Kicker Kicked

Well....that fancy Kicker stereo that was in my wagon? Not any more! Yesterday I was going to take that out at my buddy's shop. I looked and I couldn't even BELIEVE the wires in the car! Some of those wires are as big around as a quarter! Looked like guide wires that hold up 500 foot towers. Two sets of 250 watt fuses that are bigger than any I have ever seen. I'm no wiring guy but my buddy that owns the shop is an ace car guy and can do anything on a car so we took the back cargo area apart and he jumped in and started disassembling. Later, he had the back seat out too. The speakers had to weigh in at about 15 lbs or so each. We ended up with a PILE of wires that look like spaghetti only a LOT bigger. And all the wires aren't out yet. The amp looks bigger than I have ever seen too. Can anyone actually USE 200 decibels??? Hey...they measured the decibels of the crowd at the play off games at 106 decibels! Anyway....some more wire threaded through the car needs to come out and it's history. Good riddance! We had the stereo just barely on before we took it out and it shook the walls of the building and the wagons windows were up! I don't know what these Kicker's are worth....I know nothing about stereo systems. I was told I could get good money for it...whatever that means? I'm just glad to get that mess out of my nice wagon.

 

I bet your SS is glad to have that out, too!
Now it can concentrate on doing it's job, and not with every nut being vibrated off every bolt!

David

 

The kids are into stereo now, throw them on craigslist. you will get some bites.

That thick gauage wire whoever put it in wasnt necessary for that. Probably using Tv cabel coax LOL

But seruiously ive only used 12-14 gauage for my CB radio set ups. I have a CB in the house here and in the car. I use that thick gauage coax to run my linear. Neighbors love it when I fire up the amp and blow smoke.

 

Right, Wix....I'll bet I gained a half second in the quarter with all that weight out of there!

F27....THIS wire was a braided wire that IS ACTUALLY as big around as my thumb! It actually does look exactly like a guide wire cable. THEN, there were 2 other wires that were as big around as a nickel. In dismantling this we did see that the guy didn't know how to do the job properly. It was a botched job that had loose wires and things were built badly in some places and over built badly in other places. With those 250 watt fuses and those wires that were loose in some places it was a fire waiting to happen. That's what I was worried about and one reason why I wanted it out of there.
The trouble with putting this on eBay is that this stuff is HEAVY for shipping. I will have to look up and see what these units are worth.

 

It makes you wonder, does'nt it? My hearing loss is from machinery etc through work, I'll bet most of this generations hearing loss/damage will happen at a much earler age due to the 2 million decible sound sytems.

My old truck is kinda the same Fox, the last owner put the sterio in. It's got a masive braided cable decect from the battery with the sterios own fuse box, all the junk under the seat and is so stupid loud I can hardly bare the volume at 2.

 

Hey Foxy,

Forever's right.

Craigslist is a better choice for getting rid of this stuff.

It is local, so no shipping. Cash on the barrelhead.
Meet with a buyer in a safe public place...no one coming to your house.
It works good.

David

 

that sounds like 0-2 gauge wire. i was in to car audio for a few years an got out, to run serious power u need to the bigger gauged wire so u dont melt the insulation. but kinda over kill thou. my old systems i ran either 6 or 8 gauge amp power wire, 8gauge ground wire, dependig on the subs i would run 12 gauge sub to amp wire, and the remote wire well it was the basic 14-16 gauge wire

 

SF, kids nowadays are looking for all kinds of ways to save money. It's cheaper to melt the wax out of their ears than spend thousands on a lifetime's worth of Q-Tips!

Phantom's right, they use HUGE Ground cabling to wire those mothers up. What a thing to do to a classy wagon like that!

Sounds like your buddy knows his way around.

 

My buddy can do ANYTHING to ANY car. Period. The best I have ever seen. His shop is about as big as a two stall garage and he makes a living out of it as a mechanic. He also can do stellar body work but doesn't do much of that anymore except on his own stuff or maybe mine. He's one of those guys that will look at something mechanical that he has never seen before and picture what's happening in his head and fix it.
FLASH!:
He just called me on the phone. He spent ANOTHER hour on my wagon (2 hours previously) and it still isn't all the way out! The guy that had it and did this abortion job on it cut the wires at the radio right AT the radio.....so my buddy did a bunch of solder work and shrink seals on it. This all after part of the dash and the radio came out!!! And there are still wires that go from the front to the back that were never even hooked to anything??? He has the front speakers working and still has to solder up some wires for the back. He said the front speakers sound great. I sure wish I could have taken pix and shown them to you guys. You wouldn't have BELIEVED the amount of stuff involved in this system! And thank god for my buddy, Bryon. Without him this take out would have been impossible.

 

I ran 0 gage in my little 89 Honda Accord and I needed every bit of it to run the 50 watt competition amp that was 1/4 ohm stable. I ran 2 12s and 4 10s in it off that little amp. It was rated at 50 watts but at 1/4 ohm it put out 1100 watts. The amp was over 3 feet long, 1 foot wide and 4 inches tall and weight every bit of 50lbs. With all those subs, 2 6x9's, 4 6,5s and 6 tweeters, I only could put out 132dbls. A 155dbl steady bass note for 11 second will make your heart skip, I have heard. I never listed to it that loud while sitting inside it. I had a remote for the deck unit and could adjust it from 50 feet away. I could open the sunroof without even being in the car. Never used a snow brush either, just use the remote and crank it up and the car was clean. I even had the trunk lid moving off the seals a few times, windows flexing and all that nonsense. I was an installer for PJs Auto Sound for a couple years and my car was sponsored by PJs so I got it all at cost and some for free because i allowed my car to be used as a demo for what kind of work we could do.

So if you are running multiple amps or big power, a very heavy gage wire is required to prevent voltage loss and overheating. I hope he did not tell you he was putting out 200bbls, there is not a sound system built as of yet that has been able to break the 177.2dB record set in 2002. That system had 72 1500watt amps and 36 big 16-volt batteries to put out the 130,000 watts of power needed to power his nine 15-inch subwoofers.

Mike, take a pic of what you have and I can give you an idea on what to ask for it. Model numbers of the amp and subs will help. I would guess, around $400-600 is very possible, maybe higher or lower, depending on what they are.

 

Thanks a lot, Blackie. This says 200 decibels on the amp so I assume it is capable of that but the guy never said that he ran it up to that. My buddy and I don't know jack about these systems but in looking at it Bryon thought it had to be a 10,000 watt amp...LOL. I will see if I can get some pix of it and I will get the model number etc off of it and the speakers and send them to you if I can. OH....Bryon said that the some of those cables were 1 gauge.

 

10,000 watts, nah, maybe 1000 at most. But even that is highly over rated and over rated by the manufactures. The easiest way to tell a good amp is the weight. The size of the box means nothing, unless you open it up and most of its circuit board is being used, not just wasting space to make it looks like its all big and bad from the outside.

 

Thats my rule of thumb in the audio world....
I don't care how many watts is says it puts out.... how much does it weigh?

I have a 50 watt guitar amp that will drown out other amps rated at 100 watts.

 

Well....I didn't weigh the amp but it's damn heavy!

 

My kicker is an early '70's Audiovox AM-FM 8-track stereo hooked up to the original 1971 GM speakers. Sounds awesome! It weighs alot too!

David