Little Things

It is amazing how the little things are the ones that get you. Take for instance what I did today. Angel had asked me to install her new seat covers that she picked out the other night while out buying items for my component speaker installation. That purchase was on Wednesday. We had company on Thursday and was working on my car last night. Therefore, her anxiousness got the better of her today and wanted to get them installed. Well, I guess it was improper of me to think that this would have been a simple thing to complete.

The whole thing started with installing the new windshield wipers that her car needed. While we were out there and the weather was nice, she decided that she would take it upon herself to install the new seat covers. Well, she quickly learned that she would need my assistance in completing the install. The instructions provided did not line up with the materials provided.

The instructions indicated that there were elastic loops on each of the left & right sides and two in the front. These loops were supposed to reach from the sides of the seat to the rear to thread thru a grommet that would secure the bottom of the seat and then extend forward and link up with the front loops.

There were two major flaws in these instructions. The links to connect the side and front loops were not provided with the installation kit and the loops were not long enough to cover the distance it was indicated that they should. Missing pieces and not enough material posed an interesting quandary. What would we do now?

Well, my first reaction was to go back to the store and buy bungee cords to travel the distance required. Well, this idea was shot down when I realized that he retention loops the affix the cord to the hook would not fit through the grommet. Therefore, it was time to get more creative as to how to deal with this.

Since working on a seat while it is mounted in the car gives you a difficult environment to work in, I decided that I would remove the seat to see if I could convince it to work as the instructions indicated. This was a no-go, even with the seat removed it would not work as advertised. However, now that it was out, it was easier to get more creative in the retention process.

I decided that I could use some 12g solid core wire that I had lying around in the shed to run the route required for proper installation. This was the ticket. Using some pliers and careful consideration for the tensile strength of the materials involved, I was able to successfully get the covers properly installed.

One thing to note during this process is that my car is still in the garage in pieces with the component speaker installation still underway. Therefore, my car is still unable to be driven since the passenger seat is still not installed, instrument cluster missing, driver's side door unable to be closed and so on & so forth. Then today took Angel's seats out of her car. For a time period, neither vehicle was in a state to be used. It was something worth a chuckle when it was brought to my attention.

Have a look at the pictures we took during the process. Sorry, I didn't take detailed installation photos for you, but I think the description is more than enough to get a picture of what I did.

Read More......

Found the garage floor

I know that some of you have seen our garage. It wasn't too bad when we first moved in. Just the normal boxes that are placed there to be moved later.

Well, those boxes were never moved plus we have picked up things for the house along the way. Plus, we had received decorations from family and friends. (Also from moving sales and garage sales.) And to add to the clutter of the one side we still have Clark sitting in there. (Our Christmas tree.)

Bob and I have been talking since we've moved in that eventually we would straighten up the one side so we could use the whole garage as it was meant to be. A two car garage instead of a one car garage that came with storage space. And I've been getting frustrated for the fact that Bob has been able to put his car in there and not me.

And if you have read his post yet then you know that he is taking up the one side right now with his car. Which is fine and dandy but we still have clutter in the garage and plenty of storage space elsewhere.

Granted I did have Monday off from work. But, I did some extensive spring cleaning to the house that day. Wow, you never realize how big your house is until you pull out the toothbrush. Besides the point. I was off again today and didn't have anyone trying to call me to pick up a shift. Which is nice. I've been working 6 days a week for almost a month straight now with being nice to people. So, after about 5 hours the garage is clean. Now all we have to do is remove Clark and find an opener that works for that door. I can't tell you how nice it is to know that I'll finally be able to pull my car into the garage. Not that we get the cold weather like in Pittsburgh. But, just for the fact if I want too. It would also help out after grocery shopping.

Read More......

Paranoid

Hey Peeps,

As some of you know Bob travels here and there with work. Usually for at least a few days if not close to a week at a time. Well, this month he was gone for what felt like at least half the month. I swear the cat love's it when he's gone but that is besides the point.

Seeing that this isn't the first time being alone in the house and won't be the last time either. This last time that Bob went out of town I got really paranoid one night for some reason. I heard every little noise possible in and out of the house. The cat scared me and fear of the dark came over me. It could have been that there was a full moon that night plus the lunar eclipse on top of it. I don't know. But, essentially I had to turn on every light in a room and that didn't help. At time's I would have a flashlight in hand. I kept thinking that someone was in the house with me.

Now, I'm 29 year's old. I should not be feeling like this. And I know that there are a lot of you that know me and know that this isn't the first time that you have heard of me doing something weird like this. And I kept trying to remind myself that I'm a big girl now and I've lived on my own alone before. So, why can't I deal with just a few days of being in the house by myself. After one of the many times of telling myself that I heard a noise and went running upstairs and hid under the blanket. Practically in tears I called my Mom. Why? I felt like I was 5 again. Yes I felt stupid doing that but I had to hear someone's voice telling me that everything was okay. And no this was not the same night that the tree broke. That was the first week this month that Bob went away for work.

I did get over this whole ordeal the next day. I can't explain why this happened after almost a year of being in the house. I could have seen this happening the first time of being alone in the house. But, I know that I'm just weird like that. It's like burning myself on the stove when I was around 20, or running into my parents bedroom after having a nightmare at 19. And I can't forget the time that I set my hair on fire from candles when I was around 21. So, this is just one of the many things that I have done as an adult that should have been about 20 years ago and not now. You can just call me special.

Read More......

Tree Down

Hey Everyone,

Please forgive me if for some reason this sounds jumbled or whatever. This is my first blog posting out our site.

I felt that this has a lot of significance with being homeowners now and having our very first tree fall down in our yard. As quite a few of you know that we have a good amount of tall trees in our back yard. Well, a few weeks ago we had some pretty high winds come through. One day the winds were close to 50 miles per hour.

It was on the second of these days that Bob was getting ready to leave for his weekend away with the National Guard that I heard a noise in the backyard. I didn't think anything of it seeing that the winds were high speed, plus having the neighbor dog running through our yard sometimes, and squirrels that love to make a ton of noise.

It wasn't until the next afternoon that I noticed one of the tree's was broken. It hadn't fallen yet but it was obvious that it was broken on the trunk. So, I looked from a safe place to see where it would land when it would fall and noticed that it wouldn't hit anything or do damage. So, it didn't phase me any to tell Bob at that point. Then about an hour later I heard a loud noise. When I looked out the back door I noticed that the tree was now laying down on it's side. Calmly I sent Bob a text message letting him know that it fell. Looking back I'm surprised that he just didn't call me back about it. But, he did respond to me asking if there was damage. Thankfully there wasn't.

I later went out to look at our other trees. Seeing that if it was any of the others we would have had some good damage done and I would have been on the phone to see how to put our homeowner's insurance into effect. Seeing that we could have had broken window's or had our shed completely taken out with one of the other trees.

Bob has started cutting the tree into pieces. But, it's only half way done at best. We have a few idea's of what to do with this thing once it's completely cut. The one idea that I like the most is to sell it as firewood. At this point we can't really do that. It's pretty close to spring and we have yet to get through hell weather of summer.

I'm sorry that I don't have picture's to add to this post. I wasn't thinking about it before the tree fell. It could have been that I was to afraid of when it was going to fall that it didn't cross my mind.

I have to admit that this did remind me of growing up and seeing tree's that would fall because of lighting and stuff like that. And seeing what my parents had to go through with getting tree service's in to get them down. Welcome to home owner was one of the first things that ran through my mind with this.

Read More......

How Many Licks Does It Take To Get To The Middle Of A Tootsie Roll Pop?

Well, as some of you know, I've been working on an additional project as of late. I've been working on a new website for a friend's business. To see the difference between what he had to what I'm working on, have a look at the following links:

• MJMAutoInnovations


• Dev Car-Speaker-Adapters.com

Anyway, I'm not going to talk about the development of this site. Instead I want to tell you about a new project that I've found as a result of this project.

I took on this project with the aspirations of helping out a friend. If you have a look at the progress of the site & compare it to what already exists, you will see that there are improvements in leaps and bounds. I did not take this on to make money. However, it was made perfectly clear to me that I would not do this without payment.

While I was in Portland a package arrived at my house. It was from this friend I'm working with on the website. I wasn't expecting any packages from him and was very intrigued as to what had arrived. Thankfully, I only had to wait one day to discover what was delivered. When I got home from the airport and before I left for Columbia, SC I had couple of moments to check it out.

To my surprise it was the first payment installation for my work on his site. He purchased & shipped to me an automotive component speaker set, Powerbass Extreme 3XL-6C to be exact.





I've been wanting to buy & install these speakers for some time now. I had picked these guys out when I purchased my subs a couple of years ago. The only thing that has stopped me to this point was I couldn't justify the cost of them in comparison to everything else I've had going on. I couldn't have asked for anything more appropriate for the work that I've done with this site & its content matter.

Well, I've decided that since I'm going to finally replace the only factory speakers remaining in my car that I would also go the extra distance to replace the factory speaker wiring. This has proven to be an interesting decision. The factory wires appear to be 20g wire. Based on the research that I've done thus far, for the distance the wires are running, this is an appropriate gauge. Unfortunately, I don't trust the auto industry to have taken the care and consideration in running the wires in an intelligent manor to produce the best sound.

There are many things to take into consideration with signal carrying wires. Signal wires should be kept away from power wires whenever possible. Power wires can introduce noise into the signal. Signal wires should be as close to the same length all the way around the car. The distance the signal needs to travel should be as close to the same as possible to ensure that the sound reproduction occurs at the exact same time. To install wires to speakers of distinct difference lengths will introduce a minor but detectable dissonance within the soundstage. These two considerations are the ones I plan on mitigating with the installation of my own wires.

There is another reason why I've decided that I will install my own speaker wires. The factory system is comprised of a 6 speaker setup (two tweaters and four coaxial 6x9's). The Infinity 6x9's installed by the factory were just poor quality drivers OR the prior owner just abused them. Either way, they were ideal candidates for replacement. I'm happy to be replacing the final set of 6x9's in the car. However, since the installation of my own 4 channel amp, the factory tweeters have been bypassed. This is all fine & dandy since the factory tweeter installation location was in the dashboard pointing directly at the windshield. Pointing any speaker at the windshield is poor soundstage design. I refuse to re-use this installation point. Therefore, since I need to run new wires to relocate the tweeters anyway, I might as well finish the job for the rest of the car.

This is where the title of the post comes into play. In order to properly prepare the environment for the accessibility required to run the wires to all of the locations that I will require access has deemed dissection of my car a necessity. I've taken doors apart before, I've taken segments of a dashboard apart before, but I've never tried to completely disassemble the dashboard. Well, as far as I can see, right now there is only a single vinyl component installed on my dashboard (not counting the steering wheel or driver's kick panel.

I could not believe all of the screws, panels, layers and mess that all of this would create. There are dashboard pieces all over the garage & in my car (not where they belong) that it is just humorous. Between Angel & I working on this together, it took us about 2 1/2 hours just to strip down the car to where it is at. Check out the following slideshow to see exactly what I'm talking about.



(In case you are curious, yes, removing the passenger seat was required to access the factory line level amplifier. I also removed it so I could assess why it stopped sliding on the adjustment track.)

Well, I'm sure there will be more to come on this topic as I make progress getting the new speakers & wires installed in my car. Tomorrow we plan on buying the speaker wire & doing the wire installation (aka, the fun part).

Later.

Read More......