LA Installation Tour September, 2005

(Rod's account, some content posted to the 911 community/digest at www.rennlist.org dated 9/28)

As usual, Jon, my younger brother who works for a law firm in SF accompanied me on this install trip, while my trusty full time employees and wife worked at the store.  We planned 8 days initially, but really had to get back to take care of a very busy schedule at the store.  Jon and I drove down on Thursday, 9/22 and drove back on Tuesday 9/27.  It's a good thing that we only had 6 cars planned on this trip (though we took care of a Boxster with a botched install from another shop, making the total 7 in all.)  We worked on cars every day, including the days we drove down and back.

It's nice to work on 6 911's (ranging from 1986-2001) and a Boxster S, then come back to see a Ferrari 328GTS that's in the install bay. We finished up a nice custom system on a 350Z today too, that car took almost a month among our other work, and a C5 waited for me through the entire trip I was in LA it just sat...

Anyway, my youngest brother Jon accompanied me as usual, and we cruised the CAI Aerostar van, 'stayed at a motel in Buena Vista, visiting Harry with a 993 cabriolet in Culver City on Thursday after arriving. We finished up his full system with premium speakers and subs, amplifier, sweet headunit, changer, Ipod interface and satellite radio, whew!

Here's Harry's car and the "company van" CAI vehicle. 

Here's an overhead shot of Harry's car, showing a bit of the amp and speaker installation, and the new Kenwood XXV01 headunit is in place.

A side view, showing the CAI dual 8" subwoofer enclosures in place, as well as the amplifier.

Harry was really rockin' when we left, and was able to stay busy at work until about 9:30 when we finished.

Next was Mark's '99 96 in L.A., where we installed our coupe style enclosure with a quad set of really nice 5" subs wrapped in factory carpet with a custom elliptical grill (to match the elliptical shapes in the interior), his gigantic PPI amplifier (which fit in his trunk only once the endcaps were removed, and still a tight fit! I highly recommend a more compact amp that fits along the back wall of the 96 C2 trunk in place of the factory hifi amp, behind the spare), anyways, we installed it, tweaked everything and set crossovers for his already-upgraded speakers, the subs, and we left him sitting in the car in his garage, listening to the upgraded setup. Rock on Mark. Just like Harry, he was really appreciative and thankful. Thank you for the business Mark! That was Friday, and since the van's A/C compressor was making nasty ground bearing noises with it off-and seemingly frozen with the clutch engaged, we were able to (Jon's brilliant idea!) pick up a belt at an Auto Zone for the "non A/C equipped Aerostar", and I swapped it out in about 10 minutes. Since it was a singe serpentine belt and I'd just converted it to electric fan, the swap was a breeze, 'fortunately Ford didn't put any different idler pulleys on the non-A/C version, as detailed in the underhood diagram. Mark actually borrowed the van to go to a dentist 40 miles away while we worked in his garage.

Mark's 996 was a nice looking car, and the garage was more spacious than it looks.

Here's the custom enclosure that we installed into Mark's 996, as well as a 996TT a few days later on the same trip.  This houses a set of 4 Polykevlar subwoofers, wrapped in factory carpet, blending in literally seamlessly, with a custom, elliptically shaped grill

We wanted to check out the Peterson museum, since Jon and I are just die-hard car freaks, but ended up getting on the road about 10 minutes before closing, not quite good enough timing even though the museum was only 8 miles away...doh!

Patrick was out of the country, but his wife Christina hosted us at their house on Saturday in a hilly area with really nice houses. A clean, well-lit 2 car garage was great for the work we did on his 2000 996 coupe. 'Just a modest 4 channel amp, sweet 5" door subs, nice dash speakers-actually just nice coaxials, nice oem looking 24 bit headunit, aux input for handheld MP3. Chris bought us sandwiches and made great conversation, like most of our customers, we made a fast friend. We missed Patrick by a couple hours, but we were able to go out to dinner with our aunt and uncle who live near Glendale-always a highlight on these Socal trips. Patrick emailed later to tell me that he enjoyed it so much that he drove around just to listen to the system, and that my estimate that I'd deliver a value of double the actual cost, if that makes sense, was right on. His wife Chris has family in Roseville, so he promised to drop into the shop in the future.

Here's a shot of Patrick's 996 coupe.

'another shot of Patrick's car, also with nice wheels.

On Sunday we went to West Hollywood and worked on Summer's 1991 black 964 (911) coupe. This car had nice updated wheels on it, and only 60k miles.  It was a pleasure to work on this beautiful coupe and Summer is one of the coolest people I've ever met. She was on a really tight budget, decided not to do the subs (dual 8" for the 964 is the typical setup for us), but a nice compact 2 channel amp to drive nice door speakers, a new headunit, basic rear coaxials driven by headunit power, satellite radio and Ipod interface. It sounded really nice, and she was delighted. Although we performed this installation on the street, along the curb, it was a pleasant neighborhood with character and characters abound. We left for Studio City to help Brad figure out why his Boxster S didn't sound good.

I didn't get pictures of Summer's 911 or Brad's Boxster, 'mistakenly thinking that I'd left my camera in the motel room.  doh!  And I had it all the time in the back of the van.  doh! 

I finally had a chance to help Brad in person. We'd tried over the phone, probably 2 or 3 hours' worth, to help him figure out why equipment that I mostly recommended just didn't deliver what he wanted.

I figured out that most of the installation was done okay, except where someone had cut up the door panels (non-hifi Boxster, so no factory door "subs" originally), mounted a wood panel, layers of Dynamat, and a Kicker 6.5" freeair sub on each door. They built grills out of 1/2" MDF to the door panels, then wrapped them in factory carpet. Uh, the factory carpet, has a backing, it doesn't allow air movement at all.

This was making the door subs very inefficient, limiting their output, affecting their performance, and hindering any actual movement, overheating and distorting. Once I reworked the grills, the car sounded completely different, and I was able to tweak crossover settings and he Brad was finally happy.

Monday and Tuesday (sorry, this is getting too lengthy for our list!) were spent at Jeff's place in Highland, on his 2001 996TT and then his 1996 993TT, both full systems, the 996TT also getting a 6.5" touchscreen headunit and navigation. All premium stuff all around, we finished the 996TT Monday, then the 993TT Tuesday and hit the road. Jeff was an absolutely gracious host and just about the coolest guy you've ever met, living in my dreamhouse and driving two off the sweetest looking Porsches I've ever seen, big glorious red calipers peeking out, both grey with black interiors. Man, they just look incredible parked in the driveway or garage. I found myself admiring both again and again.

Here's Jeff's 1996 911 Twin Turbo, aka 993TT, with Jon poking into the front compartment.

Here's another shot of that beautiful car!

Here's a shot of the 996 TT, a 2001 that was also beautiful and had every leather option I've ever seen.

'and a shot of the 996TT outside in the driveway.  Man, they both looked beautiful just sitting still!

'sorry for the long rant. I'm catching up with family time (17 month old boy and 10 year old girl). Thank you everyone for the referrals, feedback and support. We made two of these trips last year, and in the last two years I've also been to Arizona, Kentucky and Vegas for 911 audio installation work. Man, what a job I have!

www.caraudioinnovations.com, the Porsche Specialists "Time spent with a customer is time invested in a friendship" 1-800-892-6430