Postby bowaster » Sun Feb 02, 2020 9:03 pm
Have spent many many hours trying to get a body sonic system in a T2 sorted.
I bought the car as a non runner about a year ago and finally gave it some time over recent Xmas. I will make another post about the mission involved in undoing all the bad and finally what got the car running.
Today however, after many hours of stripping out the lower dash with it's garbage truck full of dodgy aftermarket twisted bird nest wiring, pulling apart seats, dismantling the body sonic amplifier, checking the circuit board and the wiring about hundred times, and almost giving up, I finally got the passengers side of the system up and running.......and yes, as described in previous posts, it is earth shattering sensation, pretty cool, and put a well earned smile on my face.
My car came with a pretty typical late model aftermarket Sony headunit. Most of the factory wiring had been chopped out. The Pioneer Body Sonic unit had two tufts of cut wires sticking out the back that looked similar the photo posted on this site several years ago. The Sony head unit had a horrible mixture of wire types for input and output, with both speaker outputs being connected L) sided. Several live wires were unprotected.
Pulled everything out and made new looms which got the head unit working well, but not the Body Sonic.
So here's what I've learned and like to share with other potential sonicfiles.
Lesson 1): The green wire IS important, and IS shown in the factory Turbo manual Body Sonic section (but not on the T1 and T2 general wiring diagrams).
Without this connected, I got several hours of nothing. But eventually trying different things, connecting the head units Remote Amp wire (typically blue/white) finally made the difference.
Lesson 2): The Sonic's speaker input wires: - red (right +ve), blue (left +ve), and two grey wires (right and left -ve wires, and there appears to be no difference which is left or right), should not be connected up to the factory speakers as the wiring diagrams show.
Car audio systems have changed quite a lot since the early 80's, with many speakers back then having a live input to the speaker with the other wire quite happily going to ground somewhere along the way. The problem with the Sony (and probably most newer systems), is that it obviously likes it speaker "negative" return cables to remain "negative" within its system, and DOES NOT like it's speakers grounded -ve. The big problem is that the Body Sonic's return input grey wires, are simply grounded within the unit! Yip, they go nowhere, except directly to negative ground earth. So every time I connected the Sonic's output black ground cable, the Sony head unit immediately failed! This kept me quite busy for a while trying to find the "short" problem. It's not a short and it's not a problem, it's just incompatible systems.
Solution: Ditch the speakers as inputs and use the RCA outputs off the back of the head unit. I used an old television RCA cable and cut it in half giving me the two RCA pins needed (for left and right). These run a very fine screening wire surrounding an insulated inner core wire. At the cut end, strip back the outer plastic about 30-40mm, unravel the screen wire and twist it into a solid wire. Put clear (or black) heat shrink wrap over this, leaving 5mm free wire at the end for a crimp connector. Strip 5mm off the end of the inner wire and I put coloured shrink wrap over this (red for +ve right and blue on the other RCA for +ve left). Crimping connectors to these fine wires can be a bit fiddly. Doing this gave me colour coded RCA speaker input connections for the Body Sonic input loom: red right and blue left with clear -ve's to connect to the grey wires.
Inside the Body Sonic there were a couple of loose solders on the PCB but the capacitors and everything else looked good. There could still be a problem with the R) side "Sonic Boom" LED graphic in the face plate or there is still an undiagnosed problem somewhere in the circuit board for the R) side. Wont know until I get drivers seat back in and connected up. If all else fails, at least I will have good vibe passengers!
Wires:
Input loom -
yellow/red connect to: ACC live +ve feed (yellow/red)
green : Amp Remote (blue/white)
red : input signal RCA +ve right (red)
blue : input signal RCA +ve left (blue)
grey x 2: input signal RCA -ve's (clear)
output loom -
black : ground -ve (black)
yellow: lights (red/black)
red/thin black drivers seat (orange)
red/thin white drivers seat (green)
blue/thin black passengers seat (light blue)
blue/thin white passengers seat (pink)