by "Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
Published 02/12/2017 at 20:47
by "Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
Published 02/12/2017 at 20:47
No Tags
STARS: 4
Spent my weekend on a couple projects for my car. First up was taking care of the terribad halogens that had been forced upon the perfectly decent projector lenses.
Left is halogen, right is LED.
Color temperature comparison
After and before
Looks so much more modern
These are what the bulbs look like. Had to modify the plugs slightly as the polarity was wrong on my car.
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Next up was the doors. I had gotten some sound deadening material in an attempt to dial back some of the rattling and buzzing from my speakers.
I still don’t understand Bose speakers. What the hell is this and how does it work? Complete mystery.
A couple shots of the passenger door cavity with the plastic peeled back.
Coverage isn’t important. The heavy material stuck to the thin sheet metal changes its resonant frequency and gets it out of the “annoying range” with proper application. I forgot to take out the speakers and put some behind them. Damn.
Put it on a few places on the inner door structure as well, then took the other half of the sheet and put pieces all over the door card itself. It works great. Bass rattles are far reduced and the door sounds much more solid when you close it. I’d like to remove the plastic moisture barrier entirely and replace it with the deadening for 100% coverage of the interior of the door, though mass-loaded vinyl would be a better choice for that.
EDIT: Totally forgot, I also lubed the window guides and rollers. Windows are waaaay faster and smoother now. It’s fantastic.
"Frenchlicker" (frenchlicker)
02/12/2017 at 20:55, STARS: 0
How long until someone bitches about the housings not be made for led lighting?
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
02/12/2017 at 20:59, STARS: 1
I give negative fucks. Cutoff is fine, there’s no glare. My damn tiny-ass running lights look brighter than the headlights if you’re above the cutoff point.
"Rico" (ricorich)
02/12/2017 at 21:01, STARS: 1
As small and low a Miata is, you need all the light you can get.
"Nerd-Vol" (Nerd-Vol)
02/12/2017 at 21:05, STARS: 0
You’ve been a busy man. You have a master list of all the projects you have done to the car?
"random001" (random001)
02/12/2017 at 21:09, STARS: 0
“to make my Miata not suck” said no one ever...
"Frenchlicker" (frenchlicker)
02/12/2017 at 21:12, STARS: 0
Solid point, at that height it won’t matter.
"jimz" (jimz)
02/12/2017 at 21:12, STARS: 2
projectors are less of a problem.
"jimz" (jimz)
02/12/2017 at 21:15, STARS: 4
that Bose woofer is a motor-above-cone “pancake” speaker. instead of the voice coil and magnet being on the back of the speaker, it’s reversed and on the front. it uses a neodymium magnet which is about 10x stronger than a typical ferrite ceramic magnet, so it only needs to be 1/10th the size.
"Nibby" (nibby68)
02/12/2017 at 21:26, STARS: 1
Now if I did that in my truck, heads would roll
"Life and Times of Magoo: The People's Champ" (magooslaststand)
02/12/2017 at 21:36, STARS: 0
And now I’ve learned something new today
"Vicente Esteve" (vicente-esteve)
02/12/2017 at 21:48, STARS: 1
The LED’s turned out great, just keeps getting better.
"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
02/12/2017 at 22:08, STARS: 1
Nice upgrades. These are exactly the things I was thinking of doing to my Mazda5. I think the headlights on my car are pretty good as-is, but I wouldn’t mind making them better, if that’s possible. Hopefully the LEDs consume less power than the stock bulbs; I melted the wiring on the E34 by changing from 55W bulbs to 80W units.
The car is a little noisier than I’d like, but then again some of my previous cars were a 5-series BMW and a MB E-Class so it’s not really fair to compare $50K cars to a $17K one. But if a few bucks and an afternoon could get me a little closer to that level of quiet it might be worth it. Any plans to put some on the floor and/or firewall?
"Jayhawk Jake" (jayhawkjake)
02/12/2017 at 22:33, STARS: 0
Says the guy that nearly got in a fist fight over someone’s LED lights
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
02/12/2017 at 22:44, STARS: 0
Yeah it’s almost like there’s a difference between LEDs in a projector housing designed to minimize glare and LEDs in plastic chinese reflectors blasting photons every-which-way without regard to other people’s eyes or something. Imagine that.
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
02/12/2017 at 22:47, STARS: 0
I’ve been made aware that there are 55w HIDs that don’t require their own dedicated cable to the battery. Last I checked HID ballasts required dedicated power and ground a-la stereo amplifier so I never considered getting HIDs for my car. I’d probably go with them over LEDs if you had the money.
I’m considering adding some sound deadener to the firewall but don’t really feel like ripping up carpet. I’ll for sure be adding it to the parcel shelf and I’m also figuring out a way to bolt the rear of the hardtop to the car instead of using the frankenstein bolts, adding another solid mount point to further stiffen the chassis and reduce rattles. Honestly my Miata is already the quietest, most rattle-free convertible (well, less so a “convertible” with the hardtop) that I’ve ever been in, even compared to far more modern (saturn sky) or expensive (c5 corvette) cars.
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
02/12/2017 at 22:48, STARS: 0
Thanks! Hoping to do my rear turn signals and reverse lights next.
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
02/12/2017 at 22:50, STARS: 0
You’re awesome. I had 20+ tabs open trying to figure out how Bose speakers physically work but all I can find is people arguing about whether or not they sound good.
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
02/12/2017 at 22:52, STARS: 0
Daily driver tho. The only car with higher NVH than my Miata was my 2005 Mustang. Ford did some real shit job with the engineering of that thing.
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
02/12/2017 at 22:59, STARS: 1
Honestly not a ton. I keep a log in my phone. Here we go:
* Oil change
* Oil change
* Power steering pump seal replacement
* rear left brake caliper replacement
* rebuild shifter
* exterior detail (buff/polish)
* replace OEM Bose head unit with another bose head unit after the original broke
* Rear o2 sensor replacement
* Delrin door bushings to replace worn rubber ones
* hard top (RIP wallet)
* oil change / trans fluid / dif fluid
* Acura LS Laces and economy all-seasons as “winter tires”
* oil change
* Pioneer radio after OEM radio pooped out again
* Proactive replacing aged brittle OEM radiator with aluminum radiator
* Seat repair/foamectomy
* Sound deadener installation (to be revised at least one more time)
* LED headlights
* lube window tracks
The high oil change frequency was because the car had been sitting for 7 years when I bought it with Quaker State oil (had a Jiffy Lube sticker in it) which had gummed up EVERYTHING including the first-generation Variable Valve Timing system, so I had to flush it out with frequent oil changes fiddling around with weights and brands until settling on Rotella T6 5W-40, which has been fantastic.
"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
02/12/2017 at 23:01, STARS: 0
I thought that HIDs without an optimized housing was a recipe for poor lighting. The added complexity of HIDs seems like a pain, and I was hoping LED bulbs would give me the advantages of HID without the wiring headaches.
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
02/12/2017 at 23:07, STARS: 0
I dunno. I really don’t understand the physics between why an HID would cause more glare than a regular incandescent. As long as the light emanates from the same point it should be focused in the same way, I would think.
I think the “don’t put HIDs in an un-optimized housing” only really applies to reflectors, though.
"Nerd-Vol" (Nerd-Vol)
02/13/2017 at 00:16, STARS: 0
Do those engines suffer from the hydraulic lifter tick that the NAs do? I had to do a 2twisty flush on mine.
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
02/13/2017 at 00:38, STARS: 0
I haven’t noticed any, so I’m going to guess not. My NA actually had a lifter completely collapse, so I flushed the engine out with 3qt ATF + 1QT random engine oil and let it idle for an hour. When I was done I had the quietest 1.6 I’d ever heard.
"Kat Callahan" (kyosuke)
02/13/2017 at 06:35, STARS: 0
Please explain LED headlights and can I do this on my GA3?
"jimz" (jimz)
02/13/2017 at 06:46, STARS: 1
I had 20+ tabs open trying to figure out how Bose speakers physically work
Bose speakers are speakers. they work like speakers :) they’re not the only company to do motor-above-cone woofers, just the most prolific.
the car audio world is filled with morons who think they can tell how “good” a speaker sounds just by looking at it. I do this for a living. I can hand you a 6.5" mid-woofer my company buys for $4 each in quantity which is better than a lot of 6.5" woofers you’ll pay $150-300 for in a component set, but your average numpty will look at it and think it’s “junk” because it has a plastic frame and doesn’t have a sparkly cone. meanwhile, I can take some 6.5" midwoofer which Crutchfield would magnify its bamboo-pulp cone reinforced with pearl mica and zebra jizz, ultra-strong frame cast from mercury-filled lead, and it’ll be a total piece of junk. I’m talking a “75 watt” rated speaker which has incredible amounts of distortion (both harmonic and modulation) at head unit levels of power (16 watts.)
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
02/13/2017 at 11:14, STARS: 0
They’re just LED “bulbs” that drop-in in place of the stock halogens. Pretty quick and easy, but in my case I had to plug them in ‘backwards’ which took a little bit of doing because LEDs, unlike halogen bulbs, have a polarity. They’re available from a variety of brands in most common headlight sizes but it’s really a lottery based on the headlight housing how well the light output will be controlled since headlamps are designed with the light coming from a single origin point (the filament of a traditional bulb) and LEDs are outputting it from two rectangular planes on either side of the bulb, a mm or two off from center.
So you get a cooler white light, a fair bit brighter than stock, and instant on/off (if anyone cares about that) for the effort of putting in a new bulb. If your car has one bulb for highs and low beams like my NA (I had an H4 conversion that let me put a traditional bulb where the sealed beam lamp usually went) then you get the benefit of your high beams being instant on/off which is far better at getting peoples attention if you’re using them to signal someone.
Typically they look something like this. You can see the yellow light-producing elements are mounted offset from the center because they have to mount to that big heatsink, which is another thing to look out for. These stick out from the back of the headlight housing a significant amount so the heatsink (oftentimes with a small fan in it to assist cooling) can get air, so if you have dust covers or intake piping in close proximity to the back of your housing they may not work.
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
02/13/2017 at 11:43, STARS: 0
My buddy bought some bulk speakers for $3 apiece (I think he got $120 worth of them) and puts them into custom enclosures and a couple of free-air setups and they sound astonishingly good. Honestly my Bose system surprises the hell out of me. Stereo imaging is fantastic and bass is punchy and a LOT less boomy now that I generic-dynamatted my doors, which also brought the mids out a lot more. It’s very similar to my ATH-M50x but with a tad more bass (though I do have “bass boost” turned up a little on my head unit).
The way I’ve read is that Bose are masters of taking their systems and tuning them to work great in that particular car with that particular set of equipement. Outside of the car, on their own, or mixed with other equipment they aren’t near as good and since there aren’t really any published specs for audiophiles to brag about they just kind of poop all over them.
"Frank Grimes" (FrankGrimes)
02/13/2017 at 18:46, STARS: 1
dont fill the motormounts with polyurethane. It makes the car suck. seriously so many vibrations and noises. I think it actually shook the hood skin from the bracing.
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
02/13/2017 at 19:00, STARS: 0
My buddy had solid motor mounts on his turbo 1.8. It was miserable. He recently bought some Mazdaspeed competition motor mounts and they’re much better.
"Frank Grimes" (FrankGrimes)
02/13/2017 at 23:08, STARS: 0
I wonder if using one comp one and one regular one would work even beter under acceleration the firm one would prevent the drivetrain from rotating making better shifts but the normal one would dampen the vibrations from the drivetrain in the opposite direction.
"daender" (daender)
02/15/2017 at 19:55, STARS: 0
Keep us posted, hopefully your LED turn signals don’t “hyperflash”. That said, the stock rear turn signals are bright AF when I was behind a NB1 with NB2 tail lights.
"daender" (daender)
02/15/2017 at 19:55, STARS: 0
Keep us posted, hopefully your LED turn signals don’t “hyperflash”. That said, the stock rear turn signals are bright AF when I was behind a NB1 with NB2 tail lights.
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
02/15/2017 at 19:56, STARS: 1
Load resistors FTW. My fronts are LED switchbacks. I need to ditch the resistors and just get a new flasher module but that’s like $80
"daender" (daender)
02/15/2017 at 20:05, STARS: 0
How’s the down-range output? I’m on the fence about what to do to increase viewing range way down the road when I’m doing 70 mph down country highways with no overhead light fixtures. The sensible part of me says to ditch the OSRAMs and jump to Phillips 9012 bulbs (modifying the bulbs to fit the 9006 housings) but others parts say HIDs or LEDs.
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
02/15/2017 at 20:16, STARS: 0
I honestly find myself wishing I got HIDs. The cutoff is alright but once you get a hundred yards or more away it becomes a gradient instead of the crisp cutoff you see with modern HID-equipped projector cars. I believe this is because the LED chips are offset side-to-side from the center axis pole of the light housing. I might give the LEDs to my mom who currently has the world’s most miserable halogens and buy myself some cheap HIDs from Amazon.
"Mercedes Streeter" (smart)
02/17/2017 at 17:09, STARS: 0
How good are these LEDs? Like how far can you see with them? I want to change out the crappy halogens in the new smart for some LED, it would suit the LED DRLs so much more.
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
02/17/2017 at 17:14, STARS: 0
They’re ok, but I’m thinking of getting some 5000k HIDs instead. The off-axis-ness of the LED diode itself from the center axis of the housing results in some unfavorable focusing at large distances (the cutoff gets fuzzy).
"Mercedes Streeter" (smart)
02/17/2017 at 17:19, STARS: 1
Hmmm...thanks for the input! My 451 has HIDs and they’re pretty awesome. My only caveat is how they age...oh and don’t get analog ballasts!