Saturday, December 5, 2015

Quick Update: Kenwood Sound Cruising System, Pre-Wired!

A while back, I had done a blog post on the optional Kenwood Sound Cruising System that Nissan offered on several models of the R33, including the GT-R.
The brochure has passing reference to the Kenwood system as an option (red box)
One question I had, however, upon solving the mystery of the blanks on the interior A-pillars, however, was whether Nissan provided a specialized wiring harness for cars with this option.
what you get with the Kenwood system for the tweeters

My finger pointing to the cutout
I had previously looked very closely at wiring diagrams for the BCNR33, and they suggested that the wiring harness for ALL cars, indeed had leads going up into the A pillars, whether or not the car was equipped with the Kenwood system. My car did NOT come with this option.

The easy thing to do, of course, would be to pop open the A pillar cover and check for myself, but I was always too lazy to do so - until last weekend, when I was at Nissan Prince Shinagawa on another quest to find more parts for my car.

Once talking to the technicians there as to the Kenwood system, and inquiring whether that location was indeed the best place to place tweeters at, they immediately called over one of the mechanics who popped open the A pillar cover, and we found this (red arrow) terminal clip on both sides of the car:
Ignore the other wiring, that's for the aftermarket Navi... I think...

In my excitement I forgot to take a photo, but the BACKSIDE of the A pillar had a large "X" marking the spot behind the cut-out.

So, this is exciting - it suggests that ALL BCNR33s (and possibly other R33s) are pre-wired for tweeters in the A pillars.  Now I know the purists will say that, such OEM wiring is subpar and needs to be replaced with the latest hi-end oxygen free wire yada yada, but 1) this is a car, a very NOISY car, and 2) so long as the wires can carry a signal, why bother with extra cost when the wiring is already there??

Oh and also, many people will claim that it's not the brand of the wire, but the thickness of the copper gauge of the wire. In which case, I will have to choose my tweeters carefully I guess...the problem is that here in Japan, there aren't many shops that have speakers on hand to listen to, other than the name brand "average" aftermarket speakers like Pioneer, Sony, Kenwood, etc...  Anyone have any recommendations? Would prefer separate components that can be heard over the drone of the exhaust (and yes I plan to get a separate amp for the front speakers too).

10 comments:

Jeff said...

HI Aki. Interesting about the Pre existing tweeter wire in the BCNR33. Ill have to look at mine when i take the A pillar cover off.
I am running alpine type R 6" splits in the front and 6" rears all hooked up to an alpine 4 channel amp and running off a alpine ipod head unit. I think they produce really good sound. Everything bolted into the factory speaker mounts very easily which is what i wanted. The only tricky part was mounting the tweeters and the amp. After failing to find any tweeter mounts I managed to find another set of the triangular trim pieces on the mirrors and made some custom tweeter mounts. For a first attempt they are not too bad. I will have to play around with them some more. It makes a massive improvement with the tweeters up high pointing at you. I mounted the amp on a metal plate and used the existing holes in the boot sub frame in front of the battery's. If you want some pics i can send them to you.

Aki said...

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for commenting. Actually, I have been experimenting as well and have temporarily mounted some cheap Pioneer tweeters to the triangular trim pieces (makes it easier to run off the cross-overs which I left in the door). Definitely sounds good, but I wonder if it would sound even better if the tweeters were in the A pillar?

I'll check out those Alpines - how do you find the sound? You'd surprised to hear I think that, here in Japan I don't see Alpine marketed as well as it is back home in California.

Also, what have you done with sound deadening, if any? The RB26DETT produces nice music, but would like to dampen that out a bit when I crank up the tunes!

Thanks

Aki

Unknown said...

I angled my tweeters so that they pointed towards the center of the car. I personally don't know if mounting the tweeters on the a pillars would make a huge difference as the distance from where they are currently and where they would mount on the a pillar is not very much. That is just my opinion but Im not an expert in audio. The only way you will know is by trying it out.

I really recommend the alpine stuff. Driving home last night i turned the vol up quite high and didn't notice any distortion or anything like that. Sound was crisp and clear and i haven't even set my amp up properly. I will have to take it to an audio place and get them to get all the settings correct. At the moment they are just as per the factory settings.

I haven't done anything in the way of sound deadening either. My train of thought is unless you pull all the seats and carpet out etc and sound deaden the whole car putting it in various places isn't going to make a massive amount of difference. I do have to play around with the rear parcel shelf though as it vibrates and rattles which annoys me. Apart from that i can turn the music up to drown out the road noise and the exhaust, although the HKS priest exhaust on mine doesn't drone that much at all really (doing 100kph on the highway i can have a conversation in the car without shouting).

Aki said...

Awesome input Jeff - really appreciate the info! Thanks for taking the time to go into detail like this. Will look into (more) Alpine stuff...

Unknown said...

No worries Aki. Always happy to help. Keep up the great work with the blog.

Jack Roberts said...

A very good piece of information and I would like these Kenwood tweeters in my R33 GTR.
A quick check suggests they are designated as part of the A207 system with Nissan part numbers for my model year 28148-22U03 and 28149-22U03. I might be wrong since there were so many speakers throughout the full Skyline range.
Question: are these part numbers available in Japan?

Aki said...

Jack - I actually inquired with Nissan on these parts... unfortunately they said they no longer had them in inventory.... back to the drawing board...

Thanks for reading and the comment!

Aki

Unknown said...

Aki, sorry for digging out such an old post. May I know where is the other side of that tweeter wiring goes? Thanks.

Ringo

Aki said...

Ringo - just saw your comment, sorry! For some reason didn't get the notification.

From memory, I think it goes to the speaker harness which has a separate lead for these. At least that's from the diagram I looked at. Cannot recall if tweeter wiring couplers are present on the other side, in the center stack... sorry...(but good question and I will try to ask next time I'm at Nissan/Nismo!)

OMGTR34 said...

Hello Aki

I just found your post about the connector for the a-pillar tweeters. R34's have them too. Where can I find this wiring diagram? I want to replace this wiring with connector with the ones from alpine which I bought.