Back to list of mods

ICE In Car Entertainment

In car entertainment is one of the best or worst features of modified cars, if you have gone to all the trouble of modifying your car the last thing you will want is a standard sound system.

To start with you will want to replace the standard head unit with a cd/mp3 head unit which will cost about £150 for an entry level unit, when shopping for the head unit look for power rating and pre outs on the back of the unit as there will be essential later on.

Once you have the head unit installed you should look in your car’s operating guide and see what size the standard speakers in the doors or dashboard are, once your know this you can buy high quality replacements for about £70.00 and it will give you over all better sound quality but also a massive increase in bass running on the amp inside the head unit.

The next thing you will want to do after the standard speakers have been upgraded is adding some more powerful rear speakers to keep up with the higher and lower frequency rates in songs.

The most effective and popular speaker to add to your cars parcel shelf is the 6 by 9, the speaker got it name as it is the measurement of the speaker in inches, this speaker will work if powered off of the rear wiring channel already in the car but it will work properly to its full potential when amplified.

This is where the pre-outs will come in to play, a full wiring kit will cost about £15.00 and is available anywhere you can buy an amplifier, to wire in the 6 by 9’s to the amp you will need to run a set of RCA cables from the head unit 2 the amp which are colour corresponding so are easy to install correctly.

Alpine SXE-1725S 16.5cm Speakers

Now you have done this your will need to put the remote lead in to the wiring harness on the back of the head unit, most head units have a specific slot for this wire, this is a crucial part of the wiring as the remote lead tells the amp to turn on and off with the head unit to stop the battery being drained.

The next step will be to find an eathing point in the boot of your car and attaching an earth lead to it making sure it has a direct contact with the cars metal work.

The last cable you will need to run through the car is the power cable, you will need to push out a grommet in the cars wire wall to get the wire through in to the engine bay, once you have got it through you will need to bolt it directly to the positive side of the battery to give the amp the power it needs, make sure the wire you use has a build in fuse before you wire it to the amp as this will protect you from overloading your amp and blowing it.

Now you have all your wires run in to the boot you will need to connect them to the amplifier to the labelled wiring terminals, once this is done you will need to wire the speakers to the positive and negative speaker channel on the amp ensuring they are making a good connection, before you test out the speakers make sure the amplifiers levels are al tuned to half power so you do not over load your speakers.

When shopping for an amplifier for your speakers make sure that the power rating of the amp does not exceed that of the power rating the speakers carry, a two channel amplifier will set you back around £50.00 and a set of reasonable quality 6 by 9’s will cost around £60.00.

Now you are ready to test out the speaker system, begin by putting all the setting on the head unit to 0 then adjust them until the speakers are creating the desired sound.

After this if you are still interested in further modifying your sound system the best thing you can add is a subwoofer, this is a larger speaker that produced a louder bass for your sound system and an over all more powerful sound.

The amplifier for the sub is put in the same way as the above explanation but you will need to get a higher powered amplifier again dependant on the power rating of the sub, a basic sub and amp package can be bought for about £120.00 and would be a good starting point for any one interested in upgrading there car audio.

Once you have a basic upgraded sound system the possibility stretch a long way as far as audio modification stretches, most show quality car’s have customised fibber glass installs containing two – four amplifier powering and number of speakers, also a common trend in modified cars recently car DVD players and television screens.

If you wish to take your modifications this far you can buy a DVD head unit that has a 7.5” motorised screen will only set you back about £400.00 for a basic one but it may not have the power ratings of a normal head unit.

The main rule to remember when building your sound system is not to use amplifiers with a higher power rating than your speakers and always make sure your have fuses installed in your system.