Archive for the ‘ Car Accessories ’ Category

The Different Types of Car TVs and Some Helpful Installation Tips

Car TVs can make a long drive with the family more fun – these vehicle accessories can keep your kids from getting bored just sitting at the backseat staring out at long stretches of nothingness. These televisions meant for cars are quite easy to install and can be tackled without hassle by a regular do-it-yourself person.

Basically, there are there are different types of car TVs:

1. Headrest televisions
2. Overhead televisions
3. Dash televisions

As there are different types of these accessories, there are also various ways of installation procedures. These procedures of course depend on the type of the electronics involved. Read more

A Quick Look at the Turbocharger in Your Car

Let’s say you want to construct a more powerful engine. The most direct method is to increase the amount of air and fuel burned in each combustion cycle by adding more engine cylinders or increasing the size of the cylinders. But that makes the engine bigger and heavier, which means you need a bigger car to haul it around.

Assuming you don’t want a bigger, heavier car, what else can you do? You can pack more air and fuel into the existing cylinders. This, in a nutshell, is what a turbocharger does.

Some people think that turbos are only good for sports cars or racing. But there is more to a turbocharger than sheer horsepower and speed. In fact, the best reason for turbocharging the engine is to enhance your driving experience. Read more

What You Should Know About EGR Delete Kits

When it comes to an EGR delete kit, there are a few things you want them to be. Here you can read all about them to know if you are getting the right things you need. There are many of these sold. Here is why.

The one thing about these kits is that in many times, they have a guarantee on them. These are normally lifetime guarantees. This can be something that many love though it is said that few things go wrong.

The reason that few things go wrong is because they are rather easy to use. There are many who say that it took them no time at all to assemble this. Therefore, you do not spend that much time on a project.

When it comes to replacing the egr system, this is all you need. Some of you have learned the hard way or know people who have and have learned that you have to have a kit. Therefore, if you do not then you will find that you then have to buy all these different parts. Read more

Honda Fog Lamps

Looking for new fog lamps for your Honda? Aftermarket Honda fog lamps with different features are worthy of considering.

It is no need of ordering an OEM pair of fog lamps, as they are sold expensively and may be delivered to you after a very long time. When our car parts go broken, we actually are used to getting aftermarket replacements for the reason of both convenience and money-saving. As for fog lights, it is also good choice to go and get a brand new aftermarket pair.

As numerous people are Honda owners worldwide, a large quantity of aftermarket parts for Honda are provided for people all the time. Aftermarket Honda fog lights come in many different styles, shapes and lense colors. For a specific Honda manufacture year, there can be different pairs of fog lights with different features. For instance, you can find clear lense fog light for a 2/3 door Honda Civic with manufacture year 1992-1995; you can also find a yellow lense pair and even fashionable JDM style ones for the same car. To choose which depends on your own interest and need. Read more

Car Wind Deflector

How much do you know about wind deflector? Do you want new wind deflector to install on your car? We give you a general knowledge of this auto device as well as a guide to choose best-fitting visors for your specific car model and model year.

Just cast a glare at a side of a vehicle, a sedan for example. Pay attention to its door windows. If some slices along the top edges of the windows extending outwardly come into your eyes, remember they are what we call as wind deflectors, wind visors or window visors. As the names imply, they are parts for deflecting wind, and at many times, rain drops, snow, dust and UV. These visors reduce the amount of such things that come into the cabs to a great extent, which allows the windows to be partially or even completely open. No harm will result in to occupants in the car, and proper ventilation can be guaranteed in this way. Read more

How to: A Car Stereo Installation Guide

Want to save some money? Ever wonder if you could do a car stereo installation yourself? Yes, you can do it yourself! Go ahead, spend that money on your hardware! Don’t spend it on labor. Besides, doing a car stereo installation yourself can be a very rewarding experience, not to mention you can learn a lot from it too. Nothing beats the feeling of seeing your “creation” in action, running smoothly and perfectly.

But be very careful, you really won’t want to damage your expensive hardware. Well, most car audio hardware are no-brainers to install, you’d find that most of the time the parts have specially shaped sockets and slots etc. and would only fit where it’s supposed to be installed. Still, it’s best to proceed methodically.

In a car stereo installation, you have to determine what kind of rig you’re going to put into your vehicle. If you’re a beginner, it’s best you do a car stereo installation if it’s just a simple system. You may want to leave the complicated stuff to the professionals, like installing delicate equipment like LCD panels, motorized parts etc. especially if it requires the creation of custom panels and such.

Head units are one of the easiest to do in a car stereo installation. Fortunately, most units follow the same size standards (DIN). In many cars, once the factory radio is removed the aftermarket radio will fit in the hole. In many other cars, a kit is needed if the factory hole is too big, or not deep enough. In some cases the dash has to be cut.  Any car stereo store should have kits required for installation.

There are two types of mounting in a car stereo installation. ISO mounting is when the radio can be screwed to existing factory radio brackets, such as in most Japanese cars. Ring mounting is when an aftermarket radio comes with a metal ring that gets mounted to the factory radio hole or aftermarket kit via bendable tabs. In many cars, dash and trim rings have to be filed to enlarge the radio hole. Once the ring is installed, the radio slides in and is held by snaps. In most cases, special tools are required to remove the radio.

Speakers are very critical in a car stereo installation. No matter how expensive your speakers are, if they are not properly installed, the sound will not be up to par.

In a simple car stereo installation, you’ll probably be using speakers that fit into a factory location. Just make sure there are no gaps or holes. Sometimes building a wood or fiberglass baffle helps reduce holes and gives you much better sound. But always be careful when using power tools around speakers. Car stereo installation warranties usually don’t cover holes in speakers.

For unconventional speaker locations, sometimes metal has to be cut. You might want to leave this to the professionals, tools like plasma cutters and pneumatics drills are required. But if you’re going to insist, a pair of metal snips (left and right cut) will do.

A car stereo installation has to put up with vibrations and other noise sources in its environment. Even though it is impossible to eliminate these completely, there are products that will greatly decrease the noise and rattling, particularly on non-luxury cars. Liners, sprays and adhesive strips and even carpeting applied onto the panels can make a world of difference.

Duh, It’s A Car Stereo!

Pretty self-explanatory isn’t it? It’s a stereo system in a car, you say. Whoa, hold your horses, it’s not that simple. Although some people like to put home stereos in their cars and vans (out of dire need for some sounds), sometimes it just doesn’t work. Yeah, maybe before it could’ve worked just fine, all you needed was radio and a cassette player (or 8 tracks, for the inner dinosaur in you) so sure, lug those big box speakers into the back seat and you’ll be blaring down the highway. But nowadays there are things like cd players and mp3 players and your popup LCD panels and all that techie knickknack you’d think they’d like to build a home theater system right smack on the console of your van. If you don’t know anything about these things but would like to have some sounds in your car anyway, here are some things to know about a car stereo.

As mentioned above, at first units and speakers from home audio systems and professional markets were just simply installed into vehicles. However, they were not well suited to the extremes of temperature and vibration which are a normal part of the environment of an automobile. Car stereo enthusiasts were not satisfied with the sound quality of regular car sound systems, and with the advent of the CD player, they really had to start modifying some of these home stereos in order to work well in a car environment and voila!, now we have the modern car stereo.

If you have a new car, first hand bought, say from about 90 to present, chances are you already have a “factory” car stereo in your car. It means the car manufacturer already included a car stereo system in your car, unless specified in the car model but most often this is the case. Some car manufacturers make their own car stereos, like BMW which includes a pretty decent car stereo package head unit and speakers. It is a standard which comes with all their cars (which isn’t surprising considering that BMW is included in the league of “luxury car manufacturers”). Or like Mercedes Benz or Volkswagen, they use car stereo systems from a German audio manufacturer called Blaupunkt.

A standard car stereo (also called a head unit) usually includes an auto-reverse tape deck, a cd player and sometimes the optional changer – a device which automatically changes the cd in play. On newer car models, the car stereo can also play mp3s and other digital audo file types like WMA and AAC, whether on a cd or a memory device which can be hooked up to the head unit.

The car stereo head unit is connected to several speakers. Older car models usually just had one speaker mounted underneath the dashboard, pointing through perforations towards the front windshield. The standard for car stereo nowadays is a pair of “tweeters” (used to bring out high treble) on the driver side/front passenger side dashboard, a pair of normal “mid” speakers on both doors, sometimes even the backseat passeger doors if it’s a large car and larger speakers capable of bringing out low ends at the back protion of the backseats.

Your car stereo is probably ok as it is, as car manufacturers ensure that the audio products that come with their cars can handle most dirver’s listening demands. But if you think that what you have isn’t enough, you can always CUSTOMIZE.