The Manic Mechanic

I took the day off, partially from feeling under the weather, but also to catch up on some paperwork and tasks around the house. One of these projects has been to finish up installing the new stereo in the Stratus. Leave it to me though, it was not just a simple headunit swap. I picked up an Alpine IVA-D310 headunit, along with a Sirius tuner module and iPod adaptor interface module. For the time being, I had planned on keeping the stock amp and speakers that came with the car, since it actually sounds pretty decent, being biamplified on all four corners and with an acceptable amount of power. Try as I might, though, I could not get the new headunit to play nice with the stock amp. The stock HU has it's own power amp, but that feeds the separate amp where an active crossover takes over and sends highs to the tweeter amps and lows to the woofer amps, and these signals then head out to the individual speakers. The new HU has a similar internal amp and output configuration, but it's playing hell with the amplifier.

In the screechiest, tweeters-only way possible.

I had a pile of instruments checking signal levels, voltages, and whatnot, and there is no differences at all between the stock head and the new thing. Except there is no woofer action at all. Makes no sense whatsoever. So, I am going to toss the original cassette radio back in the dash, and pack the new mess back up in the box and tackle it some other day. After mucking around with the new setup, it's also become clear that I will probably be adding a subwoofer to the stupid thing because it's set up with a non-defeatable crossover that needs a sub by default. I really did NOT want to get stupid insane with this thing. I got the DVD headunit mainly because of the big touchscreen and expandability, possibly adding navigation at a later date. My 'boom car' days ended in the 80s. So, unless I bail out totally on this system, I'll have to buy speakers, a small sub and whatnot to get it going. Right now, I am contemplating the former.

I never thought I would say that. I used to live and breathe this stuff, winning trophies and coming up with some crazy setups of my own as well as for others, before there was such a 'hobby'. Then again, I was half the age I am now and with scads more enthusiasm. I'm not lacking in abilities, just motivation. Maybe I'll get bitten with the bug again.