car stereo [3].

A few months ago, K and I realized we had two of the same vehicles. She had a Yaris, I had a Corolla. Well, basically the same. And when it came time to take our family on an adventure, and bring along the pup, we were out of luck. About the same time, we were driving back and forth to our ski hill, where we witnessed everything from a semi-trailer jack-knifed, splayed across the highway, to a little Prius that got stuck just trying to leave (and I spent a good five minutes trying to help the poor people push it to no avail), to some old Mercedes fish-tailing all over the highway as it crawled up to the pass.

Yeah... all wheel drive might be nice...

Being a Toyota family, we had been looking into a RAV4. The new ones sure look stylish and... whoa, wait - they're something like $30 thousand dollars. Okay, no. Oh, and they only come in automatic transmissions. No bueno. So after doing some research, we learned that Toyota only offered the RAV4 with a manual transmission up until 2005, after which they ceased producing (or exporting) vehicles with that option. Bleh. But no worries, really, because an early-2000 was much more affordable.

After very little time spent on Craigslist, we found what seemed to be the perfect specimen! A 2001, manual (duh), AWD, 1-1/4" tow package, roof racks, sunroof, tinted windows, only 135k miles, and so on. After test driving, we could tell it needed an alignment and an oxygen sensor, but after talking the dude down almost a grand, we drove home with it that night.

Welcome... Luna!

At Stevens Pass this past winter...

And at our campsite in Glacier National Park, BC (yep, not the Glacier in Montana)...

K came up with the name, clearly named after the rugged peak in the North Cascades...

And well, she needed a new stereo, too (the car, not the mountain... ok, ok).

This install was somewhere in between Spencer and Stuart. Meaning, I had to modify the tweeters a little creatively, but everything else was pretty easy-peasy. Particularly (as usual), the receiver -

Boom...

Boom...

Boom... Done.

That is another reason why I really like older cars... their stereos are so much easier to replace! (And older cars are generally just easier to work on and fix ourselves)

Then it was time for the speakers. I didn't spend a fortune on this (yet), but rather just started with a new (Bluetooth) receiver and four new speakers to replace the stock ones. The only tricky part on the door speakers was having to drill a new hole for the new speaker bracket (well, really not tricky - just an extra step that took about five seconds) -

And installed!

Well - maybe worth pointing out is the window insulation I had lying around that I used to create a tight seal for the bracket, and avoid it rattling when the speaker was cranking -

The component tweeters were a little trickier, like I mentioned, only because I ended up having to file them down a bit to get them to fit behind the little sail panels...

Step 1: remove factory tweeters...

Step 2: splice new tweeters to existing wiring/harness...

Step 3: file edges of tweeter with coping saw/metal (or wood) file...

Step 4: reinstall using factory mounting bracket...

Step 5: reinstall sail panel...

And done -

The rear door speakers were more or less the same, minus the separate tweeters. I shoved the factory stuff into a bin in our crawl space, in case there ever comes a time we sell her (highly unlikely) and want to remove all the fancy(-ish) stuff...

The next question is whether or not to add an amp and/or a sub under the seats... But for now, we can pair both of our phones, take calls (yikes!), and play our various iPods with decent sound.

car stereo [2].

Bleh. After I installed the new stereo in Spencer, I realized it could sound even better... with an amp and a subwoofer! The thing is... I already had both, and they'd been taking up space in a basement cupboard ever since Oliver (my previous car, a '95 Toyota Tercel) was totaled - although I ended up selling him to my now father-in-law for him to use as a commuter. He stills drive Oliver... I think.

But anyway - I had an old subwoofer and amp sitting down there, along with all of the necessary cables (power for the battery, ground, turn-on, RCA, and 16-gauge speaker wire) in a plastic bin, also just taking up space. And so I carved out a couple of evenings before Jeff's and my road trip to Glacier National Park to get them installed...

First, I had to get power from the battery through the firewall, which turned out to be pretty easy. I poked a scratch awl through the main rubber grommet where most of the wiring was already being routed -

Then - after taping the 8-gauge power cable to a piece of 12-gauge electrical cable - I stuck them both through the hole, then reached up under the pedals on the driver's side of the firewall and yanked the mess through -

Along with everything else I already had, I installed the battery fuse. It was just a simple matter of connecting the 18" lead from the battery to the fuse box -

So power then was done. Next, the amp (an old Phoenix Gold XS4300) -

came with a potentiometer that adjusts the bass output I needed to install -

I had the perfect spot - right next to the 12V adapter in front of the stick shift. So I just quick drilled it -

When I had yanked the stereo before selling Oliver, I apparently (not sure why?) cut the cable for the pan pot. The thing is, the end is a 4-cable telephone jack. So I had to go get a box of jacks. Thankfully, from all of the structured wiring I've done in the house, I already had the CAT5 and RJ11 crimper. So it was really easy -

Then I plugged it into the amp -

I'd later find out... it didn't work. After double-checking I had crimped the wires correctly in the jack, I inspected the connection at the pan pot side. Yep - only the black wire was hanging on, so I had to break out the soldering iron to reconnect the other three (my wife helped hold the soldering flux) -

And done -

Well, it's backwards - so turning the pot right turns down the volume on the sub, but whatever. Maybe some day I'll fix it. I probably should have read this first... so I'll probably end up rewiring it.

*** UPDATE 10.11.16 - yeah, it bugged me. So I fixed it. (I just reversed the black wire to the other end, then put the green/yellow in the middle, and the red where the black had been) ***

Anyway... next, I had to run a bunch more cabling, which is how I spent the rest of that first night - just pulling cable through the car after removing a bunch of the trim sections. The power turn-on lead went over to run alongside the speaker and power cables under the door trim (you can run power with high-level speaker wire without getting any noise interference, but not with low-level RCA cables - those must be placed away from power cables or engine whine will likely be a problem through the system), and speaker wire went into the trunk for the subwoofer.

I gave it a valiant effort to pull the 16-gauge speaker cable through the factory door boot on the driver's side to connect the component speakers in the doors but... nope, it wasn't happening. So I ended up just splicing the 16-gauge stuff onto the factory wiring harness adapter -

After all was said and done, it kind of looked like a huge mess -

Note: power, ground, and turn-on lead on the left along with the speaker wire (the amp's inputs are arranged intentionally, with power and speaker inputs on one side, and RCA inputs on the other), and the RCA and pan pot on the right. I did some quick level-setting before bolting the seat back in so I could leave the next day to pick up Jeff at Sea-Tac and make the drive across the Pac NW to Glacier...

Just a couple of days after returning though, I was driving home from work and all of a sudden the sub sounded awful - like it was rattling something obnoxious. So I pulled it out of the little enclosure and inspected. Bleh - in the seven years of sitting down in the basement, the foam surround had deteriorated and begun to separate from the speaker cone -

Rather than spend $500 on a new sub (which may or may not fit the same volume box I had), I opted to go the thrifty route and spend a whopping $20... on a replacement foam surround kit from Simply Speakers. Brilliant. Then got to work scraping off the old surround -

The kit comes with the foam surround (duh) and some special glue that works pretty quickly, but still allows time to line up the speaker cone's voice coil in the magnet to make sure it's not rubbing during its length of travel. In a couple hours, I had the new foam all glued (to the cone and the frame) and the gasket reapplied -

Boom. Good as new and reinstalled in the trunk -

And now neither it nor the amp are taking up space in the basement...

car stereo.

Back in college, I was into car audio. I even had an 'audition' working at a car stereo shop for a day, where I was put to the test installing a receiver and some speakers. I, uhh, sucked something awful and definitely did not get the job.

But fast-forward to now... The stereo in Spencer (my 2006 Toyota Corolla that I've had for seven years now) was pretty good (it had component speakers in the front and a 6-disc changer), so I lived with it. Meaning, every year for our road trip to California, I'd spend a couple hours burning a dozen CDs because it only played CDs (not even MP3 CDs) - no auxiliary input to plug in an old iPod or anything. Still, it was pretty good. Then, a few years ago, one of the rear speakers blew. But still, it was pretty good. And I'm cheap.

Until recently when - just for fun - I looked into what it would cost to get some new speakers and a new receiver to which I could hook up my old iPhone 2G. I was surprised, cos - for two sets of speakers and a double-DIN receiver - it was pretty cheap (about $250). I ordered the stuff from the same place I used to buy from back in those college days (Crutchfield), mostly because they include (uhh, for free) wiring adapters, dash and speaker kits, and complete installation instructions.

So I plunked down some cash, waited for them to arrive, then got to work...

It was really easy, actually. Too easy (i.e. not much fun because the ABS speaker adapters and everything made it so I didn't really have to problem-solve, which is kind of the most fun part about installing car stereo stuff). But first were the door speakers -

(Those are the factory speakers)

After removing the door panel, I cut out the bracket for the new 6-1/2" mid-woofer, then installed the little crossover box and tweeter with velcro - and boom! Done.

Then the rear speakers, in short order (just had to be mounted to a bracket). The factory speakers -

Removed, and next to the JBL replacements (already mounted to the bracket) -

And the JBLs installed -

And... done.

But since that wasn't much fun, and Stuart had his own stereo problems (umm, just a CD player which didn't really eject any CDs, requiring me to sort of hold down the eject button, take off the faceplate, then use a needle nose pliers to yank it out - as well as tiny little front speakers and two non-operational speakers in the rear). Oh, and I had gotten a pretty nice JBL component speaker set at a garage sale years ago that has just been sitting in the garage ever since.

So - this time for $100 - I was able to get the single-DIN version of the same receiver I installed in Spencer (so operating them would be a piece of cake cos they're identical) and some 6-1/2" speakers for the rear. And this installation would require a bit more, well, creativity. Yea!

The receiver was easy (I think they're always easy) - just remove any necessary paneling (which Crutchfield details in their pretty handy installation instructions), do some wire splicing from the receiver harness to the factory harness, and pop it in.

The paneling removed -

Four supplied screws mounted it quickly to the factory bracket -

And the wiring harness -

Then it was time for those nice component speakers (I'm a huge fan of component speaker systems). This was interesting, because apparently back in 1991 Toyota thought it was cool to use ABS speaker housings for all four speakers (the little speaker box removed from the front driver's side, complete with a port for all the air the little 4" speaker moves... heh)-

And the new vs. old -

(Apparently the speaker surround on the factory speaker had basically disintegrated... )

Okay - but those speaker boxes are actually pretty ingenious. Until it's time to upgrade the speakers, then they're kind of a pain. Especially since - despite getting this JBL set for probably something like $10 - I was stuck with them, so I had to make them work (and - quite frankly - pretty motivated to make them work).

But I quickly discovered the magnet on the new speakers didn't quite fit in the housing. Hmm... creativity... First I thought I could just cut into them with a utility knife or something, but that would kind of render them useless and inefficient since there was no real backing under the dash (so soundwaves emanating from behind the speaker cone - all speakers send sound forwards and backwards, which is why they need to be in a box - would wrap around and cancel out the ones from the front... no bueno). Hmm... wait! I broke out the heat gun I got years ago when I was reglazing some of the original windows on the house (it's used to melt old, brittle window glazing) and quickly heated up the ABS to the point it was malleable - then beat it with a hammer -

In no time - the new speaker fit perfectly -

Success!

Then it was time to mount the tweeters... This would be pretty easy, but fun because there weren't previously any tweeters. I opted for surface mounting them along the windshield pillars (vs. flush mounting in the door panels, since the mid-woofers were under the dash - I wanted them and the tweeters to be on the same 'sound plane'). Just had to drill -

Then run the wires -

Put everything back together, and done (the mid-woofers are hidden behind the slotted cutouts under the dash) -

Finally then... the rear speakers. After I removed the rear panels, this is what I found -

Uhh... (that's a 4-1/2" speaker - and I bought 6-1/2" speakers). Yeah, this was going to get creative! Obviously, for starters I had to take it out and inspect -

Hmm, ok. Well - first thought was I could build something. And for these speakers - they were completely enclosed in the rear quarter panel, so I could chuck the factory housings with what I would build. I scrounged around the garage for some scrap 3/4" MDF, then went to work on the table saw -

(The front and sides - cut to the same dimensions as the original housing - from a piece of scrap)

Then I took off the mounting brackets, measured the spacing, and recreated it on my new speaker brackets -

To make the cutout for the speakers, I used a circle jig for my plunge router -

It's awesome - and makes circles from about 2" all the way up to 18" (broken out in sixteenths of an inch). Easy -

I routed the outer circle first to 1/4" depth, then routed out the 5" circle last -

Fastened the new speaker to my little bracket -

And boom!

The factory speaker housings had their own circuitry - and I surmised more than just a crossover network (which is usually just a capacitor or two), possibly an auxiliary amplifier. But - without knowing what it was - I definitely wanted to bypass it. So I ran some new speaker wire along both doors up front to the receiver -

(NOTE TO SELF: white on right, grey on left)

(I crimped the new wires directly into the receiver harness, bypassing the factory harness)

Then mounted my self-made speaker brackets -

And reattached the rear panel -

Boom. Done.

Now no more having to burn dozens of CDs...