wheelie bin stereo system

[Max Cady]

Hi I have seen a few on the net and I saw one at a protest once and I was wondering has anyone put one together before?

I sort of have a basic idea of what I need...

car stereo head unit

amp

12v car battery

speakers

a box / wheelie bin

But my problem is what do I need to wire it all together? do I need a head unit? or can I run an ipod or similar straight into the amp? will I need to earth it out and how would I do that?

there's probably a ton of stuff that I'm not taking into consideration that I probably should so any help would be much appreciated.

below link showing them in action

 

 

[Jonstn]

You might be able to get away without using a head unit if you find an amp that doesn't require a head unit turned on to turn on itself, but I've seen head units with aux input for $30 it's basic as, just radio and aux no cd or anything, guess what im trying to say is that I'd personally get a head unit for it lol

You'll be able to earth everything to the battery no problems I'd say, just make sure you have the correct fuses and gaged cables

If only I had a use for portable speakers, got 3 spare wheelie bins sitting out the back lol.

How are you thinking of recharging the battery? You could hunt down some cheap solar panels then it would save you having to hook up a car battery charger every time you want some juice ;)

[Max Cady]

recharging the battery I was thinking a trickle charging thing like what you pick up at kmart.

Maybe I just need to figure out the wiring from a car battery to a head unit will a head unit come with that cluster of fuses and stuff? and then do I just crudely twist wire to wire that connects to aligator clips to the battery?

I have know idea about electronics unfortunately.

[Jonstn]

I've done a few stezzas over the years, by no means a professional or anything, this is just from personal experience.

Head units tend to come with fuses already, and for the wiring there will be 2 wires for positive power, ones meant for the battery and the others meant for the ignition, they can both go straight to the positive terminal on the battery, negative wire goes on the neg terminal, RCA wire goes to your amp, speaker wires can go to the amp on some units or you can hook them up to speakers , there will be some AV cables that join between the head and amp too.

With the amp it's just a matter of positive to positive and neg to neg and hooking up the speakers and cables coming from head unit. You'll have to decide if you want to buy a 2 or 4 channel amp.

A Kmart battery charger will probably do the trick, I've heard that car batteries can explode if you don't have the caps unscrewed while charging though, could be a myth though never seen it or heard of it happening to anybody.

Also, sometimes you won't get a fuse for your amp when you get it, gotta make sure you have a fat fuse for it or it could be bad times fo sho lol

[Max Cady]

Cheers Man it makes more sense, I've got a head unit and a couple of 6x9's already I'm going to hunt around for everything else dog cheap and see what I come up with shouldn't as hard as I thought lol but will see what happens...

[OPP]

I made a crude stereo for new years. It was just a big wooden box, head unit, car battery, speakers, amp and a sub. Running off a car battery it lasted about 6 hours with the sub on low. Its pretty easy to wire up.

If you are in the Sydney area I can come help you wire it up if you want some assistance.

Can also post some pics if that will help or give you some pointers on wiring it up.

[theuserformallyknownasd00d]

I once saw a similar setup involving backpacks... there were too packs fitted out with wooden boxes, one held the speakers and head unit and small amp, the other help the batteryx2 and 2 speakers. a cable went from both bags, but the bags were linked with a 2ish meter chain stopping all the wire being pulled out.. it was rather ingenious and was used for a uni pub crawl back home. good times and good luck with your wheelie bro

d00d