So off i went this saturday to finish the pending sound system installation. JBL was the choice as decided earlier, went to JBL shop at the fixed appointment time and spoke to the person there, he was very helpful and even recommended me a better choice but for my budget decided to go with GTO series.
Old Pioneer KEH P705 (HU)
Very Old Pioneer CDX P1220S (12 CD changer) & Rear 6x9 (Oval) GTO 937 * 2
Front Component GTO 607 C * 2
So the 3 musketeers started ripping my car apart!! In the process i came to know how Swift is built (atleast the interiors).
Door pad: Held by two screws and two rivet-type plastic locks, rest are just press fit locks!! 2 minute and one abrupt pull the door pad is in your hand, remember to pull out the connector for window winder switch.
10 sec and one pull later comes the dash lid/tray.
2 screws, 1 minute and another pull, the central ac vent and the stereo holder thingie.
Another 5 minutes and some door sil covers and molds and they are ready to start fitment.
This in part should explain why a swift rattles, its all plastic clips that hold the stuff together. Good part is all the wires and cables inside doors (including central locking) are properly routed and attached using clips.
Now the sad part, Swift diesel stereo connectors are different from petrol and the shop didnt have them yet, so the fitments guy had to slice the insulation and make a parallel wiring for the Pio HU :(
Good part Swift comes with all 4 speaker wiring, so if you are planing to do a
simple ICE installation like mine you can use the wiring in the car, front doors till the speakers itself. Rear speaker you need to slice the wiring insulation that comes for the rear door, at the point near the rear door sil cover, still a very easy job compared to pulling 4 sets of wires from speakers to the stereo.
Yup thicker wiring would have made me more happy lol.
Tray came for ovals and installed the CD changer in the boot, behind the rear seat. Front component tweeter needs a small cutting on the front door pad, again 5 mts job, make sure you mark the template before you go with the cutting.
So 45 mts and 3 men later, power ON and.................. OMG!! All my money went down the drain feeling..........
The installer guy, he tuned some kannada FM and then i could sense what was wrong, well he is not a JBL guy rather the fixer guy who cant understand proper sound atleast my taste, anyways i didnt want to complain and then spend another 20 minutes with me explaining and he fiddling with the settings.
The speakers are good, installation OK so i decided to pay up, i am used to DYI of all the ICE set ups since my last 3 cars and i knew by now what clips and screws need to be opened up if i need to do anything drastic.
So i started and at the first "oh so great you are not going anywhere Bangalore traffic signal" my first check of "all speakers playing proper test" is a failure!!
Rear RT speakers are dead, damn damn.. is it the speaker? is it the wiring or something happened to my HU?? with all those questions i turn back and drive back to the shop.
Installer guy is more than happy to help me out, i think he also felt bad coz he didnt bother to do a proper check earlier on since we were parked in a "not so legal park space" and wanted to move out fast.
Anyways he removed the HU and asked his assistant to bring a set of speakers to check, and soon figured out one of the speaker connection at HU end was not proper.
Problem fixed and good thing is that i had noticed the CD changer power fuse box hitting around in the dash in my short drive earlier, so on my request he neatly fixed all the loose wirings.
Sound had improved with all 4 speakers playing and decided to head back home for a personal appointment. And damn one pot hole and CD starts to skip!! damn damn again!! anyways i was in a hurry and got home and decided to attend to the stereo after lunch.
First: CD Changer skipping, ok you need to make an adjustment made depending on Vertical or Horizontal installation you do, did that and everything is fine.
Second: Awful sounding great speakers!! This one took some time, starting from full flat settings i went step by step, those tweeters are way too loud so the trebble and mid is at +1 in HU.
Then the frequency parameters and i know nothing about them, last time also i went by my ears, sat their with the motor running and AC on for some 30 minutes and i was liking the way the whole set up was sounding.
FINALLY!!! 85% to my taste, so i left it at that and started playing different kinds of music for next step of my fine tune.
Then it had to happen, damn LT front door pads are making sounds!!! OH NO!! Do i need to go the damping way??? Then deiced to check the door pads anyway and eureka, the screws are loose, some tightening and problem fixed.
So after some sweat and a great "deal" from JBL am done, kind of 90%. Only some songs boom control has to happen better, and in comparison to my previous set up in iKON this sounds very clean, all the frequencies clean and crisp.
Thank you JBL and once again thanks Rudra!! ofcource ol man did listen to this set up today afternoon and commented i can delay the amp set up for sometime which prompted me to this write up.
And this is my car ICE in a nut shell rather a car shell
