Tuneage accomplished

[greatbear]

Today was a fantastic mid-upper 50s day to work outside, so I tackled the car stereo project. Discovered the reason why the amp would not work, one of the harness adaptors was made incorrectly, preventing the turn-on signal from reaching the amp. I had most of the dash apart tapping into other wiring needed to make the install work. All that remains is some little finishing touches like the trim bezel around the headunit, cleaning up and reinstalling the passenger's seat. I gotta run the iPod cable into the center console where I can keep the iPod hidden yet have full control at the headunit. Also, I need to activate the Sirius tuner now that everything works.

A pic of the in-place test run:




The too-huge tuner box. Shown here straddling the stock amp under the passenger seat:




Bracket made to support the tuner/control box that makes use of the seat mounting points:




Here's the dash taken apart during a quest for wiring needed to complete the installation. For DVD players, a signal from both the foot brake and parking brake is needed to prevent the in-dash screen from showing a picture while playing a DVD and driving. It's illegal, of course. To enable the picture or get deep into setup and system configuration menus, one has to press the foot brake, engage the parking brake then release the foot brake. Lawyers. O_o




As complicated as the wiring is in cars these days, some things have actually gotten easier. This is the body control module, a computer used to control lots of various systems on the car such as the climate control, lighting, keyless entry and whatnot. A good amount of the control lines congregate here and can easily be tapped into in one location rather than running wiring all over the car.




Tomorrow the seat goes back in, the final touches get taken care of, and I will do work on the rest of the 'fleet' here as well as a bit of yard work.

Comments

[rockybear02.livejournal.com]

WOW that's great Phil! I'm sure you'll love the interface - probably would be great to control your ipod from the head unit.

Glad you got it done today. :)

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a project and a half ya got going there.

Glad you found out what the issue was with the amp and got it fixed. For for ya.

Shoot us a pic of the finished product will ya?

[jrjarrett.livejournal.com]

Oh dear GOD, I'm shuddering :D

I thought wiring a simple JVC stereo & amp into my '88 Scirocco was complicated.

I must have you now :D

Seriously, yes, completed pix, pls!

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Oh, trust me. This is noooothing. You should see the work that I break a sweat on. I just need to try and take more pictures of the major stuff, or at least do some scanning of past jobs.

Truthfully, this post was just a way for me to show people some of the things I do. I mean, I talk about a lot of it but dont go into detail. Plumbing, cars, wiring, building, I dont think in terms of blogging when I am doing other stuff.

Here is a project that has languished untouched in the garage for over ten years. This is the dash I made for my crazy Dart back in the early 80s. Note that no wiring in that car is factory. I made my own harnesses for some of the crazy shit I had done in there.





These are the only two pics I have hosted. I gotta find the others, or take some more.

When one works around fighter jets, one gets strange inspirations for car mads. :-D

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

er, make that last word 'mods'.

tho some would say I am mad. 8-O

[danthered.livejournal.com]

Wow, quite an installation. Can you tell me a little about this head unit with the great big screen?

[growler-south.livejournal.com]

What was the issue with the woofers not working? Or... *thinks about it* Ah, it's bi-amped, so I'm guessing it was the woofer amp that wasnt turning on? Looks good though...

If I ever get bored with the sound of an overdriven supercharger cramming 200HP worth of air into a 1600cc engine than maybe I'll get around to installing a radio in my car too.

Dont hold your breath, though. ;-)

[growler-south.livejournal.com]

Oooh pretty!! Reminds me of the wiring loom in my Austin Healey- it was Lucas, and so fairly dodgy already, and when they stole the car they ripped half the loom out looking for the big red wire to hotwire it with (which they did). So I designed my own wiring, rewired and rebuilt it sensibly... all in black. Every single fuckin wire was black. Hah!! Steal *that* you bastards.

[sfmini.livejournal.com]

I have wired entire houses. I have done every bit of the plumbing on a house. I can even do hvac work, but car wiring has always had some mystique that I could never overcome. I do remember, though, the time I was poor and in college I had to replace the heater core and I basically had to disassemble the entire dash to get to it.

The Dart dashboard reminds me of my '67 Plymouth Barracuda dashboard. I hadn't thought about that in years.

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

I'm in utter disbelief -- that's an amazing project you got there, one that I know I'd personally have no clue how to even start let alone proceed with ^^;;;

[beastbriskett.livejournal.com]

I'm amazed. What you undertake as an afternoon project would have left me without tunes for quite a while. Nice job!