The Worst Install u have seen/fixed

Where to start???

Here's a good one.


I will try to find some more pictures later, but that was the first one I found.

Impressive...

I was kinda wondering how you break a door hinge installing a set of coax speakers?

I also seen x9's in the dash of a 80's model Chevy truck. I think I have pics at the shop. WAY to many fubar alarm installs.

This is by no means the worst I've seen, but there IS an alarm in there somewhere!

Here's the "after" pic.

A friend of mine had a 68 Mercury Cougar in the mid 80's. He went to Highland Electronics and bought some equipment. He bought a couple of 2 channel amps, and a cassette deck (all by Fujitsu 10, this was pre-Eclipse), plus a pair of Fosgate Punch 10" subs and a pair of huge JBL titanium tweeters. I don't remember what mids he got, but I think they were Fujitsu as well.

Anyway, Sparkomatic (of all brands) had this really cool flat speaker wire at the time. It was tinned and braided, heavy gauge, and invisible under carpet. He bought a bunch of it on clearance, and did his entire install with it including power. This was all fine, the wire was heavy enough and he doubled it up for power.He asked how I'd go about the install, and I told him to hard-mount the amps first, then find the spot for the power wire to come through the firewall. I recommended slitting the rubber around the main wiring grommet to run the power through and sealing it with butyl. My second choice was to drill and grommet it, but because of the flat wire it wasn't the ideal solution. He chose #3, which was to run it through a hole in the firewall with no grommet all. Bad choice number one.

I also told him to run 3" duct tape along the path the wire would follow to the trunk, then run the wire and tape it down along the entire run. He chose not to secure the wire at all.

Then, instead of running the power wire through the quarter panel into the trunk (which would have avoided any sharp edges), he drilled a hole through the support behind the back seat and ran the wire through it with no grommet.

Now for the amps: He never mounted them, and his grounds were crap. He jammed in this setup for a few weeks, till one afternoon he was driving down I-35 in Austin on his way home from work. First he lost the subs, then he started smelling smoke. The car started filling up with smoke, and he didn't have the window crank handles on. By the time he got slowed . down and off the side of the interstate, he couldn't see anything. The wire had shorted where it went into the trunk, and although it never actually caught fire, the wire was melted and the carpet was scorched all the way through the car.

So... He rewired the car exactly the same way, and kept jamming. A couple of weeks later he's driving down the road and the subs go out again. He doesn't smell smoke, so everything must be alright. Then the mids and tweeters went out, and smoke started rolling out from under the hood. It had shorted out where the wire went through the firewall, and he still didn't have an inline fuse. This time the wire did catch fire, but he got it out before it did any real damage.

So... He rewired the car exactly the same way, but wrapped the power wire heavily in electrical tape where it went through sheet metal. Everything else remained the same. A couple of weeks later he was driving down the road jamming when he lost the mids and subs all within a couple of seconds. He immediately pulled over, but the wiring was all fine. It turned out that he'd lost the ground to the amps, and blown both of them. Fortunately he'd bought the Highland extended warranty, which covered everything including stupidity. They couldn't repair the amps, so they gave him a new pair which he immediately sold. He traded the Cougar to me for a Ford EXP that I had, and he included the JBL tweeters and a new Alpine Cassette deck.

The first thing I did was take out every inch of wire that he'd installed.

I got two from when a worked at a shop a while back.

A gentleman had his son's 96 ish Grand Cherokee towed to our shop because his son attempted his own install. It turns out, the kid tried to install his sub and amp amplifier. He ran both the 12V+ and the ground to the battery and somehow ended up drilling a hole in it and NAILED the amp to the box. The guy was relieved it when we told him it was the damage was minimal and it was only $100 to get it reinstalled properly and stereo working. He was going to get the car towed to the dealer to get the car running but after we told him all he needed was a new battery he was going to get the car towed home and make his son replace the battery. He then asked us if we could install on for him if he brought us one because he was concerned his son, in his words, "would probably f*** that up too".

A guy came in with a brand new at the time 2002 Jetta VR6. We quoted him for about $400 for labor to install front components, rears, two amps and a deck. He thought it was too much. The next week, his car is in the install bay. Apparently he bit off more than he could chew. He ran the power wire down the fender and under the car and came into the car right where the backseat middle passenger's feet would be,through a hole he drilled. And then he gave up. The car was a lease.