Boosting the factory radio?

[Gear_Head]

If you're worried about cooking an alternator, you need to add a .5 or 1.0 farad stiffening cap between the amps and the battery. This will charge itself, and supply all of the necessary high amps needed without even touching the battery current. It will also increase the transient response of the amps as well. It will also provide a safety buffer for the electrical system and will not overtax the electrical system.

Alan

[llars]

EZ to verify how bad the front door speakers are (or aren't).
Spend 7 min, removing one door panel per PT DIY instructions , leaving speaker connected yet.
Sit in middle of car, with ignition on, and radio (or tape/CD of your choice) playing.
Move full balance to the door that has the panel in place and give a lissen.
Now move full balance to door with NO PANEL ON and likewise lissen.
There is no comparison. Between 1 the speaker low and firing at your ankles 2 the deadening effect of the heavy panel plastic
and 3 the small hole for sound to come from the speaker, and you have one bottleneck for sound.

Get yer sabre saw out and cut that phony plastic 5" grille out. NOTE YOU CAN DO IT WITHOUT REMOVING THE DOOR PANEL!!!!!!!!!

HOWEVER You risk the chance of cutting the OE speaker itself at the front corner, where the curve of the lower storage pocket/spkr blocker sits. I was lucky, only sliced the black overlay a couple inches.

Gotta still realize we have still cut the effective area of that stock speaker in half (do the pi R squared trick), my gut says in a wek I will have a much larger hole cut see templetes.

MHO this is a no brainer.

PS- a heavy utility knife edge works better than a file to smooth edges of your newly cut opening. ALso angle the saw in slightly towards the CL of the speaker to avoid chopping into all that heavy tubelike thing they have cast in. My cut was made at the groove between the fake speaker grille and the textured body of the lower area. Save in case U want to silicone them back in place later....

Now for the rears-- Install the rear pkg shelf UPSIDE DOWN i.e. with the hardshell side facing up, allows rear sound from both the speakers to bounce towards the front much better.
Inch by inch the STOCK PT sound components are reaching new highs (and bass too....).
Hope y'all with stock systems are following all this
Final grade for the mods-
Sound quality increased at least 50% with the opening of the grilles in front doors.
The use of package shelf inverted to bounce rear speaker sound more to the front added another 25 or 20%.
Total cost to increase sound quality of stock system 70% or such was time only .No bragging rights as to how many hp my new amp has or names of the new speakers, but it sure do sound Fiiiiiiiiine!

Enjoy. Just send cash, in unmarked bills....

Lars

[pt4u2nv]

I just installed a 200W MTX Amp and Bazooka 8" Sub and it made a world of differnce in the sound quality. Not overpowering Bass but I can get it thumping the back of the seats if i it want too.

[GR8FLPT]

Isn't the stock alternator rated at 136 amps? I thought I read that somewhere but don't remember where.
I just can't see that car drawing that much current even with hi beams, fog,rear defrost & A/C running with tunes cranked. Hopefully they built in overkill to the charging system.