanenls at the head unit. If the crackle goes with the wiring, the wiring is bad. If not, then you have isolated the crackling to the head unit and the channel is bad and you will need to repair or replace it. I'd recommend replacing it. Car stereos have come a long way in the past couple decades. Just make sure your speakers and your new head unit are all compatible. Some factory systems use weird resistances such as 2 ohms or 8 ohms whereas most aftermarket (and by far, most OEM speakers too) use 4 ohms impedance.

Lots of good advice right there. Thanks.

Problem solved: Since I had already dropped in new speakers, I swapped in the much newer Blaupunkt receiver out of my Miata and everything worked as it should, so it looks like there was an internal problem with the original receiver. Which, as it turns out, was not my car's original receiver anyway. There was a "Factory Remanufactured Unit" sticker on it dated 1989.

andrave wrote: And old paper cone factory speakers combined with a new 30wx4 aftermarket receiver with bass boost will equal blown speakers in about 15 mins. From experience.

Yeah. I can't believe how much power modern head units have. You know, if I weren't playing around with old cars so much, I don't think I would have noticed. I actually quit using my 80s era JVC "boom box" in the garage, and just fire up the system in one of the cars instead.

I've got the switched & unswitched leads both hooked up to unswitched power, so I can play the thing with the key out. Doesn't drain voltage as much as you'd think.

In reply to Woody:

Sounds like a new reciever would do the trick!