Stereo problem

From : cardudechaos

Q: do you have compression i finally finished putting together my 1975 dodge powerwagon 360 after rebuilding the engine. its my first rebuild and i have learned alot by going through with it myself. to make the build interesting i did some performance at least i hope upgrades and now i cant light the fire. i ported and polished the heads match-ported the intake manifold and heads replaced the cam intake manifold and stock 2-barrel carburetor with edelbrock performer parts and added headers. i replaced the plugwires plugs rotor distributor cap and fuel filter. i installed the appropriate throttle linkage adapter that is required for chrysler engines on the edelbrock 600 cfm 4-barrel electric choke carb and i know im getting fuel because its visible and occasionally burns off in a mini flame in the carb bowl. i also checked to make sure that i had a spark at the plugs and that checked out ok. the starter turns and the carb is spraying fuel its just not igniting. this seems like a basic problem but its got me stumped. does the addition of these aftermarket parts require an upgrade in the coil ignition or distributor will severely out of sync timing cause this problem i made sure to align the rotor and distributor pointing at the #1 cylinder with it at tdc. i also installed a new timing chain set that had three options for timing and i installed it with no advance or retard. it seems to me like a spark problem but i havent been able to pinpoint it and the occasional flame in the carb bowl seems to indicate some sort of spark. any ideas for this rookie mechanic as you can probably imagine im antsy to get the truck up and runnin! thanks in advance for your help... lance carpenter .

Replies:

From : tbone

mon oct 27 2003 208am cst+1 from fatchance@noway.now tbone it sounds more like you are not getting enough power to the stereo. you also need to be sure that your speakers all have their own grounds and that they are not all bound together. dont depend on the factory wiring harness if that is what you are using it was not designed for the type of stereo that you have now. thanks for the response tbone. today i took and and hooked up all new speaker wire and grounded the stereo to the chassis. the only original wire im using now is the power wire. i thought what i did solved the problem but it didnt. this has me puzzled because ive never had this much trouble putting a stereo into any of my older vehicles. i would replace the power wire as well. that is probably where you problem has always been. there may be a bad connector somewhere that is limiting the current that your stereo gets. i would use a 12 gauge wire min for its power considering its power output and dual cd capabilities. make sure that the speakers are not grounding to the chassis or using a common ground between them. -- if at first you dont succeed youre not cut out for skydiving .

From : chaos

mon oct 27 2003 208am cst+1 from fatchance@noway.now tbone it sounds more like you are not getting enough power to the stereo. you also need to be sure that your speakers all have their own grounds and that they are not all bound together. dont depend on the factory wiring harness if that is what you are using it was not designed for the type of stereo that you have now. thanks for the response tbone. today i took and and hooked up all new speaker wire and grounded the stereo to the chassis. the only original wire im using now is the power wire. i thought what i did solved the problem but it didnt. this has me puzzled because ive never had this much trouble putting a stereo into any of my older vehicles. .

From : tbone

it sounds more like you are not getting enough power to the stereo. you also need to be sure that your speakers all have their own grounds and that they are not all bound together. dont depend on the factory wiring harness if that is what you are using it was not designed for the type of stereo that you have now. -- if at first you dont succeed youre not cut out for skydiving here is some background info before i get to my question. i have a 1984 dodge d150 custom that im having trouble with the stereo in. when i purchased the truck it still had the original 8 track player in it. i purchased a dual cd player model xd6200 for the truck. 200 watts 50x4 here is my problem...... when i turn the stereo up to about 1/2 way the lights on it start to flicker and the speakers sound like garbage. it only use to do this when i had the bass set in the positive range but now it does this at any volume close to or above the 1/2 way range. it almost sounds like my ground is poorly hooked up but everything is hooked up the same as it was with the 8 track player. i also had this problem when i installed a cassette player in the truck so i figured the head unit was just garbage. now im positive its something in the wiring system that is malfunctioning. anyone have any ideas that i can try to cure this small problem im thinking that maybe if i ground the stereo directly to the chassis that that will cure the problem. im not sure if this matters or not but everything in this truck is original. .