garry

I disagree gents - more likely to be for sat-nav connectivity according to the attached wiring diagram. Is sat nav an option on non-GT models, if so then this defo makes more sense than SWC.

I reckon the connector refers to wires 17 thru 20 on their own connector block.

Guys - the website for this has changed - obviously no longer sponsored by F'n'M

http://www.scottishmodifiedcars.com/

Are any of you guys going through to this?

P15ULT I think you mentioned you were going to have your car on display?

I'll be competing in the EMMA SQ Sound-off and will be driving through from Glasgow on Sunday AM if anyone wants to meet up for a jaunt through... let me know.

Otherwise look out for my white zed in the EMMA area and come and say hello!

http://www.fastandmodified.com/pages/show.php

hmmmm...okay this should actually be simple enough.

I've been to the wiki and downloaded the appropriate service manual for my '07 car

here -> http://www.350z-tech.com/files/manual/0 ... manual.zip

In the section av.pdf there's some good diagrams of the system and details of which wire does what, so I'll have a play around and let you all know how I get on.

Need to isolate the switching signal (that switches on when incoming phonecall being rec'd, and off when you hang-up) plus the TEL Voice Signal coming from the person on the other end of the line. Once I've traced these to the appropriate pins using the diagrams then it should be easy enough to capture and modify the signal into something that will be useable by my car PC... maybe.

No jay it is a black mr2 - i am technically not from glasgow but motherwell area just outside.

 

thanks guys

Good stuff - sounds like Luke and I are in your immediate neighbourhood!

Give us a shout if you need a guage of the difference between an mr-2 and a zed and one of us will come and meet you at the strathy park roundabout for the m74 grand prix!!!

Do any of you guys happen to know if the oem bluetooth can be hacked to work with an aftermarket sound system.

The reason I ask is since replacing my oem bose with aftermarket kit I notice that my phone still pairs to the integrated bluetooth kit.

Furthermore, on making a call when accidentally paired, the person on the other end of the phone could hear me speaking but I couldn't hear them. So therefore the mic still works fine with the headunit out!

Unfortunately I need to work out which wires in the bose loom are providing the output from the bluetooth so I can try and capture the signal to playback over my aftermarket sound system.

Dos this make sense to anyone, or just in my head?

I don’t know if this is something you guys do but I'm thinking of doing a 'Hot Marques' track day at Knockhill on Saturday 19th July (If it's dry). Let me know if any of you guys are up for joining me.

 

Gordon

Gordon - why don't you start a thread on this - I'd be up for going along, date dependant of course!

The idea of Hot Maeques is it keeps all the muppets in clapped out xr-2's and nova's off the track -usually fairly sensible folk driving.

Good pics all.

Adam - can't believe you airbrushed out the old dude in the beemer - put him back immediately! And where'd the caravan go?!?!?

(in case you're wondering, Jay was towing a caravan, at least I think that's why he was so far behind the rest of us )

fatalus - in my opinion here you will always be fighting a losing battle using the bose amp and sub.

The bose sub is of extremely poor quality, it'll be low powered compared to your front end and you have no ability to adjust the x-over point meaning the sub will be playing too much in the way of high frequencies which will be generally ruining your sound.

If I were in your shoes I would invest a little more money on a decent sub + box + amp and I can assure you the improvement will be the same again.

Now you have a power line run into the car to run your amp for your front-end, much of the hard work towards instaling a sub amp + boxed sub has been done!

Also, I would recommend looking at a couple of products - both of which are intended to take speaker outputs from oem headunits and remove equalisation, boost signal and split into proper pre-out signals, as used by amplifiers.

alpine pxe-h650 http://www.alpine-electronics.co.uk/ind ... d=pxe-h650

jbl cleansweep http://mobile.jlaudio.com/products_clea ... page_id=94

both do of course come at a price... but if you consider it being money you would have otherwise spent on a decent headunit then it's maybe not such bad value considering it lets you keep the oem look and will be easily transferrable to your next car.

Yeah thouroughly enjoyed the drive and was surprised/disappointed/relieved by how normal you all were - my missus had me convinced that you were just a bunch of random non-zed owning strangers who were going to hack me up into little bits and steal my car.

still, there's always next time...

Was impressed by the tight formation driving along the twisty roads... or was that just because I was up front and going too slowly?!?

G

I saw these on an orange 350z at the geneva motorshow and thought they looked great - so much so I was almost tempted to go and buy them.

But if I put them on my white zed now I'd just get called a copycat

 

Its nice to be rare...

you won't want me parking next to you then?

Its less efficient as it has to convert 12v -> 240v then again 240v -> 12v - Each conversion requires power as they are far from 100% efficient.

 

A computer only needs 12v so a proper car PSU will probably use quite a bit less power.

 

When you say it drops to 8/9v do you mean just for a split second and then it goes back up to 14v?

(To be honest the power cap does not actually do that much)

I agree with both of these points and the other benefit of a proper car psu is the ability to start up and shut down the system with the ignition switch. I drop my car PC to hibernate automatically when the ignition turns off.

Does your invertor get hot? If so there's proof of the power inefficiency!

It's also a topic for debate whether or not you get benefit from using a capacitor - especially if you have a fairly chunky alternator/battery which I'd guess the zed does to crank the big V6.

Hi Bear - install looks great and I would be very keen to see pics of the sub boxes without the subs in them - what volume (cuft) are they?

Agree with others in that I personally would hide the amp or be constantly paranoid someone was going to smash the back window and nick it! It is a nice beast to have on display mind you...

I'm currently getting my installer to create me a screen moulding for cubby-hole mount, much like yours and I will post pics when it's done. I currently run the set-up that you are moving towards with my PC playing through the aux port on my alpine headunit and it works very well. The sound of my PC, allbeit very good using FLAC and suchlike, is limited by the hardwear playing it back (i.e. PC soundcard) and so for pure SQ I like to use my HU rather than the PC. Only mentioning as this is another benefit of doing what you are thinking about... that and the fact you'll get a radio!

I'm not sure which front-end you are running on the PC - but I think I recall someone talking about problems with use of the rotary controller in combination with Centrafuse - best to do a trawl of forums related to your front end and have a look before buying...

I'd debate that with them. What they really mean is they can't be bothered to find and fix all the rattles. Probably because they've run out of time and have another job waiting to come in or something.

Sounds like you'll need to get yourself a test tone CD and go round and fix them all yourself. If it is indeed the clips that are rattling in the plastic panels then it's an easy but somewhat time consuming fix with insulating tape.

That said, I'd be surprised if you could hear any rattles with a W7 going full pelt behind you! Turn it up and it'll drown them out!!!

looking forward to it - should be fun... hopefully in the sun!

Might come down from Aberdeen for this, stretch the legs. Where's the Showcase cinema? Got a postcode and I'll google map it.

look at the map way up in the post... starting point is on that. showcase is pretty much right at the meeting point of m8, m73, m74

It's looking good for a few zeds then - will Sanquhar be able to cope!?!?

Bet we make the local paper!

I also have a friend who is keen to come along too - not a zed owner but he should be able to keep up... in his RS4

okay - how's about this route, assuming we meet at the showcase...

1 - motorway blast 30mins down m74, showcase cinema to abington

2 - abington to sanquhar, 20-30 mins picturesque twisties including quick picture stops half way

3 - sanquhar get a beer and a burger if desired in local hotel (an hour or so?)

4 - sanquhar to happendon, 20-30 mins drive through more twisites

5 - return motorway blast from happendon back to showcase cinema 20 mins

All in all about 100miles and a 3 hour trip including stops - travelling within the national speed limit of course Could then go somewhere in or around Glasgow if desired...

For some reason the hyperlink thingy won't work with this humungous url so paste this into your browser for the route in multimap.

http://www.multimap.com/directions/?qs_1=colinslee+crescent%2C+glasgow&countryCode_1=GB&qs_2=Abington%2C+South+Lanarkshire%2C+Biggar%2C+Lanarkshire%2C+Scotland%2C+ML12+6&displayName_2=Abington%2C+South+Lanarkshire%2C+Biggar%2C+Lanarkshire%2C+Scotland%2C+ML12+6&lat_2=55.49204&lon_2=-3.69229&countryCode_2=GB&qs_3=sanquhar&countryCode_3=GB&qs_4=happendon%2C+scotland&countryCode_4=GB&qs_5=colinslee+crescent%2C+glasgow&countryCode_5=GB&mode=driving&optimizeFor=quickest&mapData=858#map=55.5392,-3.61286|10|4

I can assure you that steps 2,3 & 4 are a great drive but does anyone think it's too far?

Be good to see you again Garry...engine still holding together ?

Alex - I'm not sure we've met before but the engine's fine thanks

working on a route guys - how long do we want to drive for and do we want a wee break for a bite to eat?

Honestly - the roads I'm thinking of are fabulous - cut into the hills, twisties, and great spots for photographs. All only 30 mins south of Glasgow too... will post some maps and directions to get your opionions!

sounds good!

add me to the list.

I know of some cracking driving roads 30 mins down the m74 we could tackle!

showcase cinema on m8 a good meeting place as near where m8 m74 m73 and m80 meet. got a mcd's too!

You guys going to be able to get to the Japan North show at Haigh Hall in August? I'll make the trip up and can compare sounds.

Could do - although Japan North is a bit of a misnomer IMO given I'd have a 3hr drive south to get there

You English think everything above London is "Northern Britain"!!

Well - sounds like lots and lots of work is going into this, I can't wait to see the finished result! Hopefully even get a chance to hear it sometime too!

As for your question:

Have I been a muppet? Will i be able to compete with you lot on competitions?

I guess that depends on what type of competition. Although I am belatedly now adding a PC to my installation as a toy, the main purpose for my install is to reproduce music with exceptionally high sound quality (SQ) rather than high sound pressure levels (SPL - i.e. volume)

From an SQ perspective, the weaknesses in your system I would guess will be:

- audio source - a PC can't yet compete with a top-end head-unit

- use of rear speakers - won't do anything to help you accurately define a sound stage in front of the listener

- use of dual subs - perhaps will overpower the rest of the system and won't give as controlled output as a single well integrated 10" sub.

I'm not sure on the exact model of focal speakers you are using for front end so won't pass comments but type, fitment and amplification of these are critical for good SQ.

From an SPL perspective your car is going to rock however and would blow most systems (certainly mine) away any day of the week.

If any of you guys are going up to Scotland at the end of summer then it would be a great opportunity to have a listen round each others' systems!

2. Thinking of adding a 2 channel amp to replace the existing and disconnecting the rear speakers. I think the sound may end up being better that way. Any thoughts and recommendations on amps appreciated.

Richard - I'd think about adding a four channel - use two channels to run the fronts and bridge the other two to run a replacement sub.

Any sub that's £100+ aftermarket will be better than the bose IMO, or failing that now you have some decent front speakers even crossing over the bose sub at a lower frequency would help matters no end!

Who did you get to fabricate it? I'm having problems finding somebody who will create a convex piece, most want to do a flat one.

It's not done yet - should be by Friday tho!!

I'm getting one fabricated by my audio installer in Glasgow. He's going to make it convex but with a recessed hole for the screen which will be square to the vertical if you know what I mean. Probably much like the nissan surround but without having to cover up the holes etc on the oem panel for the oem sat nav buttons.

I promise to post pics as soon as it's done and if you like it I could get you a price for him to do you a replica of mine.