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Bluetooth for music & calls, for Apple CarPlay just a simple Lightning cable

Apple Car play, Phone Calls, Texts, Maps, Music etc all direct from the phone.

It's a simple tap on the screen & then it is voice activated for a call or text

I'm still discovering new things this Pioneer head unit does. I was giving a demo of the install to a guy last night & going thru all the functions etc With Apple Car play I can actually vocally tell the phone who in my contact list to call & it does it. Even more impressive is when I told the Pioneer to send him a text message, I dictated the message & it sent, straight to his phone in his pocket in the passenger seat. I didn't know it could do that! It's pretty cool & a very impressive thing to do on a demo. If anyone else in SE London/Kent border wants a listen just shout me up!

Just had a quick tot up, retail prices just for the equipment without labour are over £5k Luckily some things I have owned for years such as the Subwoofer (8 years and still running perfectly) 300/4 amplifier (7 years) TV Tuner (approx 5 years) and these items were at or around half retail as they were second hand (subwoofer was as new in the unopened box), so its not like I went out with £5k cash and just came back with this lot etc. What was it Scorps used to say? If it's got tits or tyres it's gonna cost ya!......

£1,500 would just about cover the labour costs at a dealer (if they were cheap). A good part about the install & the car itself is that it is pretty stealthy & doesn't attract too much attention, it doesn't scream "come & nick me" which was exactly the effect i want, no spoiler, no tinted windows and no huge Pioneer or Alpine stickers on the back window!!

I think this is everything in my install but probably missed something out... Pioneer F-60DAB Head Unit/Sat Nav/DVD/USB Alpine TUE-T150DV DVB-T TV Tuner Alpine KRE-500E Remote Eye Alpine KAE-210DV Amplified DVB-T Tuner Aerial Alpine RUE-4143 Remote control AudioControl Epicentre with Remote JL Audio 1000/1 Amplifier (Subwoofer) JL Audio 300/4 Amplifier (Front stage) JL Audio A-2150 Amplifier (Rear doors) JL Audio 12W7-3 Subwoofer JL Audio C5-650 Tweeters (Dash) JL Audio C3-650 Component/Coaxials (Front doors) JL Audio C2-650 Components (Rear doors) JL Audio RBC-1 Remote Bass Controller Pyle PLCM HONDA Infrared Rear Camera Silent Coat 2mm & 4mm Multi Bulk packs CCF Decoupling foam 9mm & 3mm 0awg OFC Power & Ground Cables 4awg OFC Power & Ground Cables 0agw & 4awg Gold Terminals KnuKoncept 0AWG Battery Terminals KBT-30 & BT-104 KnuKoncept KNF-60 Fused Distribution Block KnuKoncept KNF-36 Fused Distribution Block KnuKoncept 8AWG x2 Subwoofer Cable KnuKonceptz Krystal 4 Channel RCA Kables Heat resistant Plastic Conduit trunking Cost a fortune and some of it was second hand or re-used from my old install, but full retail prices would be utterly mental. I mean for starters the Head Unit was £1,000, the subwoofer & subwoofer amplifier would be almost £1,500, front speakers £500+, TV Tuner £210, it just goes on & on, but after the great feedback I got at Japfest at the weekend, it was worth every hour spent on the install & every single penny.

Hey BTW Happy Birthday Tony!!

It was a full service Monday, then MOT, & now Car Tax before May 1st tho. Still at least it passed with zero advisories & it is running sweet

Car Tax next thing

Yay MOT pass

Having to strip out about 5-6 metres of the stuff under the car was a fair bit of work, & it meant zero chances being taken on having to do it again. It was pretty cheap tbh £6/metre.

More pics (cable porn)

That's the entire Earth Cable run replaced, conduit, braided, heatshrink, all cable ties replaced with black ones & finally crimped with my new hydraulic crimp tool I got from Amazon (£24). Lots of different collar sizes so pretty much any cable up to 70mm² can be accommodated. At least I won't need to do that again. I'm too tired today, but will check the entire cable I have removed, cut out any dodgy parts as necessary, & get some jumbo crocodile clips to turn it into a set of huge power rating jump leads..... So jobs left to do as & when time/funds allow? 1) Construct a (Rear) Battery Box/Cover out of sheet ally & cover in carpet. 2) Order the Perspex/Acrylic panel for the front of the Amp Rack. 3) Continue to dial in the system 4) Finish installing the Sound Deadening & eliminate rattles at higher volume levels. Nearly there now...... (Famous last words)

No, at the end nearest the battery terminal. All insulated & braided.

New cable ordered, so will fix the issue in a couple of weeks permanently, it's a total ball ache to replace though as its all routed under the car in conduit etc.

Well it was the Earth but then it also wasn't the Earth, just a cable from what must have been a dodgy batch. Very odd as the tiny bit I have left indoors as an offcut looks totally fine....

I was just unlucky with a dodgy batch, I wouldn't have used it at all if I felt it wasn't up to the job, so just a bit of bad luck really.

More Silent Coat, this is on the front & rear doors, this particular picture shows the inside of the very outer door skin. Applying the inner door skin with silent coat The finished door panel prior to the door car being replaced. Note the crossover mounted above the speaker, and the Foam F.A.S.T Ring around the speaker itself. This provides a seal so all the speaker output goes thru the door grill and into the car, rather than some of it lost to inside the door card etc. MDF mounts are hidden uner the foam. Explanation of the F.A.S.T Rings here and more info/pics here Apologies for lack of pictures for the final parts of the install, but getting the car finished was the priority and time was a factor.

Just a couple I haven't posted up before..... Here is my Alpine Freeview DVB-T TV Tuner, underneath the front passenger seat Finished & time for the seat to go back in This is the driver door card getting a thin layer of CCF (the black stuff) used a a decoupler to help prevent any vibration from the door itself against the door card. Similarly on the passenger doorcard. Notice the black square at the rear. This chunky bit of paper mache (left end) was removed from the door cards so the inner door skin could be sealed up but the inner skin covering of silent coat to provide a proper sealed enclosure for the speaker within the door itself.

Ok so a bit of an update.... As you may well know I have been thru the mill a bit of late on a personal level. Getting this install finished has been the one real positive thing to happen over the last few months. It was with a huge amount of excitement (& indeed expectation) I was looking forward to my first meet of the year, & where several friends from more distant parts of the UK would get a chance to hear the car for the first time. So there I am sitting in the car wash just along from the meet, I only had LBC on the radio during the journey, so I decide to crank it up a bit to get it nicely warmed up for the many demos I was expecting. All seemed fine initially, but as soon as the bass kicked in the sound virtually cut out from the subwoofer AND the front speakers. Honestly you couldn't make it up!!! I visibly checked all the connections, nothing was loose, nor indeed had been actually touched since the install was completed. To say I was crestfallen just doesn't do how i was feeling justice. I was absolutely devastated. No amount of tinkering with the Head Unit could solve the issue, however the rear door speakers were still working absolutely fine. This made no sense whatsoever. Anyway I had a pretty miserable meet, and really couldn't at that stage start to comprehend what could be the issue. The amplifier under my driver seat was working fine for the rear doors, yet my two main ones were BOTH cutting out at the same time. On the way home I had not handsfree bluetooth, nor indeed Sat-Nav guidance as they all function thru the front speaker set up. I pulled over on my way, and was checking again for anything lose, yet forund no issues. Wothout a multimeter to test signals etc my thoughts then turned to the Pioneer Head Unit, maybe it had somehow got in a tiswas, so I did a complete Factory Reset on that hoping to fix the issue, but to no avail. All I did was completely lose all my set up benchmarks for time alignment, navigation, bluetooth and various other bits. Once I got home, for the next 3 weeks I didn't even want to look at the car let alone drive it. I was so utterly fed up, and with finances being tight atm, I didn't even want to contemplate something that could possibly be an expensive fix. Finally I decided to grab the bull by the horns. After much pondering in the armchair, I had narrowed the issue down to the rear battery, or something connected to it. I knew nothing had been touched on the install, I also knew the car was still starting fine, so the front battery must still be ok. 3 things didn't quite add up though. 1). Both AGM Batteries were bought at the same time and are identical. 2). The Amplifier under my seat is connected to the same boot mounted Fused Distribution Block as the other two amplifiers, yet was working perfectly. 3). I install things properly, and for 2 high quality amplifiers to exhibit similar failure at the same time was more than a little coincidental, in fact the chances of it happening at exactly the same time are ridiculously remote. So finally out comes the multimeter & a screwdriver or two to check things over step buy step. Amplifier Terminal connection tightness? Check Turn on signal to amps? Check Power to amplifiers? Check Audio Signal from the Head Unit? Check Battery connections tight? Check Earth? Barely at all. WTF????????? Both boot mounted amplifiers were connected to a huge Earth Block in the boot, then a 0AWG Earth Cable is routed alongside the Power Cable out of the boot, and passes in conduit under the car and up into the engine bay, where it terminates directly to the Battery, which in itself is connected with upgraded earths to the car body, and engine/transmission. Earthing really should never have been any kind of issue. Putting the probe on the ring terminal showed there was a good earth. Now my heqad was beginning to ache. So I checked under the car, but the cables showed no sign of damage to the conduits containing them. The the probe was touched onto the slightly exposed part to the cable end (just under the heat shrink) yet barely had a connection. What??? I had crimped that terminal myself using a pretty big hydraulic crimping tool that would have applied a massive crimping force. This still disn't add up. So off came the heat shrink, and a check again with the meter showed barely an earth at all, so I pulled through a little spare cable, and cut off the terminal. Once again though, there was barely any earth at all in the cable. I stripped back more of the insulation and discovered the nasty truth. As a cost saving excersize I had used 0AG CCA instead of 100% OFC Copper for the Earth Cable run from the boot to the front battery. CCA is Copper Clad Aluminium, and is somewhat cheaper than 100% pure copper. It is aluminium cable strands making up the cable, but it is dipped in copper so 90% or so is aluminium and the outside has a thin layer of copper. As most of the power is used up by the amplifiers, the return earth will have a much easier job carrying the current back to the front battery to complete the circuit. It is used by some people on their installs for the power run too, but you just need to usually go up one gauge on the cable to ensure it can handle the same power safely as 100% OFC Copper, as CCA of the same thickness is rated slightly lower. Anyway saving some cash wouldn't have been any issue at all, exept I seem to have had a bad batch of cable, the aluminium in the cable itself seemed to have oxidised in some way and was corroded to the point of falling apart. Stipping back more of the cable showed it had corroded more than 12" along the cable length, albeit to a lesser extent the furth I stripped back. Basically the entire cable needs to go in the bin, the only problem with itis that it is not readily accessible, and is covered in conduit, so pretty much a full day or at least a few hours will be needed to strip it all out and run a new cable in it's place, along with securing the entire run back in place under the car. The corrosion goes further than I could actually remove, so as a temporary measure, I have cut the cable back as far as I can in the engine bay, and crimped/soldered an new earth ring, but this is only a temporary fix so I have sound again, there is no option when I am feeling up to it, the run must be replaced. I am going to have to try to get a refund on the cable, as it is obviously faulty, but will more likely go for 100% OFC Copper as a replacement. Lightening should never strike in the same place twice, but tbh with the total ball ache of replacing this cable, routing in conduit etc & the time to actually do it, I'm not going to tempt fate. At least the car is back with proper sounds again, and has improved my mood quite considerably. Those of you wondering why the amplifier under my seat which powers the rear doors was still working fine? Answer: this amplifier runs a seperate earth under my seat to the chassis. Anyway after all that, who wants to see some pictures?

No that's spot on mate, the Old Bill think all cars should look just like it, as do the local chavs.....

Gloss Black panel in place. Connect up in the daylight tomorrow & that is that job done!!

So I started tackling another job I haven't had time for recently. The remote controls for the JL Audio Bass Amplifier plus the Audio Control Epicentre we're routed thru to the driver dash cubbyhole. However I obviously wasn't happy with them just sitting loosely inside as they not only looked untidy, but also were difficult to use as they were not anchored in any way so I hatched a plan. £4 worth of eBay black Perspex later & the idea is taking shape.... A quick measure No bandsaw at home so out came the Dremel again and after many test fits a nice snug fit was finally found.... Now it's time to drill some holes. More updates later....

I'm just as guilty buddy 😎