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Baldylocks

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Posts posted by Baldylocks

  1. Are you going to be using the standard speakers?

    Either way, you'll need a head unit adapter lead to enable you to plug a standard ISO connector into the existing wiring loom:

    eBay: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Lexus-is200-se-sport...1QQcmdZViewItem

    (The flipping price has gone down - I paid £50 for this a month ago!)

    And a fascia adapter to let your fit the head unit:

    eBay: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Lexus-IS200-Car-Ster...1QQcmdZViewItem

    That's for starters, will get the head unit talking to the standard speakers.

  2. Thanks Carolyn... I am well chuffed with them, but I have developed an irrational fear of curbs now - you need a taxi to get from the door to the curb when I park up now :D

    Have a sniff in the yellow pages or Yell.com, I am sure someone in your area will do the job. Just make sure they take off the tyres, shotblast and spray the entire wheel before you part with any cash. I think Lap-Tab have franchises now, have a look on their site, you might get lucky.

    Have a look in the Gallery here, someone might have dark alloys on a silver car...

  3. I went ot Lap-tab in Birmingham to get my wheels refurbished, cost about £250 (although I did catch them offering 25% off).

    They did an awesome job, I got them resprayed in Anthracite, and they look really good (in my humble yet biased opinion).

    I am not sure if they offer a warranty on the repair, but everything I heard about the work says they should last a fair while. If it's good enough for Quentin Wilson, it's good enough for me :)

    http://www.lap-tab.co.uk/alloywheels.php

  4. My alarm went off twice in the middle of the night last night for no apparent reason. Has anybody else experienced this? It has never done it before.

    Thanks

    Si

    Don't be tempted to leave the alarm off - if some toerag is setting it off so you lose your rag and leave it switched off, they can just sneak in and rob you.

    Happened to a mates Beemer a few years ago, the thief just kept on setting it off over the course of a week until he left it off, woke up the next day and it was gone. They found it a week later wrapped around a tree.

  5. I'm a clumsy sod, so taking the Battery out was a blatantly obvious move - I need a bit of room otherwise my delicate office-workers hands get scraped to pieces :)

    Took me 25 hours last weekend to re-cable and install my stereo ripped out of my old Golf... talk about a job lol

    Taking out back seats to remove speakers was the most daft thing I had to get my head around, although it's obvious enough how and why they do it like that. I've always had or worked on small hatchbacks, so as my first saloon this was a nightmare job! Sound's SO much better now though, although I need to invest in a new sub... and a boot build is just crying out to be done :)

  6. Replacing speakers with aftermarket one's will always make a difference, but you have to be really careful with the output you get from the standard head unit...

    From what I have read here, there are 4 cables per 6x9 as standard (2 off +ve and -ve's), because they are effectively 2 different speakers per 6x9. They are at different ohm ratings (one pair at 4 ohm, one at 8 ohm, I think), so the amp is at risk of over heating if you use the wrong connections to your new speaker.

    Do a search using the Search function, it should be able to explain more.

    As for the standard head unit and connecting to another Amo, I think there is a pre-out ont eh head unit to do so, but as I never even considered doing this (my standard head unit was screwed) I have not researched it.

    Again, run a search and it should pop up with something.

  7. Your biggest problem there is the shape of the things - they are described as "6x9 Rectangular", and you have a oval hole to put them in. The picture kinda backs up my theory. Square peg in a round hole rings a bell.

    You could get a bit brutal on the rear shelf and cut it to fit, but being a saloon, and bearing in mind the window is really low, that has every oppurtunity to be a long and painful job. I had to use a socket set to get the original 6x9's out because of the lack of working space, let alone cutting the metal there.

    It took me an age to do, but the Amp route is, in the end, the best bet.

    Also, are you thinking of replacing the head unit? You'll need a facade plate and wiring loom adapter off eBay if you are.

  8. The RCA's are the least of your problems - getting the power for the amp to the boot is the real chore :)

    You should also bear in mind that, as a saloon, the big problem will be getting the bass through the rear-seat bulkhead.

    Having spent the weekends at it, the only way I found to get the bass through (without having to thrash the amp to within an inch of it's life) was removing the ski-hatch and rear speakers. Now that's a job.

  9. I've got a healthy 420 miles from a £55 tank doing mostly motorway miles.

    Running around in town is far worse, about 360 miles.

    My only advice is to get through gears quickly, the thing I found with it is that it's so quiet, you find yourself doing 4500rpm without even noticing. Trolling around at 40mph in 4th is the way forward. If you need to give it large, you can always drop a gear.

    Avoid 1st like the plague, I prefer to roll up to traffic lights and not stop if I can avoid it. I remember watching a documentary on a bloke who got from one end to the country to the other and halfway back on one tank of fuel in an old Skoda (pre-VW) and he said the biggest enemy to fuel economy is the brake pedal. If you have to brake, you're wasting fuel.

  10. I didnt go thro insurance cos i've just started to pay less and didnt want a claim!!

    You can't argue with that. It might cost £180 now, but if you consider what the claim will cost in a years time when your insurance renewal doubles, you've actually saved a bomb.

    I avoid pillars like the plague. I scraped my bosses motor once, and that was enough for me to never park near them again :D

  11. I was jsut wondering if anyone had ever splashed out on seperate insurance for their stereo gear?

    I am teetering on the brink of transplanting my old gear into my IS, and I realised that whilst my old car was a battered wreck with no alarm, it just didn't look like a car that had £1000+ of gear in it and thus never attracted much attention. The IS, however, does, and my normal insurance only covers me for stock gear.

    Any idea of prices, etc?

  12. Much better game than the FA Cup! Mind you, that wouldn't have been hard.

    Why didnt he play Crouch earlier? As soon as he came on it made a difference. Was a big shame they lost, but they put up a good fight. If they had converted a few chances earlier, they would have owned it.

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