Mustang Mach 460 Sound

[ThisGuyUKnow]

Mach 460 Information

I have begun to notice that late nineties to early 00 stangs are becoming very common in the JY. I have been wanting to upgrade to a more powerful sound system but just don't know enough about systems to build my own. I am however very good at wiring and interpreting and then reusing complete electrical systems in my jeep. So all though I have read mixed reviews on the interwebs, if the mach 460 set up is good enough for the engineers at Ford to call and "upgraded" sound system, then I think it will work just fine for my purposes.

This has turned into a real bear on me so I will have to get ya'll pics when I am done. I had to build an entire floor harness from scratch and it is getting quite unruly. To give you some Idea I have to route 18 wires into the dash from the pass side of the car, Now some of those wires are for other auxillery systems ie heated seats, 120v inverter, and console light. But most are just for the radio and speakers.

If you dont feel like reading the link, a quick overview of the system: 6 speakers. 4 Mid woofers that do lows only basically acting like 4 small subs, 4 tweeters that handle the mids to highs all are made out of cardboard in the mustang. Then it has 3 amps one for the 2 rear mid woofers, one for the 2 front mid woofers and one for the 4 tweeters.

The tweeter amp interprets the signals and the 2 mid woofer amps are slaved to the tweeter amp so all three are needed to make the system work the amps can't individually be used. The amps each push about 77 watts to each speaker, hence the 460 in the mach 460 name.

The amps cost me next to nothing at the jy and I have put the whole system together and bench tested it and it sounds pretty good.... out of the car. What got me is the cost for the speakers. I already had VDP sound wedges that house 6x9s but i needed something to house the front mids and the rear highs. I also needed speakers.

I ended up buying some maring 6x9 component speakers and just just using the mid woofer cause the tweeter was junk for the rear mids.

For the front mids I grabbed a set of the mod pod enclosures that mount at your feet under the door and a set of 6.5 round subs from audiophile.

The tweeter speakers I was having trouble finding a suitable replacement for because the mach 460 ones are kinda big and in all reality dont function like normal tweeters. So after some experimenting I found that using the the 5.25 2 way speakers I already had in my dash produced about the equivalent sound I was getting from the oem tweeter, I opted to just use 2 way speakers in the oem dash slots,

for the rears I bought a set of versa pods with the 2 way speakers already in them and they will be mounted near in the space under the rear feet of the roll bar on either side

The tweeter amp is mounted inside my console on the wall, of the amps it is the most important as well as the most PITA to pull from a donor so I wanted it to be the most protected. The other two larger amps, I cut the backs out of the sound wedges and basically just smooshed them into the housing they are slightly exposed out of the back of the wedge but should be protected from minor spritzing when the top is down later I will experiment with some rubber flaps or something at the top to sluff the water from the top but in the mean time I plan to do my best to avoid drenching the vehicle in the rain.

SO I know I know no pics or it didnt happen. Im not done yet and I was mostly writing this so I could see my plan written down.

Here are general pics:
Versa pods
sound wedges
mod pods
mach 460 amps
my front amp in the console.

 

[raser13]

Dang! My cj only has two five inch cheapies in the dash and two 6X9s mounted in ammo boxes on the back fenders. But I also go mud crawling and would fry a system like yours as soon as I submerged the tub at all. Plus the jeeps so loud you can nearly hear the radio or the person next to you without having it turned way up or yelling. One of these days I want to add one of the bar mounted sound bars that the newer jeeps have. That should be high up enough not to get wet so I could put in some better speakers.

 

[ThisGuyUKnow]

Dang! My cj only has two five inch cheapies in the dash and two 6X9s mounted in ammo boxes on the back fenders. But I also go mud crawling and would fry a system like yours as soon as I submerged the tub at all. Plus the jeeps so loud you can nearly hear the radio or the person next to you without having it turned way up or yelling. One of these days I want to add one of the bar mounted sound bars that the newer jeeps have. That should be high up enough not to get wet so I could put in some better speakers.

The loudness is why I'm going with an amplified system. I want to be able to hear with the top down.

 

[ThisGuyUKnow]

So i still have a big pile of spaghetti in the front of the CJ but I finished the rear speakers today cause I finally got all the parts and pieces I have been waiting on.

So what we got in the rear are the 2 amps that push the 4 mid woofers one for front and one for rear mids.

I cut the rears of the sound wedges out and shoved the amps into the backs of them. Then I got 6.5 mid bass woofers and a spacer/adapter for 6x9 to 6.5 speakers. This gave me enough room for me to angle the amps slightly so that I can seat the sound wedges in their correct location. Instead of running the harness across the floor I cut 2 1 inch holes each on the fender well near the bottom of the roll bar and added 2 break away connectors and fire wall grommets and ran the wires between the amps from the drivers side well to the passenger side one where it plugs into the floor harness.

For the rear mids to highs I got the versa pods from select increments. I want to make these so they do not move but I would like to be able to get the pods out easily so if anyone knows a pn or something for some magnets that I can use as feet, I would be much appreciative.


Im still waiting on parts to clean up the wiring in the front and mount my front mid woofers. The front highs will be the 5.25 speakers in the factory location on the dash.

As you can see the rear amps are well off the floor and very little of the amp is exposed out of the back. It is unlikely that I will be doing anything the will flood my jeep floor but these are high enough up that water on the floor should not be an issue, in that if it is I have other things to worry about than the sound system. They should be good for everything except torrential downpours if the top is not on.

Ill post more pics when I get the parts for the front portion of the system.

 

[ThisGuyUKnow]

Wiring

 

[Hedgehog]

With a jeep being what it is I sure hope you grounded each and every system directly to the ground post on your battery. No doubling up and using one wire for several systems you need a dedicated ground for EVERYTHING.

I hope you consider what music you are playing because everybody within a half mile or so will be enjoying your choice of music. For instance you probably shouldn't play hard core punk rock in the deep south or old time country in Detroit. After all if you drive in, you most certainly want to be able to drive back out again. I know that every time a rapper with those big base speakers that over power the speakers inside my car at a stop light I am generally not incline to think positive thoughts about the driver. ...but hey, that might be just me. You could turn down the volume and wear head phones.....

I'm sorry, this could be considered a negative post where I am reaching for a little comic relief. I'm sure your sound system will be great. Warning though, when I was your age I put a set of cheap speakers in my jeep, they were gone the next morning.

 

[ThisGuyUKnow]

Fortunately the mach system isn't strong enough to be heard from far away. The mid basses don't serve the same function as those ghetto thumpers people put in their trunks. They produce the.... well the mid bass. To be more clear its like taking a set of component speakers and the amps act as cross overs. If you run standard set of 2 way speakers with built in tweeters the larger cone is the mid woofer, this system is just separating them. So if you have a decent system pushing the speakers you can get a little bit of a bassy sound going but its not going to shake the block.

In the stang the 4 smaller speakers are kinda more tweeters except they handle a little bit lower than the highs that standard tweeters do, So this was problematic because I could not find a suitable replacement so I just opted to go with full range speakers with decent results.

All I am doing is emulating a stock speaker set up that would have been seen in a factory mustang. The system was made with convertible vehicles in mind so that is one reason why I thought, hmm lets yank the amps and stuff from this mustang when I was at the yard.... so I kinda committed to the project on a whim.

The sound should be no more annoying than someone pulling up next to you with their windows down and radio turned up really loud, it will not be capable of rattling windows and making babies cry. What it will do is be a vast improvement over the two 5.25 speakers in just the dash and make decent sound.

 

[ThisGuyUKnow]

With a jeep being what it is I sure hope you grounded each and every system directly to the ground post on your battery. No doubling up and using one wire for several systems you need a dedicated ground for EVERYTHING.

NOPE,NOPE, NOPE! One single ground for all three amps and the seat heaters grounded to the floor by the passenger seat. I am not going to run a ground for every single electrical item in my jeep to the battery as that is ridiculous, a lot more work than just making sure the jeep is properly grounded. The two rear amps in the factory configuration have a shared ground so maybe you can make an argument the front needs to be grounded separately.

Running wires directly back to your battery negative is a band aid and your creating a lot of work for yourself just to avoid work for yourself. If you are not getting a good ground on your metal tub, then your either missing a grounding strap/cable that should be there or you need to remove the screw/bolt that the grounding strap/cable is connected with and service it with a wire brush or replace the bolt.

I have a grounding cable that runs from the negative terminal to the head and to the firewall. I also have a grounding strap from the frame to the short block and a grounding strap from the head to the tub. I have considered running a strap from the frame to the grill assembly for the lights and elec fan but as of right now I dont have any issues with getting a good ground there.

I even used 14 ga wire to power everything.... GASP

 

[Hedgehog]

The ground thing was a bit of a joke for the guys that are very serious about grounding everything to the point of being excessive.

 

[ThisGuyUKnow]

The ground thing was a bit of a joke for the guys that are very serious about grounding everything to the point of being excessive.

As you can tell I have a bit of a sore spot for that haha. Excessive grounds and excessive wire gauge irk me.

 

[ThisGuyUKnow]

Front mod speakers