I finally got round to looking at the subwoofer in my '94 'softdash' and as the poor stereo quality suggested, the thing is not working at all. I have removed the cover, checked the fuse (which is fine) and the wires look OK, but I didn't have the right tools with me to get to the inner cover off. Any other suggestions as to what the problem might be?





What I did find though are a few things that have got me scratching my head:

The first one was this strange button, which would not stay pressed nor did it make any 'click'. It has an 'R' logo on the back, which could possibly be to do with an old RACAL car phone or something?

I then found this strange cable, which was not connected to anything but looked as though it could be something to do with an aerial, again, possibly part of some old car phone kit? Or is it to do with the subwoofer??





Any thoughts or suggestions as to how to get this thing working again would be much appreciated. At the moment it is just wasting space in the boot. Cheers

Don't know too much about the classic setup, but do about P38 and car audio in general.

That's definitely an antenna cable lying there - it may have come off an antenna amplifier, if the classic is so equipped (P38 is). The 'button' actually looks like some kind of buzzer... Although I can't for the life of me think of what it might be for!

As for your sub - you need a multimeter. First thing you need to check is if it is getting power. Next, you need to find the wires carrying the signal from the head unit - get your multimeter across these, set to the lowest AC voltage setting. With the stereo turned up high, you should see a small varying voltage coming down the signal wires - likely to be no more than 0.5 volts at its peak. A totally dead reading means no signal from HU. If the amp is getting power, and you have a HU signal making it to the sub, open it up and check the amp output at the speaker connections.

I don't know the classic's wiring, but I imagine RAVE would tell you what colour wires in which plugs you need to be concentrating on.

The R button device looks a bit like the buzzer for a towing kit,so when you plug a trailer socket in it buzzes when you indicate.

andyp38 said:

the r button device looks a bit like the buzzer for a towing kit,so when you plug a trailer socket in it buzzes when you indicate.

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I have a spare sub amp for you to try, although not heard of one going faulty.

Thanks all for the replies. Looks like I have a bit more investigation to do on this. The towing suggestion would make sense, as it has a towbar all set up

Do all classics have these subs? I was disappointed with my sound system in my car

bigwilly said:

Do all classics have these subs? I was disappointed with my sound system in my car

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My '93 has the best sounding stereo I've ever had in a car.

The seals on these sub boxes are prone to deterioration over time, so if yours sounds crappy, it may be worth cracking it open to check on condition. Fabricating a replacement with similar material will give a huge improvement - anthing less than an airtight seal will destroy performance, particularly with a 4th-order bandpass box.