An interesting radio upgrade perhaps?

WilliamA

No sooner than the ink on my last post dried than the DHL dude showed up with my new head unit. I spent a few minutes unboxing it and having a quick look and am ready to start the swap. That will take a bit of time as I need to first, make a mount for the universal head unit to fit securely into my radio bay. Next, it's going to be a bit of careful fiddling to get the power and grounds sorted out. Like parachuting, wiring is something one wants to make sure and get right the first time. Particularly in something as finicky as this radio head. There are 4 separate power inputs; B+, ACC, Park and Reverse. The park feature is to make sure you can't watch videos while going down the road. That's supposed to be hooked to the parking brake switch on the car, but of course I don't have one. It also doesn't say whether the input feed for park is positive or negative. Many vehicles ground the park circuit so I don't know whether the radio is set for positive or negative on this circuit. A quick scan of the circuit diagram shows that this feature is capable of being turned on and off in the software so I'll start by not hooking up the park and disable it in the software and see how that works. The reverse lead simply overrides anything you have running and turns on the backup camera. I won't use that so it's another one I don't have to connect for now. It should work without anything hooked there. There is an "ILL" wire that is used to dim the display when it detects lights being turned on (headlights) but I have a plan for that. I have my power switch set to include 2 different settings for input and that's all sorted out in advance. Saw that one coming. All of the other circuits are clearly marked so I don't see any serious problems getting it hooked up. My Jeep radio came with 3 usb plugs and this one has only 2, but if need be I can just use a usb hub. 2 should be enough. I'm hoping I can feed the video out port so it will give me a mirror on the television of whatever screen is on the head unit. It's not clear in any literature how that works and whether there's software for it. One step at a time. First things first; mounting brackets.

Here are all the components in the kit. The screen looks smaller than the Jensen and it is by about a quarter inch vertically and horizontally, but the entire screen is active. It's barely 1/4" thick on the face, so it looks much less massive. It's the size of a 10" tablet.

Here's the back. The little wispy wire is for the wifi antenna. There is also an AM/FM antenna port and GPS antenna port. It came with a GPS antenna, which I'll have to snake up onto the roof of the trailer. Plenty of wire to do that.

Here's the unit with all of the composite wiring plugged in. I just now noticed that there is a slot for a Compact Flash card on the side. Some of these units come with one, some don't. I haven't physically checked to see if it has the guts or just the slot. It's a horse apiece. If it's there, I'll use it. If not, I won't cry over it.
You can see the diminutive mounting rail on the side of the radio. I have some various mounting options but I think the best will be to spend the time and make proper brackets so it will be steady and have a bit of adjustability.

None of those things will happen today. I'll get on the job in the morning...after finishing the wiring disaster I started this morning.

Can't wait....

WilliamA

WilliamA

We spent the evening at the lantern festival in Eau Claire, Wi where K and Sprocket showed their dragon lantern in the parade. They won for best animation in a lantern. As there are just the three of us, we could hardly compete for biggest with the folks who had 12 carriers on their team. Yaay k and Sprocket! Nice job!
K is inside the mountain (best job of the evening...out of the wind) and Sprocket is on duty running the antics of the moveable head and neck. K and sprocket made the whole thing from wire, plastic wrap and paper.

Now it's wiring/fabrication day.
Happy New Year everyone!

WilliamA

WilliamA

Enough of that fun. (Although it WAS fun! Sprocket was frozen so we treated him to Pizza Hut and then home for ice cream.)

On to the job/s of the day.
Here is the Seicane stereo unit I ultimately selected:
https://www.seicane.com/hd-rotatable-touchscreen-android-universal-gps-navigation-bluetooth-car-audio-system-support-mirror-link-4g-wifi-backup-camera-dvr-dab-steering-wheel-control-s181016

It's a bit of a stripped down model from the one I originally had picked out. There is no DVD drive in this one. I did that for 2 reasons: first, I saved over 50% on this one. It was $149 dollars as opposed to $289 for the DVD model. Second, as K pointed out, the primary reason folks get rid of radios and laptops is because the DVD drive poops the bed and it's less expensive to get another one than to fix the one you've got. This came to me as she was struggling to reconstruct the scene of the crime after a major hard-drive crash on her external drive. The pain of lost data must be absorbed, but replacing the drive itself was as simple as a blast to Best Buy for another one off the shelf. She has a portable, stand-alone DVD drive for her laptop and I was using it the other day to "test" some music CD's my brother loaned me and it occurred to me that I could simply spend the $25 bucks and get one of those, plug it into one of the usb cables and put it wherever I want it. If it goes south without me, then just get another. In addition, the Seicane unit with onboard DVD has a complex electrical/mechanical mechanism that folds the front screen down to load the DVD. Another unnecessary complication, although I admit I thought it was very cool and compact. Aside from the lack of DVD drive and some minor stylistic differences, the two units are otherwise identical in form and function.

I'm poring over all of the documentation I have on the unit and also working through all of my web-based bookmarks making notes on wiring hookups. I've got that down pretty solidly and am ready to get with it as soon as I get the Jensen out and some brackets made up. Actually, I am going to wire in the power and speakers and give it a test, then make the brackets.

One of the things I've been working on getting more information for is the "Key" wiring. These radios come with 2 wires labeled "key". I have it pretty much figured out that they are the inputs from what would normally be the dash/steering wheel switches for radio operation. My Jeep Seicane unit has a separate plug-in harness with attached CAN bus (no...not THAT CANBUS) to enable it to play with the steering wheel controls and it worked right out of the gate in the Jeep. This one, being universal, doesn't come with a CAN bus so the Key wires are just loose hanging out of the back of the radio. The CAN bus, as I understand it, is another way to say: "Router". The operating system in the bus scans the steering wheel inputs constantly looking for signals and when it detects one, say, turn the volume down, it translates that into radio-speak. I have seen many places where one can purchase separate Can bus routers for radios so I know it's possible to do and I suspect that the "Key" wires are where the inputs from the CANbus go into the head unit. That's all speculation at this point and much more research needs to happen before I do anything with it, but what it means is it's possible to add a separate, hard-wired control somewhere else in the trailer. That's unlikely in this case as it would be a mountain of research and then work finding suitable hardware, but it's a cool idea. The radio has mirror-link which makes my phone into a bluetooth remote if I so desire. There's no need to go into the process of making a wired remote, but it's cool. Exactly the kind of thing that makes me giddy.... I get along perfectly well with tech. It's people I have trouble translating.
For anyone interested, the term "CANbus" translates to; "Collision Avoidance Network Bus", which translates further to; "router". Why can't they just say "router"? (Rhetorical question, not required to be answered)
It's not hard to pronounce or even to spell.

To work. Stay tuned....

WilliamA

WilliamA

I'll post a quick, in-process update. The Head unit is in and working just fine. It took a bit of time (perhaps a few minutes) when I first turned it on to find itself and sort out the details of its new environment, but it went through that with ease. I had the gps antenna hooked up and laying on the bed inside and it was still able to (slowly) figure out where it is. Photos:

I've not built a ship in a bottle, but I've wired a few. It went very smoothly.

First startup. It defaulted to the FM radio and a bit of quick tuning got me to WPR. As I suspected, the speakers were wired backward so hot was ground and vice-versa. I fixed that during hookup and the output from the speakers is much better. Wish I'd caught that earlier.

Here's the app screen. All of these apps come preloaded. I will be refining this stuff as I go but for now, it's fine with the resident software.

I tossed the GPS antenna out through the window and closed it back up to keep my heat in. I set it up on the roof and immediately got fast gps. This program is the stock gps app and is called "IGO". It works well, but I will also be loading Google Maps and GAIA Topo onboard soon.

A screenshot of the resident music player. It's much faster to load than the one in my Jeep. Probably, because I have too much music on the thumb drive. It's a huge file and takes a bit of sorting out. I'll refine my technique here by putting it on the thumbdrive in folders by genre. That should help.

Just a dark (no flash) shot of the screen. It's very thin and with the tiny black border and lights off, looks like part of the shelf face. Nice.

Now to get with the mounting bracket. The Jensen radio isn't a true 2 din unit. It's much larger than that. Therefore the hole is much larger. I plan to add a plywood mount for this radio that screws to the back of the radio with brackets I still need to build, then screw that to the radio. I'll drop the radio in with plywood backer attached and secure it in much the same way the Jensen is secured, through the face of the plywood backer. Mounting it from the back would be dumb, even by my standards....

More to come...

WilliamA

WilliamA

I've got the mount all finished up and back in place. I'm tired and taking the rest of the day off.
A few photos of what's done:
The 1/4" oak ply mounting faceplate was pretty putzy to lay out and cut. Lots of detailed measurements. It turned out very nice and fit over the head unit perfectly. I sanded and cleaned up all of the fuzz and then stained it.

It came with screw taps on the back of the unit so I put them to work. I made these clamps out of old curtain rod holders. I cut them down to just put pressure on the plywood face frame. Sprocket was busy this morning taking apart a bluetooth speaker his mom gave him to destroy and I was looking for some tiny screws to fit the faceframe. The screws he took out fit perfectly into the mounting lugs.

Finished and ready to put back in.

I repurposed the screws that held the Jensen in place. Here, I'm running a video test of the system. Transformers bits and pieces came pre-loaded so I'm just using that.

A wide angle shot of same.

Lots of software fiddling to get things just right but I am very happy with what I have. Other than updating the OS and checking a few things, it's solid as it stands. I want to add a couple more mapping programs and some music stuff. In time...

Plenty to do yet for the install. I need to hook up the cellular modem and get that tuned, then work on mounting the gps and cellular antennas. I also need to figure out a good place to run the usb ports into the face of the cabinets but that's low priority.

I'll keep you posted....

WilliamA

WilliamA

I am back from my son's house after a couple of days away and back to work this afternoon.
While I was there I had a few things on the shopping list for the radio head unit install and picked up 2 of them. I need a good, reliable through-body fitting to run a couple of cables out onto the roof of the T@G, so I went to my favorite boat place, West Marine. (Disclaimer: no, I don't work for or make money from them)

After the hundreds of hours I've spent looking through RV shops and auto stores, I find that for really good (expensive!) parts boat stuff is top shelf. I have a gps antenna, fm antenna, and cellular antenna (maybe) that need to be put on the roof and to do that, I need to run cables through a hole up there. For the hole, I plan to use the stock antenna hole. It's the right size for my needs and is already there, so not much danger of making a hole in a hole. I'll pull the stock cheesy fm antenna and put this guy in there:

It's a waterproof pass-through for cables that's good enough to work at the waterline for boats. You supposedly would be running your cabling for depth sounders, etc through there. The way is works is you mount the base solidly (stainless hardware included) and then drill a hole or holes exactly the diameter of the cable you plan to run through the rubber center. Then you cut from the hole out to the edge of the rubber insert, wiggle your cable in, plop it down into the base and tighten the cover piece. As you tighten the cover, it compresses the rubber center making a watertight seal against the wire. I've used them before for various things and they work fantastically. You can also take them apart without destroying the bits or the cable. No need to cut and splice the cable either. It was $20 bucks. I also looked at no end to the electrical gadgets.

Back on the radio, I busied myself working out some of the software I'll be needing and getting rid of the apps I don't. No need for the steering wheel control app, etc. Gone, gone. I downloaded 2 new gps apps; Gaia Topographic and Google Maps. The head unit comes preloaded with another app, but for non-moving gps requirements, I like to use the other two better. I'll be using them for planning and route id, which I can then transfer to my head unit in my Jeep. Those are in and working fine.
I stole the cellular modem dongle out of the Jeep and plugged it into the trailer head unit via usb and it fired right up. I used it to download all of my software stuff today as well as doing a few web-browsing tests. Works fine. I am in a valley off a valley so there's precious little signal where the trailer is parked. Nevertheless, it was a bit slow, but solid downloading while I busied myself with other things. I also watched a little bit of some youtube movie previews just to see how it would keep up with video. Works fine. I had thought I might need an external antenna that plugs into the usb hotspot but that doesn't seem to be the case. I'll not get an antenna yet. We'll try it for a bit first.

I spent some time trying to hook up the television to the radio and mirror the screen but that so far is proving to be elusive. I will need to do more research on it. I picked up a "ChromeCast" dongle that's supposed to do that, but haven't gotten past some teething problems with software issues. I'll work on that but it's not a high priority for me until I have everything else finished first. One beating at a time.

If there are any Chromecast experts out there, I'd love some advice...

I also borrowed my music/photo flashdrive out of the Jeep and plugged it in and the files are instantly available. If anything, they load and access faster than the supposedly larger radio I have in the Jeep. Software.....curse.....repeat......

Here's the new music program (Pi Music Player) fresh off the download and rockin some Ricky Skaggs/Bruce Hornsby. The photo files are also all available. Just need to sort out the cue. I am making a mirror (sort of...some minor changes) flashdrive to leave plugged in the trailer so I don't have to pirate and or forget this one in one vehicle or the other.

Progress.....

WilliamA

Jms

Nice job! I wish NuCamp offered more modern options like this from the factory. The days of limited cd/dvd only players are a little past at this point. Your are an inspiration for taking the plunge and customizing my T@G more!

WilliamA

I'm working hard to sew up some details. I had to find a good accessible location for the usb plugs for the time being. I am going to order a panel mount usb plug for the new "dash" but haven't a clue how many plugs I will ultimately need. For now, I have two and those are both full. I have one with my music flashdrive on it and the other with the cellular hotspot modem. I will need at least one more so that means adding a hub of some sort. In the near term, I just drilled a hole in the cabinet wall and put them up there. They are accessible but out of the way.

I had to run the gps antenna out through the roof so I used the stock antenna hole. While I was at it, I re-ran the 4' whip antenna for the fm/am antenna out the same hole. I also plan to run the cellular antenna cable out there as well, but I want to do more experiments with signal strength with the cellular modem inside the trailer before I spring for yet another piece of hardware. ka-ching, ka-ching...

Using the pass-through fitting I picked up was easy. I removed the stock antenna and enlarged the hole to 1/2". I screwed the base down to the roof with its rubber gasket underneath, then did the drilling/cutting of the rubber insert to accept the cables. A little bit of fiddling to get things just right, but not a problem. For the final tightening, I got a paper towel and put some vegetable oil on it, then wiped the cables and dabbed the rubber insert so it would slide easily and seat tightly. I use vegetable oil in lieu of petroleum based oil as it doesn't soften the rubber of the cables and grommet. It does dry over time and get sticky, but it's a minor thing. I ran the larger fm/am cable though a stick-on cable run. We'll see how long and how well the 3M tape sticks to the roof having applied it in this cold weather. I've no doubt the gps antenna will stick there as long as I want it to.

Cold weather installation complete for now. I'll keep working out the foibles of the software but have most of it downloaded and installed. Now I just need to keep after the research into various massages to what's there. It all works well and doesn't seem to be any the worse for all the disconnecting and cable rerouting.

I have many small jobs yet to get ready for my exit out to Phoenix for the T@BAZONA 19 rally. However far along this project is, it will have to be good enough. I need to get back on the headboard and do a bunch more detailing on that, then repack all the junk I had in the headboard cave under the bed. Then there's packing, etc... Only a couple of weeks before I take off for Usery State Park....

WilliamA

WilliamA

Moving along with details....
I went to town to have my propane tank filled and while there I picked up a non-powered 4 port usb hub for the new radio. I also picked up some 3M super double sided tape. I mounted the usb hub in the cabinet above the radio and hooked it up. Seems to work fine. It's going to be there until I can find a reason to move it.

I also talked to the folks at Verizon about an external antenna for my modem but they just want me to upgrade to some sort of amplifier unit for $400 bucks. Good luck with that. I paid less than half that for the radio. I'll keep researching my antenna options but for now, I have the modem tucked into the cabinet above the radio.

It gets surprisingly good reception in there. Perhaps I won't even need an external. I'd experiment for $20 bucks, not for $400.

I also picked up a small rear-view camera to add external to the trailer for security/and or/fun. It was $14 bucks so I don't feel too threatened. I have another project ongoing that will be kind of a fun camera oddity to put on top the trailer. You'll have to wait for that. I'm working on it.

I took some video of the radio installation and operation today and strung it together into a short video. I'm waiting for it to upload and will post a link as soon as it gets done. It's trudging along veeeeery slowly, so I'll let it grind away while I sleep. I'll post in the morning...

WilliamA

WilliamA

Video is up and running. It's locked/private but accessible here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZxPJGJGHdE&feature=youtu.be

WilliamA

LuckyJ

@WilliamA said:
Video is up and running. It's locked/private but accessible here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZxPJGJGHdE&feature=youtu.be

WilliamA

Not accessible to me, maybe just not yet.

WilliamA

Luc,
Try it now. I reset the privacy settings....Let me know if it comes up..

WilliamA

LuckyJ

@WilliamA said:
Luc,
Try it now. I reset the privacy settings....Let me know if it comes up..

WilliamA

Yep, now it works! . Will look into it later. Thank!

WilliamA

I've been doing more sorting of the software and working out the finer details of the Head Unit. I finally got around to paring my phone with the Head Unit so that works. I downloaded a new "front end" launcher and got that all set up this afternoon. It's called "Car Launcher Agama" on the google play store and is the one I've been using on the head unit in my Jeep. To be honest, it really adds nothing so far as function to the trailer radio but it looks great in there and has a few bells and whistles that the stock launcher doesn't. It's also more intuitive to go between the Jeep and trailer if they are both set up the same, more or less.

One of the many things I like about this particular brand is the ease of matching icon and button colors to whatever the dash flavor is. Since my switch lights are blue, I've decided to change the screen icon color to match that.
The logo in the center is user-changeable but hey.....it's a Jeep thing....

WilliamA

WilliamA

@LuckyJ said:

@WilliamA said:
Luc,
Try it now. I reset the privacy settings....Let me know if it comes up..

WilliamA

Yep, now it works! . Will look into it later. Thank!

WilliamA

WilliamA

More progress. One of the many drawbacks of any of the processor based head units is the myriad settings and often obscure menu's for turning things off and on. I have been reading about said menu's and found another where I have been able to turn on the video out cabling. Now to get the correct cabling. I had hoped to use the RCA out cables and simply go into the television with them. Haven't been able to get that to work, but after turning on the hidden menu for video, I am now getting a positive screen that says the unit now supports HDMI. I'll try that after getting an adapter from USB to HDMI. Hunt and peck. Relentless forward motion....

WilliamA

TomD

My experience with tech stuff is..it has a short shelf life. The next best, easiest, quickest, and most awsome is just around the corner and is eventually is in your lap. Problem is..tomorrow there is something else and better available and you’re behind again on what was great at the time. Camping without music and video entertainment is possible. I have done it

WilliamA

More progress today. I was able to set up a tentative link between the head unit and the television. There is work yet to do but it seems to be working after a fashion, I also got my RCA camera hooked up and that input seems to work as well. I called it a day out there and will spend the evening doing a bit of research into the fine detail of the setup.

A photo of the initial link-up:

I emailed the author of the mirroring software and have some specific questions about that. In this photo, I have the switch panel pulled out. I had to enlarge the panel hole to accept one more switch. I needed three so I built it for 4. Now 5 seems just right...so far...

Hooking up the camera inputs was more straightforward. I will be doing a bit more work top-side for a 360 degree camera mount. That will take some more head-scratching. In the meantime, I know that the hardware and software are up and working.

WilliamA

LuckyJ

This kinda of begin to look as a NASA control station.

WilliamA

@TomD said:
My experience with tech stuff is..it has a short shelf life. The next best, easiest, quickest, and most awsome is just around the corner and is eventually is in your lap. Problem is..tomorrow there is something else and better available and you’re behind again on what was great at the time. Camping without music and video entertainment is possible. I have done it

I've been sitting on a response to this one for quite some time. I often like to, as my college writing professor chided us; "put ideas in the refrigerator" and just think about it for awhile rather than jump down into the dog-pit of overreaction that often puts we humans on opposing sides of a thing for no apparent reason other than to defend a position simply because we inhabit it. Not because we necessarily want to be on it, or even believe it.

The "tech shelf-life" debate is a mantra I've heard for all of my mechanics' life. New is bad. Old is good. I have several gear-head friends who firmly plant their flags in the "Old-School" ground. My friend Richard could very well be the guy Bruce Springstein is singing about in his "Glory Days" hit. He spends most of our collective time reliving his days of distributors with points you could adjust with a matchbook, bias-ply tires, drum brakes, 4 speed gearboxes and giant, low-horsepower iron boat anchor motors. (Engines....motors are electric) I just listen, as I always have. There's no need to try and bring Richard into the 21st century because I know that he doesn't really mean all of that stuff. Richard has (I won't say the number) "more than" 20 cars. To be fair, some are really nice examples of good days in automobile history when cars were beautiful and well-appointed for their own sake. There didn't need to be any reason for chrome trim. It just looked pleasing. They were monstrous and fast and dangerous. They got terrible mileage and lasted perhaps 80,000 miles, if you were fastidious...and lucky...and had a good supply of tires and matchbooks.
I like tech for a number of reasons, but 2 main ones. First, and arguably the most important, it pleases me to be constantly engaged in the learning cycle. As often as not, when I was building showcars and now with my trailer, by the time I finish a task, I have already reaped the reward for that task. If I put in a high-end radio and never use it, I've already gotten my dollar back in knowledge, fun, challenge. I learned a ton of stuff, just by doing. By not sitting on my butt. A side effect of that is that all the chaff left over from that learning will undoubtably filter back into everything I do going forward. I picked up knowledge of many things like a sock picks up lint. It just happens and cannot be avoided. That information will be useful, whether the project I'm doing now ends up well or not.

Technology and information inhabit that odd category of words we seldom allow to stand as the nouns they are without preceding them with the ubiquitous adjectives of "good" or "bad". But the truth of it is really that those words cannot, by necessity of language, even BE "good" or "bad". They simply "are". We imply those adjectives upon them unfairly because we feel we must "make our stand" (for or against) to more solidly plant our collective flags in that thing we believe to be the best belief. To that end, those nouns will inevitably inherit the adjective not for their purposes, but for ours. They can only, ironically, acquire a personality by their application. More to the point, it is us who makes them into what they will be remembered for.

I have carried the DVD set of David Attenborough's "Life on Earth" series camping with me for 3 years. I've not gotten through it all the way because I have had other interests. I'm much more interested in watching the natural world (and collecting photos of it, and writing about it in my journal, my other great passion) than watching David, as eloquent as he is, describe it to me. I do, however, take comfort in the fact that if I so desire to watch David Attenborough, I have the stuff to do that. I'll eventually get through it.

In the meantime, if, as A.E Housman said:

"About the woodlands I will go,
to see the cherry, hung with snow"

I can both, enjoy the woodlands
and appreciate the multiport fuel injection and electronic power steering
that got me there. If you were to offer me points and condenser, drum brakes, bias tires and a fun session of exploratory surgery in lieu of an MRI, I'd politely decline.

Put more succinctly,
I'd doubtless ever be invited to Frost's or Hausman's dinner party,
but while they were out writing and carousing and philosophizing ,
I could fix their air conditioner....and microwave....

WilliamA

Joabmc

We mod out of necessity, function, improvement and sometimes just because we like to. Most start at the known weak points, baseline and go from there. At some point along the way one has covered all essential upgrades and then it just gets fun! Seems to me that you're having some fun and playing around with comfort items that will enhance your journey. It may not be for everyone but if it enhances your life, then it was worth every penny and second invested in the project.

TomD

William..I’m going to put those thoughts in the reefer for a while. My statement had more to do with technology than camping toy philosophies. Sorry for the confusion. Camping means many different things to many folks. The following is the National Parks read on “why camp”....https://www.nps.gov/subjects/camping/why-camp.htm. I would never judge anybody’s ways or means to have a great time in the outdoors.

WilliamA

I do a lot of things at what seems like the same time, but in truth, I pick and choose off my list to suit both my mood, the weather and money. I got back on the radio project this morning to keep programming and messing with the setup. I set up my VPN so I could use my ROKU stick. I got that all set up this morning and did some testing. Even in the "Hollow" here, I get good enough reception to run Netflics and some other stuff. I got Netflix, Amazon Prime, Youtube TV and a bunch of other stuff programmed in and it all seems to be working. I need to route (clean up) a few of the bits that run between the Head Unit and the Jensen TV but it's all working. Knock on wood...

I have never been a software guru or networking specialist. Speaking from this WiFi/cellular/bluetooth/cabling/config/VPN drubbing, I'm very glad that I chose a different path than that. On the upside, I now know many more acronyms....

One more thing off the list....and another put ON the list. My Roku/tv remotes interfere with the signal for my ceiling light remote. I have a fix for that and have been wanting to do that for a long time, but now it's a bit more "front-seat" than it has been. Gotta make a trip to West Marine for the fix....

WilliamA

WilliamA

I'm still doing a bit of tweaking to my trailer as time and money become available. I installed the new Android radio system over a year ago (it's working fantastic!) But hadn't gotten around to upgrading the speakers. All of the evenings spent of late sitting around "camp" in the backyard with music playing made the speakers a new priority. I snuck into Wally World early one morning and grabbed a set of Pioneer 5 1/4" 3-way jobs. No idea what the specs are past that other than the impedence matched the head unit output. I ripped out the old speakers, cut out all of the guts and used them for a mounting flange. The new speakers are quite a bit deeper so I had to cut out a couple of spacers from 1/2" plywood. I finally got them installed this morning and am very, VERY happy with the results! I can once again tell that Yo Yo Ma plays a Cello! With the old speakers, Bach's unaccompanied Cello Suites sounded like a recording of someone in a restaurant washing dishes.

The new speakers are much heavier than the old ones so I cut some small ply backers to go up in the ceiling above the buffalo board. They seem solid and don't rattle.

I'm happy.....

WilliamA

MustangGuy

William. You are my brother from a different mother. I am a speaker/audio lover. I don't do much automotive stuff. My home and pro sound systems eat small cities; however.

A while back I built a horn loaded sub called an auto tuba. It is a design by Bill Fitzmaurice. If you are interested in integrating a sub of some sort into that system with very little energy consumption and some damn low frequency response, yell at me.

DebS

I'm really curious how you attached the sides to the side of the camper, since there is no support structure on the sides other than the Azdel panels?

Sharon_is_SAM

@DebS - to notify a member about a comment, remember to precede their ID with “@“. Like hey @WilliamA. Depending on how he set up his Notification Preferences, he may receive an email or just a pop up notification on this site. He has not been on the site since July.