LA Installation Tour 2004

Jon and Rod made another trip to the LA area to install stereos in a few cars.  We had a total of 4 cars to work on, in various locations around LA, including one along the coast on the way home to Sacramento.

This was a bunch of fun, I drag my younger brother Jon away from his "day job" as a paralegal intern in SF, we have a great time (road trip!), the long drive feels good, and we go out for at least two meals a day.  An installation takes about 4-5 hours for Jon and I.   I figure he's worked on probably 75 911's with me.  He helps make the long trip more fun, he's also a Porschephile and loves to talk Porsches.  He likes to talk about other kinds of cars too, but 'doesn't seem to have the same fondness.  ;)

On the way down, we installed a system into Dana's 993 Twin Turbo.  He'd already bought some equipment from us before, so now we were bringing a Nakamichi CD400 deck, the final piece of equipment required for the full system. (We installed 3 of these Nakamichi decks on this trip, out of 4 cars total, and all Porsche 993's!) We installed everything that evening in Dana's Twin Turbo, starting at about 6 pm and finishing up around 10.  I only have one picture of his car, and it's dark-sorry!  I saw this in the sunshine the next day when I dropped by his work to check out some engine noise he was experiencing (his amplifier-I wished I'd supplied an Audison like the other cars on this trip!).  I was able to eliminate the noise, and I road-tested his car in the parking lot to make sure the system was completely quiet.  The sun was shining and his car looked beautiful, but I forgot to snap a shot, more concerned about making sure he was happy and running his keys back up to his office.  doh!

It's a beautiful Twin Turbo 993:

(ugh, terrible picture of a beautiful car-sorry!)

Our next stop was Craig's place.  This was a nice, somewhat remote hilltop location, considering the urban sprawl that is Southern California.  Craig has this nice Carrera S, a beautiful 993 with Turbo brakes and suspension, but normally aspirated engine.

Craig was great company while we worked, as well as his son Chris.  Both seemed impressed with the sound from a nice Audison 3 channel amp, a Nakamichi CD400 head unit, some Focal Polyglass components, and some basic 4x6 coaxials on the rear shelf.  Oh yeah, don't forget the custom Car Audio Innovations trademark dual 8" JL Audio 8W3 subwoofer enclosure panels in matching factory carpet!  Craig's system rocks, and responds very well to any well-recorded music.  He now has a smooth sound stereo that just shimmers in sound quality, with plenty of clean volume and bass with impact (when desired).

This is the view from Craig's front window.  I think this looks nice, and I'll bet it's just a stunning view at night.

Thanks for the great hospitality guys!

'Next stop was Ed's place.  Ed was our first customer to commit to this trip.  He's a super nice guy who was an absolutely gracious host, as all of our customers seem to be.  We really appreciate the trust shown us by so many Porsche owners over the years.  What a great group of people! 

We go to work on Ed's car, here it is all opened up and we're getting some Focal Polykevlar speakers into the doors, a nice 5 channel amp, a Kenwood Excelon MASK face head unit that plays MP3's, our subwoofer package with JL Audio subs, and a whole bunch of care and love.

Here's another view with Jon working on the passenger door speakers.  Ed's car is also a Carrera S, a 2 wheel drive 993 with Turbo brakes and suspension.  That's the Car Audio Innovations touring rig on the right (below).  ('Soon to get some Audison VRx amplifiers, Focal Polykevlar 4 way system with dual 13" 33KX Polykevlar subs.  So far all I've managed is the Eclipse 8053 head unit, changer 2-way components and one of the amps!)

(Thanks again for the help Jon, I had a blast!)

One more shot of Ed's car from a distance, 'view obstructed by several mailboxes :

(I think I set some type of record for the most bad pictures on one trip)

We also made a day trip to Disneyland, one of our favorite places and did some driving around Beverly Hills and Bel Air to look at the houses there.  A hearty "thank you" to the manager at The Claim Jumper in Anaheim (on Beach Blvd?) for directions to find a local AAA office and maps-also a great place to eat in Anaheim!

Next we headed North, and West, to visit our fourth and final customer, Aaron, who lives on the coast.  This one last stop at Aaron's, then on our way home in the afternoon.  Aaron has a 993 cabriolet with I think only 16k miles on it!  Needless to say, this car is clean.  Aaron and I exchanged a bunch of emails and a couple of faxes working out details for a nice setup that would suit his budget.  Now his audio system has plenty of clean power and quality components, a nice, high end 3-way system including another of our subwoofer packages with dual JL Audio 8" subs.  Up front we did the Focal Polykevlar new power series component speakers, with just unmatched sound quality.  Once again, the Nakamichi CD400 indash unit, and an Audison SRX3 3 channel amp under the passenger seat.

Aaron has one of the nicest 993 cabs I've seen.  The exterior is silver, and the interior Boxster red.  (We wrapped Aaron's CAI Porsche sub panels in the same exact stuff, from Germany, no problem!)

Another shot of the driveway while we were hard at work. (I don't know why I didn't take two steps to the right and snap a better shot-I likely cropped this down from a larger photo showing their beautiful house and the rest of my car).  Since this was our fourth 993 of the week, we were able to perform our customary high quality installation (solder and 3M Super 33 tape, good gauge wire, all run cleanly and hidden) in about 3.5 hours.

Driving on the way home, Jon remarked that we'd be taking the same route James Dean was before his fatal crash.  We checked out the memorial someone made near the intersection, too.  To think, here was this fairly young guy, a rising superstar, cruising a Porsche Spyder when Turnipseed, coming from the opposite direction, reportedly cuts in front of Dean instead of yielding.

Anyways, thanks everyone who made this trip possible.  We enjoyed working on all of the Porsches, talking about Porsches and music, and working on Porsches, electronics, and music.  Each car sounded so good, I like to compare the results to a $5-6k system, but with better overall sonic quality, smooth bass response, and usually with better visual integration, at half the price.

-Rod