2000 GTP: Still Alive! New Trans?

Yesterday I decided to go ahead and swap in yet another head unit. This one was out of my truck, since the car is going to get driven a LOT more, it'll get the better stereo. This head unit is the best head unit I have ever owned, by a long shot. It's a Kenwood Excelon KDC-X991, I originally bought is because of the 5v preouts and the USB capability. It has all kinds of other features that are cool and all, but that's not why I got it. I've never used the internal amp on it at all until I put it in the car and DAMN. It made a HUGE difference. I've never heard a stereo sound so good with so little. Don't get me wrong, the truck sounded better and my Civic sounded better, but I had countless hours in both of those.

Only down side is the IR receiver on the faceplate of the Kenwood is recessed more than the Pioneer or Sony, so I have to move the IR emitter to another location. I'm gonna try it on the steering column, I can poke a hole in the Pass-Key rubber cover thing.

A great stereo, I have always like Kenwood. Have any plans for the rims? If you polish them up, they do look good

Kinda torn on rims, I'm thinking I'll end up polishing them eventually, I might paint\plastidip\polish the rims, I just haven't decided yet...

I've had and tried damn near every head unit brand (on my Civic) and had something to ***** about on every single one of them. My own gripe about this one (the Kenwood)is that it takes a little longer to turn on\play music. Blaupunkt has amp problems and overheat, Sony and Panasonic's internal amp and decoders suck, Clarion had CD loading issues, Dual\JVC\Jensen all have VERY low output voltage, Alpine is good but overpriced, and I could keep going. I haven't had chance to try eclipse out yet though...

I have the KDC-BT852HD which works for me because I already have the amp in my Grand Prix and I like it allot because of the Bluetooth streaming. I also went with this one because it had an external microphone. Also another factor that played in my decision was the USB, if you use it, plugs in front of the unit because I don't care for the cable coming from the back.

I'm actually the opposite, I prefer the cable in the back. I normally leave the USB drive plugged in all the time, so if I take the faceplate off the USB drive would make it fall off. I only discovered this because a good friend of mine just bought one for his Heep, and that was his only complaint. He had an Alpine before and will NEVER go back.

Heep?? you mean Jeep? or are you talking about a heep of crap

Jeep, I'm on FSB (Full Size Bronco) a lot and they are all referred to as Heeps, lol. You know Jeeps, Just Eat Every Penny.

I never use my USB unless I use a USB stick to play music or to charge my phone. I usually just stream listening to either XM or Pandora. Streaming was the best they ever came out with. I use Scout on my iPhone for GPS and it even lowers the music volume and speaks over it giving me turn by turn instructions. Beats the hell out of buying a GPS/ car stereo unit for the car.

That sounds AWESOME, I'd do something like that if my headunit supported blue tooth, and I had a cell phone. I live in a VERY small town, 2.9 square miles and under 3,000 people. For now I've got a 32GB USB drive holding most of my music, and it's about half full. The headunit has 512 built in so I can rip a few CDs and such, but never really tried it. I would be a LOT happier if this thing supported FLAC, but nope.

Dude, absolutely awesome thread! i wish i had the balls to just tackle it all.
Its been about 10 years but as far as systems go i always had great luck with pioneer heads and memphis subs.

I would also like to share that i spent the last 2 hours reading your thread.

Lol, thanks man. I've learned a lot from all the work I've done to my Civic and truck (lots more done to the truck), and with both of them I ended up having to go back and fix stuff I either overlooked or didn't do right myself. I mainly had to do a lot of stuff over on my Civic because it was my first car, so I made all my mistakes on that one. I'm hoping to not have to re-do anything I do to this car. So far, the only 3 things I've had to redo are the brakes calipers (I had a stupid moment), the IR emitter location (different headunit), and my DRL diode modification thing. I didn't HAVE to retint my tail lights, but I wanted to, lol.

Today I went ahead and pulled my DRL diode, because I think it was having problems with the added load of the parking lights. If no on knows, the DRL diode also lowers the voltage from +12V to ~+6V. The voltage is burned off in heat, via the DRL diode's heatsink. I think the parking lights (remember, the dash lights, and 8 exterior bulbs) were drawing too much power for that little diode to reduce to +6V, so my dimming knob, and blinkers were having issues. I pulled the diode and all that went away, but i have no driving lights. Tonight or tomorrow I'm going to rummage through my spare electronic parts and see if I can't find a spare rectifier diode from my e-fans setup on my truck. These rectifier diodes don't reduce voltage at all, they only allow it to flow 1 direction. For example, when the DRL's are on, the BCM (body control module) supplies +12v to the parking lights to make them turn on. That's a good thing of course, until the parking lights receive their +12V from another place, like the headlight switch\automatic lights. The +12V would flow back into the BCM, and most likely burn it up. When it comes to electronics, going in the out door is a bad idea. When I install this rectifier diode I hope to find it will only allow voltage to flow OUT of the BCM and not back IN. If my problem STILL happens after the diode, then I'll take the diode out of the equation and set up a relay, so the BCM won't have the load of the lights on it, only the load of the relay (~250MA). Don't worry, I'll take pictures of it all.

I went out to start the car today and had a pretty bad misfire, so I pulled out my old cell phone (the one without service), and checked Torque Pro. It showed me the problem was on cylinder 5, so I went out and checked a few things on that cylinder. Of course, the same thing that happened to cylinder 6 happened to cylinder 5, the injector's connectors on the engine harness were bent out, so basically the injector wasn't plugged in. I bent the connector in to make contact, plugged it in, and it runs fantastic again. LED's came in for the trunk, I paid $2.54 shipped for them, and I'm going to wire it into the original light wires. Here's a pic of the LEDs, I should have a picture of it installed later tonight.

http://www.fordtruckclub.net/forum/p...0/p1050041.jpg

LED's are installed, and they're pretty bright. I'm not impressed, I'm satisfied. It's definitely brighter than stock, that's for sure, and for $2.54, I'm happy. I'm trying to figure out how to get my camera to show how bright the light is, and it seems the only way is to change the exposure, but then the pictures come out a bit too blurry. Oh well, you get the idea. Parking lights are on in the picture for reference, my tail lights are tinted though, so it's not really much of a reference...
http://www.fordtruckclub.net/forum/p...0/p1050053.jpg

Where did you order that led strip from? And you just wire a power wire to the regular bulbs harness power wire then ground it to the trunk?

Exactly, they have diodes built into the strip, so polarity doesn't matter. if you hook it up one way and it doesn't work, try the other way, no damage done. They do require good connections to work at all, so make sure your splices are good and strong. I bought them on eBay, and the listing I bought it from ended, but this is the same thing:
New Car Strip Light 12V 15 SMD LED Flexible Light Bar Line Grill 1210 White | eBay

If I had it to do over, I would have bought 2 or something a little bit bigger. Like I said, it could be brighter, but it's for sure brighter than stock. The rest of the LEDs for the interior should come in today or tomorrow. Then I just need some switch backs for the front, some 3057s and 194s for the rear and I'm completely LED. Oh yeah, and the glove box.

The rest of the LED's just came in, but it's too hot out to put them in now, so they'll go in later. 10 194 1 watts and 2 42mm 2 watts. So I converted damn near everything in the car (minus dash lights of course) to LED for $15. Not to shabby.

http://www.fordtruckclub.net/forum/p...0/p1050054.jpg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Booba5185

The rest of the LED's just came in, but it's too hot out to put them in now, so they'll go in later. 10 194 1 watts and 2 42mm 2 watts. So I converted damn near everything in the car (minus dash lights of course) to LED for $15. Not to shabby.

http://www.fordtruckclub.net/forum/p...0/p1050054.jpg

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Link? I would like to do that as well.

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I just ordered these:
10pc 2 LED 1W T10 LED SMD CAR Side Wedge Light Lamp Bulb 2825 194 168 W5W White | eBay
2 Xenon White 1 72" 42mm 2W High Power 211 2 578 LED Bulbs FOR CAR Interior | eBay

Hold off on ordering them though, let me post some installed pics so I can tell you if they are bright enough or not. I hooked it up to my battery charger to test them and the 194s are pretty bright, not so sure on the 42mm's. I'll have them installed tonight with pics of the results.

Thanks I appreciate it

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Further back you said you cleaned the connectors inside the radio what do you mean by that?