wiring aftermarket headunit to mach 460 amps correctly

[ndfrspd]

okay i hooked my ipod up to a 3.5mm headphone to rca to the metra amp plugin. like this:

AND STILL ONLY TREBLE! No bass or mid sound, no door speakers. The green and violet are the rear left and rear right channels. Also, i tried the white and grey for the front and that was only front two tweeters playing.

ideas?

 

[ndfrspd]

okay i hooked my ipod up to a 3.5mm headphone to rca to the metra amp plugin. like this:

AND STILL ONLY TREBLE! No bass or mid sound, no door speakers. The green and violet are the rear left and rear right channels. Also, i tried the white and grey for the front and that was only front two tweeters playing.

ideas?

Bump

 

[ttocs]

Try disconnecting the speaker wires to see if you can hear any sound from the woofers. The output from the mp3 player can be a little weak(be sure you have the volume up).

 

[ndfrspd]

Try disconnecting the speaker wires to see if you can hear any sound from the woofers. The output from the mp3 player can be a little weak(be sure you have the volume up).

I tried it with volume at max and it was all treble. This would prove that the amps are blown right?

i mean i will try it again, and even turn on bass boost on the ipod to hear if theres weak sound. another i noticed too, ever since i wired my stereo up to my red ignition wire, my 1 month old battery seems to have some kind of drain on it as it does not start how it did one month ago. it is very cold about 15 degrees right now, but the cca on my battery is like 825. its a diehard gold 3 year battery too that is slightly bigger than recommended. would my stereo be causing a drain with the key off? i dont understand how a new battery can already have a drain and slower start after 1 month... AND especially after i just started working on this stereo 2 weeks ago!


UPDATE: I tested it again with my iPod just like in the picture above, only i turned up the bass booster on my ipod EQ and still i only have rear tweeter treble speakers... no door speakers and no midrange or bass. i tried connecting all 4 different rcas to the ipod rca and all the combinations give me tweeter sound only treble. I am starting to believe its the rear amps that are blown, or not functioning.

 

[ndfrspd]

I found this:

"No Bass Speakers with Upper Speakers in Front Doors Working - This is the problem that lead up to this troubleshooting guide, after going through most of the steps above. This is a local customer's Mustang, she had been by the shop many times complaining of intermittent bass audio. Murphy's Law, the stereo always worked when she was here, until the last visit. We troubleshoot this by checking for +12 volts at the amplifiers, no voltage present. There are three yellow wires that apply power to the amplifier and three main black wires for ground. We applied +12 volts directly to the yellow wires at the amplifiers and still had no audio. Checked continuity for ground to the amplifiers with a meter and found no ground to the amplifiers. Applied +12 volts and ground directly to the amplifiers and had sound! Why is +12 volt and ground missing from the amplifiers? This is what we had to determine, the next step was disassembling the vehicle to find the junction/connector that supplied power and ground to the amplifiers. The following is where and what we found after troubleshooting. Our local dealer$hip was no help!"

http://www.carstereohelp.com/fordMach460.htm

i will check those connectors again... if its slightly unplugged i guess you would loose bass.

UPDATE 2:

There are two broken wires at the connectors behind the drivers floor kickpanel, heres zoomed out for location:

heres zoomed in of the two broken wires... violet and black.

please tell me these are two important wires and this is the reason for all my troubles???

Also, I started playing music with the 4 rcas hooked up to my headunit and i unplugged this connector with the broken wires, and all 4 tweeters kept playing...

Im looking at wiring diagrams and i cant figure out what these two wires are for...

 

[ttocs]

sorry been sleeping 20hrs a day since I got out. Where those hrns's plugged into one another in the kick?

 

[ndfrspd]

yeah they were already plugged in all the way. i unplugged them and re-plugged them just to make sure, and still all treble no bass. according to wiring diagrams, there is no solid black and solid purple, so i dont even understand what these are for? but it honestly looks like they were cut.

 

[ttocs]

The wire diagrams are rarely right. I double checked with my mustang bible and I too cannot see any wires matching those colors. I have the pin out for all the hrns's so if we can see where its supposed to go in the hrns we can just bypass the hrns...

 

[ndfrspd]

i am seeing the same, that is the black and violet do not or should not exist. But it doesnt make sense that ford would just wrap two extra wires in a harness and bury those wires in there.... waste of money.

how do i check if my rear amps have a solid ground connection? I know there is positive voltage coming in from the test light on the 3 yellow wires, but i still think theres not a ground connection.

or could it be something else?

i only see an 8 pin connector and a 6 pin connector with the christmas tree plug, what is the other connector on this? another 8 pin? i dont have this...

 

[ndfrspd]

bump. i cant honestly believe no one knows how to diagnose this problem. Its pretty common in the sn95's right?

 

[ttocs]

well to test if you have them grounded its as easy as testing for continuity to ground, touching the outside/chassis of the amp and then touching the chassis of the car.

 

[heffe2001]

This may be a pain to do, but could you get a picture of the back side of the amp that's under the radio? It should have 3 connectors going into it, one from the radio, one out to the front speakers, and a separate harness out to the rear speakers. The symptoms you have are what you get when you have a non-mach amp in the dash in place of the mach460 amp. The correct one has a crossover built in that routes the base to the rear amps. It's either that, or the guy has cut/spliced the wiring for the woofers to use another amp in the trunk (in your picture of the cut wires, is that red wire a large gauge wire for an amp hanging out from where the rear seat mounts? If it is I'd say you need to check the wiring in that harness you have a picture of to make sure he didn't cut the existing wires from the amps, and splice in for an external amp. He could have done that, and used the existing woofer wiring in the car to get signal to the existing speakers (that's what I ended up doing when I gutted the mach460 stuff out of mine, used the tweater wiring in the front to go to a clarion xc1410 in the dash, wired to kicker seperates in the doors and rear boxes in my vert, just need to add a sub in the trunk and I'm done with my stereo upgrades, sounds 1000x better than the mach system did on my aftermarket radio).

Your best bet at this point would be to make certain that you have no cuts/splices in the existing wiring. Measure the ohms on the speaker outputs on the existing rear mach amps (the 2 wire connector on each amp), I'm thinking that it reads 2 ohm, since it's wired in parallel with 2 4ohm speakers... Also remember that the amps in the back are NOT stereo, they are single mono amps, with the left side woofers (front and back) wired in parallel on one side, right side woofers on the other. Also remember that the amp turn on circuit required for the mach 460 amps requires a much lower voltage than your aftermarket radio will put out (I think around 6v is what they want to be happy), so you'll need a set of resistors wired inline with the amp turn on circuit otherwise it'll make an annoying thump/pop on turn on.

Also not sure if it's been posted here in thread or not, but lots of good info on the mach systems over at the flemworld site:

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

 

[Coastie912]

ok guys new to the whole mach system. i just bought a 2001 mustang gt with mach460 system and im trying to install an aftermarket radio which he took his radio out as i purchased it and all the wires are cut in the back, is it possible to hard wire it? or can i go buy a harness to help this process along? please help