C'mon, get on, the Double DIN Bus!

Double Din radio in a '95 Mark!

A few whiles back, I had had ENOUGH of the JBL Radio deck and amp in my 1995 Lincoln Mark VIII. So, like the previous car before it, my 1987 Lincoln Mark VII, I decided to put my own radio in. I had had experience with JVC radios, and liked them very much.

I did some measuring, and found that yes, indeed the JVC Chameleon would fit just fine. So I got one. And then came the interesting part: Without using the JBL Amp (which was the reason I decided to not keep going with JBL) I had to add amps. See, I couldn't make it work without a preamp box for the radio to go "straight in" to the JBL Amp, and the JBL Amp is a flake machine. I'd replaced it three times.

So, I did a lot of research, and basically, I wound up with this:

JVC Chameleon Double Din CD/Cassette/AM/FM radio deck
200Watt Optimus (read Radio Shack) Amp for subwoofer box.
110Watt Optimus amp for midrange speakers
75 Watt older Optimus amp for tweeters
Oh yeah, and dual 12" subwoofer box in the trunk. 8^)

Now, before you all go off sayin' anything wrong about my Optimuses, lemme tell ya this: They work fine. I piss off all kinds of people with my thunderin' bass. I also drown out the other boom boxes if I need to. And that's with the volume only 3/4ths the way up. Sure, I could spend more, but why?

The only weirdo part is the wiring. I've since lost the diagrams and such, but the JBL amp does a grounding trick to produce fade. The speakers are separated in the factory as left and right, tweeters and mids/lows. The grounding determines fade, so the speakers are wired up with positives in series, and parallel grounds. No wonder the JBL amp is flaky...

It's impossible to get a fading effect to operate unless you rewire the entire car, or figure out how to do the trick with YOUR amps, or use the JBL. So I didn't care, I don't have a fader inside the cockpit, only to turn off my subs. That's a neat trick for me. 8^p

First, the radio!

The JVC Double Din was very close to being factory fit! I was very amazed at how well I'd chosen. The only things are: You have to use the little spacer hiding surround thingy, as it's not quite wide enough. Secondly is the fact that there's about no way to keep it from sliding all the way in on the rail.

You need a rail slider, which you can get from Metra or Scoche. It's a little 'T' shaped thing that mounts on the back that the radio slides on. The original radio had the side clips, and you can somehow mount them on, but I found that simply notching the rail in the right place does the trick for me. I can always "de notch" it later to put the original back. The notches will keep the radio from continuing on into the pit. When the wood trim is replaced, the radio ain't goin' anywhere.

How do you get the radio in there? Well, the top information panel pops off with a screwdriver carefully applied. You can then see many many things. The wood trim around the shifter is then pried right off with my fingers. Once it's away, the nuts for the upper wood trim can be removed, and the panel pulled right off. You now can remove the old radio with those u clips or nails or whatever makes ya happy.

The new radio sits just a bit higher than the orignal, and so you need to notch out some of the surrounding fibrous plastic of the dash, but only just enough to get the radio to slide in. I used a hack saw, wasn't very pretty, but you don't see it, thank goodness. What a mess that stuff is.

Now to the amps:

I ran two 10 gauge wires from the battery, to the right side of the car, down the fenderwell and through the right side wall near passenger footwell. I then came down the sill plate area, and through the quarterpanel and into the trunk, where the amps are going to be.

There is a tray, covered by a piece of vanity plastic, that hangs from the package tray area of the trunk. Removing this you'll find the JBL amp. If you're unlucky enough to have the cell phone, you'll find that too. I didn't have the cell phone, and I wasn't going to use the JBL amp, so I removed that from the clips. (I still have it for resell.) I then destroyed ALL the clips, leaving a fairly smooth tray in which to mount some amps.

All three of the amps fit. I found later that they needed some active cooling, if I jammed too much, they'd circuit break. Not fun when you're tryin' to beat the other boom box into submission... I found these little case fans about an inch square, that run at 6 volts normally. But where I got them, they'd been running them at 12 volts for a year and a half, and MAN they push some air at that speed.. Exactly what I need. Since I'm in the computer industry, I had some spare case slot covers, so I took four of those and fashioned some quick and deadly fan mounts.

I also, while I was running the power, ran two very long sets of RCA jacks for the amps, and put in a three way cross over for bass, mid, and treble separation.

Mounted the tray back in, put the sub box I'd aqcuired from a friend, and balanced the thing out. Sounds great, I got 385 Watts of power, and I didn't spend more than $600 on the entire thing. I cringe when I hear people paying $600 for just the radio... 8^)

Thumbnails show bigger pictures when clicked.

Can ya see the wires?	Wired from Battery	Routed to front left.
Routed through front right. Notice the fuse clips here for easy access.	Running the power up the right side.	Up and over near the cowl to the sidewall
This is truly a horrendous part of the job, this grommet is located in front of the light plunger at the door hinges. Yuuck.	Fans for the 200W subwoofer Amp.	More fans for the 110W Low-Mid speakers amp.
Tight fit, but they work fine!	We have an arrangement, see... 200W on the left, 110 in the middle, and 75 on the right, no fans needed for him.	Entire wiring. Upper is the sub signal wires, left upper is the signal in RCAs. Screw terminals? They're still in there, I used them for power and speaker out routing, mucho handy. Sorry 'bout the fuzziness.
Left side of the speaker box, showing some storage area. I put the old radio and amp here. 8^)	Rats Nest! I had a difficult time figuring out, and finally gave up, on where to put this stuff... Only real ugly portion of the job. You can see the crossover box in the foreground bottom.	As you see, there's plenty space left, and you don't see the Rats Nest (tm). Oh, and as an added bonus, the vanity cover for the old Amp tray is now the trunk floor with a flap in front of the box. Nice for holdin' stuff!
This is a non-flash picture of the installed deck.	And this one has the flash on. Some details are revealed here, which is why I have it.

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since 12-12-05