fr0st

For reference, what make and model is it?

As far as I know there still legal in our great state. There was talk at the start of the year of banning them but I'm fairly sure it was only a proposal. Anyway.. Last night I got flashed on wanneroo road (90 zone), doing 105 going down a hill in an overtaking lane on a public holiday. As far as I'm concerned this is revenue raising at its finest, so I'm mighty pissed off about it Yes, I broke the law and got caught. But doing 15km/h over the limit down a hill doesn't cause you to magically find a pole and spontaniously combust. I'll still pay the fine... but I still retain my right to bitch about it Who runs a radar detector on here? Do they work for you? I've been looking into importing one from the states al la ebay because the prices here are ridiculous. Has anyone had any experience with this? Only thing I'm concerned about is getting stung by import tax.

Its called a potensiometer (or pot... dse guys will know what you mean). You'd need a fairly beefy one, 2 watts atleast I'd say and about 500 ohms. They only have 3 terminals. Its basically two variable resistors, where the middle pin in the common between them and the two outer pins are there inputs. As you turn the knob one resistor will increase resistance and the other will decrease. You only need to use one of them so the wires need to go between the middle pin and one of the outside pins. Snips either the lights 12v or ground wire and connect them to the pot and that should be it.

Can you perhaps break apart your broken siren and post pics? You can look for things like common wire (12v and grounds), wires connected to relay's or betteries etc. to give you can idea. Jaycar also sell a battery backup car siren which from the pic on there site looks like a 4 wire. Did you try connecting the red wire on the siren to the red wire from the alarm and then trying the black siren wire on the other wires? If that doesn't give you results I'm stumped

Well thats a bitch If the red wire has a constant 12v then the siren may be negatively switched. So instead of having it constantly connected to the ground and switching the 12v on and off it could have a constant 12v and switch the ground. Have you got a multimeter? If so I'd measure the resistance of the green wire to the chassis. If you find that the resistance is high when the alarm is not sounding and low when is it, connect the red to the positive on the siren and the green to the negative on the siren. Something has to change to tell the siren when to turn on... you just gotta find what Good luck

If you cut the wires and measure there voltage (using the chassis as the ground) when the alarm is inactive and when its set off it should give you an idea how to hook up a 2 wire siren. One wire is always going to be a ground, the only other you need is one that goes to 12v when the alarm is suppose to be going off. The ground wire can be measured using an ohm meter directly to the chassis. If its a 4 wire then it might be a battery backup one perhaps?

Wax just adds a coating to the outside of the car. Anything abrasive will eventually damage the paint if you wear throught the clear coat but wax isn't abbrasive at all. If you always keep a decent layer of wax on the car it will protect the paint.

I checked tonight and the climate control dims when I turn on the headlights Looks like I'm taking apart my dash. I may aswell redo the entire thing in LED's so I won't have the problem again for a long time, just have to decide which color to go for now Cheers for all your help

I fiddled with all the knobs ... erm wait... played with.... errmm... the knob isn't turned down anyway

I picked up my R32 GTS-T last night, Only problem was the lights behind the dash were out The guy I bought it off offered to fix but I wanted to drive it asap so I said I'd do it. I'm sure its an easy job but I don't have the service manual yet (anyone know a source?) The clock backlight works fine its just the gauges that are affected. If one of the backlight bulbs blows, I assume the others keep working? If so it means its just a fuse issue since all the gauges are out? I checked the interior fuses and didn't find anything blown (though some were missing, probably the spares). I ran out of daylight to get to the engine bay fusebox. Does anyone know where the fuse is? I really need to get that service manual Cheers guys

If you unplug the rca does the noise disapeer? If thats the case a line isolator will fix it. Its just a small audio transformer you put between you head unit and amp to break the ground between them. I know jaycar sell them, most car audio places should aswell.

Eclipse head units are renound for there sound quality... the budget models aren't as pretty as sony's or pioneers. There also quite expensive. Digital Designs make great subs ( 1kW rms for a 15 inch !) Fusion are also quite good. Speakers are more of a personal taste. If it sounds good to you then its worth buying. Amps (IMHO) are pretty much all the same except the cheap and nasty stuff. Unless your paying for a class A there all going to be of similar sound quality (ie all class B and AB). If you want big watts for subs than any amp will do aslong as its got enough power on tap. Bass is distortion

No problems frx026, I see the point your trying to make but splitters are actually the better option compared to pass throughs and line drivers. The signal remains shielded the entire time and isn't run through any components with noise of there own (e.g opamps) in a splitter. If it goes into an amplifier unsheilded (onto the board) with a switch mode power supply nearby and goes through an opamp and out again its going to pick up alot more noise than with a simple splitter. That said, even if you spent 25k on audio gear I dout you'd hear the difference between a passthrough and splitter anyway. Its a limitation of our ears if anything. As long as you don't buy absolute shit cable, you'll never have a problem. Any car audio salesman that tries to sell you oxygen free, quadruple shielded, snake-oil-included RCA's is just plain full of crap.

Thats not right : Think about it like two resistors in parallel. Each resistor represents the input impedance of an amplifier (typically >10k ohms). One side of the resistor is grounded, the other is the RCA connection. If we ignore the slight resistance of the cable between the two amplifiers (its less than 1 ohm anyway) the resistors receive the exact same voltage. Current is split between the two... but thats irrelevant as amplifiers amplify the voltage at the input and not the current. Signal loss can only really occur because the impedance has dropped at the amplifer side of the cable. So we have a 10k ohm impedance for one amp and a 5k ohm impedance for two (parallel resistors again). More current has to flow but accross a cable of say 50 ohms (exagerated) you only lose 0.1 of a volt for a 10v signal as opposed to 0.05 voltage for one amplifier. In short, if your losing signal to RCA cables its probably a faulty cable or connector thats somehow making the resistance of the cable higher. Things like loose connectors, kinks in the cable, rubbing against metal and internal break from stretching will all cause it.

haha, splitters don't halve the signal :laughing-smiley-014: Amplifiers draw something like microamps from the signal line, its nothing that could cause any signal loss. Your main worry should be noise when running the cable. Longer cables pick up more noise and you lose a little signal to resistance. Never run RCA's next to the power cable aswell, they produce alot of noise and grounding problems. Turn on thump is most likely a grounding issue btw