mach 460 trouble

97_281gt

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So I bought my car with the mach 460 subs not working the tweeters work though. Here's what's been done to check it is had a stock radio put back in 2 known good working rear racks and installed a correct wiring harness for the after market radio Still no bass. Now here's the part that gets me the harness that was in it was for a non 460 system so it's wrired in wire by wire and the tweeters work but if you plug in the rca's you get nothing out of any of the speakers. what else do I need to check to see why the bass wouldn't be working
 

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can you get a pic of the hrns you are using? Could be as simple as a wire not hooked up or it could be a bad amp.
 
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97_281gt

97_281gt

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It's got a plug in play harness and it had factory radio plugged in a still didn't work. And I know it's not Amps cause it's had two known good rear racks in it
 

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right if the aftermarket was hooked up to the 8 pin hrns instead of the itty bitty small black square hrns then we might have our problem. There are a few ways to do an install in a mach system and I need to know what has been done to it.
 
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97_281gt

97_281gt

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I just installed the correct little black one today abd got zero sound out of everything
 
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97_281gt

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Even then it didn't work with the factory radio either with everything plugged in
 

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did you connect the amp/remote turn on wire with the small square hrns? Did you test it to confirm it had 12v on it with the deck on?
 
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97_281gt

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Yea the remote wire is hooked up I'm gonna check for power to the rack when I get home which plug on the amp is the power supply?
 

ttocs

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not sure and my electrical bible is down in the garage at the moment. I will try to bring it up a little later and look but I am having a bad morning with my chrones and its unlikely I will be going far today. Worst case scenario try the 6-8 wires going to it. With the key off one should have +12v on it and then with the key/deck on one will show 12v from the aftermarket deck, 6v from the stock deck
 

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This may or may not help, but flemworld has a bunch of info on the mach 460 systems:

http://www.flemworld.com/mach460/mach.html

Some have said the colors listed in their schematics pdf's weren't the same as their cars, but mine were (the amps your looking at are in the 2nd file, they call them super speaker, those are all the woofers in the mach systems).

When your radio was working with just the tweeters, were you using the speaker outputs on your radio to the harness, or the RCA level? Could be that the previous owner completely bypassed the mach amps. Also make sure the amp in the center of the dash under the radio has 3 plugs going to it, not just 2. If it's 2, it's a non mach460 amp, and doesn't have the crossovers and connections for the rear amps..
 
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97_281gt

97_281gt

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So I have power to the amps but I found out last night the other working racks were used with the after market radio with the wrong wiring harness so I'm gonna try a good amp tomorrow and see what happens
 

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as he said there are a few different hrns's in the dash that could be causing confusion and you might just be hooked into the wrong one or they didn't connect them back together the way they should have. A pic of the inside of your dash and the wiring connections could help clear this up. Dig down under the radio and see if you find any other small square hrns's that are not hooked up as the slave cd player that came off of the deck had the same hrns.
 
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97_281gt

97_281gt

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as he said there are a few different hrns's in the dash that could be causing confusion and you might just be hooked into the wrong one or they didn't connect them back together the way they should have. A pic of the inside of your dash and the wiring connections could help clear this up. Dig down under the radio and see if you find any other small square hrns's that are not hooked up as the slave cd player that came off of the deck had the same hrns.
alright heres what i got this what was in there and what is also making the tweeters work at the moment

and heres the one thats installed now and i get no sound out of if its plugged in by its self and i looked and this was the only small black connector back there
ps sorry for the mess of wires it was like that when i got it and haven't done anything to clean it up since it doesn't work right
 
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97_281gt

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This may or may not help, but flemworld has a bunch of info on the mach 460 systems:

http://www.flemworld.com/mach460/mach.html

Some have said the colors listed in their schematics pdf's weren't the same as their cars, but mine were (the amps your looking at are in the 2nd file, they call them super speaker, those are all the woofers in the mach systems).

When your radio was working with just the tweeters, were you using the speaker outputs on your radio to the harness, or the RCA level? Could be that the previous owner completely bypassed the mach amps. Also make sure the amp in the center of the dash under the radio has 3 plugs going to it, not just 2. If it's 2, it's a non mach460 amp, and doesn't have the crossovers and connections for the rear amps..

it was using the speaker out puts on the radio and the amp does have 3 plugs going into it i just checked that to make sure they were all plugged in
 

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in the 2nd picare you saying the tweeters are playing when the rca's are connected or the little hrns? They should be playing off of the rectangular 8 pin hrns and we need to get the subs playing off of the smaller cable.

What is the brand of deck? Look at the wiring schematic/color code for it and confirm that the remote turn on wire from it is blue/white as its obviously hooked up. once that is confirmed try connecting the solid blue wire from the aftermarket hrns you connected too the stock wiring to the blue/white wires that are connected. I can't remember if the amp turn on is blue or blue/white on that hrns. One wire is for the amps to turn on and the other is for power antenna's in other vehicles. I always just wired the blue and blue/white wire on the grey/black hrns that you plugged into the stock wiring to be sure myself. To test it you can just strip a little wire from it and either touch it to constant wire(yellow) with the key off and if the amps turn on you will normally hear a pop from the speakers. If you don't just to be sure turn the deck on again with that solid blue wire with power on it and see if you get any signal out of them.

And something I probably should have asked first, are you sure the woofers are in the car? Its not uncommon for people to replace them and its also not all that uncommon to pull them out when they sell the car.
 
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97_281gt

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in the 2nd picare you saying the tweeters are playing when the rca's are connected or the little hrns? They should be playing off of the rectangular 8 pin hrns and we need to get the subs playing off of the smaller cable.

What is the brand of deck? Look at the wiring schematic/color code for it and confirm that the remote turn on wire from it is blue/white as its obviously hooked up. once that is confirmed try connecting the solid blue wire from the aftermarket hrns you connected too the stock wiring to the blue/white wires that are connected. I can't remember if the amp turn on is blue or blue/white on that hrns. One wire is for the amps to turn on and the other is for power antenna's in other vehicles. I always just wired the blue and blue/white wire on the grey/black hrns that you plugged into the stock wiring to be sure myself. To test it you can just strip a little wire from it and either touch it to constant wire(yellow) with the key off and if the amps turn on you will normally hear a pop from the speakers. If you don't just to be sure turn the deck on again with that solid blue wire with power on it and see if you get any signal out of them.

And something I probably should have asked first, are you sure the woofers are in the car? Its not uncommon for people to replace them and its also not all that uncommon to pull them out when they sell the car.

If you have just the rca's it plays nothing. I only have the 8 pin so I have something to listen to. Its a Sony and I hooked up both blue wires each way and nothing still. And I'll check for speakers tomorrow I hope there in there
 
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97_281gt

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I checked this morning and there are speakers in there
 

ttocs

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how old is the sony? Some of the newer decks have the ability to turn of the RCA outputs so check your manual and make sure that this is not the case but it sounds like a bad amp then. If you find power/remote turn on at the amp then its probably a bad amp.
 

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I hate those darn crimp on butts, solder and heatshrink are definitely your friend to clean that up..

On your signal wires (RCA), you have it plugged into the right plug, but on your other cable, how many pins does it have total? The one that goes to the stereo should have like 8 pins total (single row of pins on the connector), that's justto power the radio, illumination, etc. If you're using the cable that has a total of 14 pins (6 on top, 8 on the bottom), that's JUST for the audio out, and amp signals TO the amp. That stays plugged into the amps left most plug only. The thinner plug goes to the radio to supply DC power/ground/etc to the stereo, and the small 8 pin connector goes to the RCA adapter. It's POSSIBLE you have another 8 pin plug in there that would have gone to the external CD player if the car was equipped with one, not 100% sure if it's the same as the RCA adapter plug or not though(been a while since I pulled all that out of my car, so can't remember if it was the same, or slightly differrent).

As far as the amp connections go though, that larger 14 pin plug goes into the dash center amp, there's a smaller plug in the middle of that amp that runs the rear sub amps, and the right most I believe is where the RCA-adapted connection goes (uses the factory wiring in the harness to connect there, since it's female on both sides).

IF you're getting sound when you connect the wiring for the speaker level outputs into the same connector you're using for power on the radio now, you're using the wrong connector I believe...

I ended up just ditching the mach460 amps, and used the tweeter output cabling to a small clarion 4 channel amp in the dash, then installed good sets of seperates in the front doors and rear boxes on my 2000 convertible. Just use the wiring from the tweeters to the seperates crossovers, then the crossovers wiring to each speaker and done. Sounds WAY better than it used to, and much easier to manage. I just need to run power wiring and RCA's to the trunk for my sub, and I'm going ground everything directly to the battery (I have a bad ground somewhere, I'll get it sorted out eventually, but grounded to battery works fine without any alternator whine). That's on my list of crap to get done this weekend, lol.

I also have a full set of Mach460 amps (2 rear mono amps, and the front 4 channel with internal crossover) that work fine if you need them. Also make damn sure you either use resistors or some other means to adapt the power on signal from your stereo to the mach460 amps, as they expect 6v, and modern radios put out 12v. You'll get a nasty pop every time you turn on the radio if you don't...
 

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