mikee72

http://us.lexusownersclub.com/gallery/SC

LMAO!

I'd like to add to your "Rant." I've been modding cars since the 80's, and never in that amount of time have I seen such a vast percentage of imbeciles modding their cars as I do today. Ever since "The Fast And The Furious" came out, every high school punk with a Civic and !Removed! can exhaust thinks he has a fast car, because he has a carbon fiber fuel door and a JDM gas pedal. The lack of basic automotive knowledge is shocking. What's worse, is the pure arrogance in which these types show toward knowledgeable people who are trying to set them straight. Instead of having a desire to learn *why* something works, they'd rather just blindly buy things that are the "cool" parts to have, clueless as to whether they really work as advertised or not. If and when they realize that said part *doesn't* work, they come on to a forum and start asking the same questions that have been asked 1000 times before, and expect to be spoon-fed the answer, oblivious to the "Read this before posting a question" section that is pretty much standard fare on every automotive BBS. I could go on and on, but sadly, it isn't going to change things.

I found this searching another forum, on the subject of adding an additional amp: "No speaker adapter is needed. The inputs to the circut board are RCA from the head unit wire direct to a rca male plug. The power cable is not that difficult to run, you do not need to run a remote or inputs since you can tap these from the sub amp or the NAK amp depending on which you have." What the heck is he talking about? I didn't see anything resembling RCA plugs anywhere in the wiring diagram.

I didn't see this problem in the archives, so maybe I'm the first to have it. What I'm experiencing, is a "rocking" motion under accel/decel of the drivers seat. If I push against the floor under the pedals, I can get the seat to rock back, and come back down when I let up. I'd like not to have to take it apart to figure out what the failed part is until I have the replacement in my hand. Anyone heard of this?

He's not asking whether an SC is better than a Fiero for daily driving, he already knows that. He's asking whether the 400 is better than the 300 as a DD. IMHO, I chose the 400 over the 300 because I wanted an auto, and without an engine swap, the 400 is going to be more suited to the auto trans than the smaller six. I've also had lots of "toy" go-fast cars, and I just wanted something that was quiet, reliable, and comfortable. The gas mileage was nearly identical between the 300 and 400, so the choice was obvious to me.

Unichip has one for the 400, not sure about the 300. Ditto for Lexuspros, although I have zero experience with either. Hopefully, someone who has one will comment.

Ah ha! If you don't have the Nak system, the only amp you have in the back is a sub amp, according to http://www.technicalhelp4u.com/ The Nak system is complex and has three differnent plugs that go to the amp. This means that those of us with the Nak system will have to run both amps, so I'll have to run a new power wire. I'm still not clear about how you get the signal for the "remote" turn-on without interfacing with the stock wiring. Ditto for power, unless you ended up running new wires.

Sport, do you have any pics of the amp install? The reason I'm so anal about the aftermarket amp situation is that I've heard that Lexus does not offer a replacement stereo harness if you hack yours up. HEARD is the operative word, so if I'm wrong, please correct me. I also don't want the amp to be seen when you look in the trunk. I just don't like things that look like they've been "hot-rodded," if you know what I mean. If I've followed you correctly, you're still running the stock amp for the rest of the system. One of my other "beefs" with the stock system, is that the 4" mids cause the sound to be "peaky," that is, the tendency to get loud on certain high notes, due to the 4" tendency to want to reproduce high frequencies easier. This being the case, I'd like to also replace the stock 4's in front with 6 1/2's. I've read somewhere that the amp receives a filtered signal from the head unit for the mids. In your experience with this system, so you know if this is the case?

There are a myriad of ways you might have hooked up that amp that those two subs, depending on whether you had them in series, parallel, amp bridged, dual voice coils, etc. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you had them hooked up in such a way that it created an ohm load that was numerically less than the amp was rated for. Unless the Nak in our cars is somehow different than 99.9% of the amps on the market, there is no harm (other than less volume) in running a higher numerical ohm load than the amp was rated for. In fact, it's actually better for it, since amps produce less power as impedance goes up. That's why amps are rated "down to" x ohms and not "up to" x ohms. This really is common knowledge in the audio world. The fact that the ohm numbers of the speakers and the amp are different by themselves make no difference. It's the result of the two after wiring that determines whether it's "Good" or "Bad" for the amp. That's why it's called an "Ohm Load." :whistles:

Hmm...that's the first time I've heard of an amp burning up from a "higher" numerical ohm load. Usually amps have a minimum ohm load that they will play down to, not a maximum. Where did you get this imformation?

Personally, I wouldn't buy a Michigan car with that many miles. It's bound to be rusted to heck, like every NE car I've seen. Buy one from somewhere that doesn't use salt to melt snow like TX, FL, or AZ. That's what I did. I found a two-owner car with 62k and all maintenance records for $8500 in TX and drove back to WA. It was more than worth it. I'd pay $4k for a "perfect" 160k car, but no more.

I'm assuming he's looking for a brighter interior light, but joking about the Xenon thing.

Along those same lines, doesn't the new sub play lower regardless of power? I realize that running a 2ohm load vs. a 1ohm load will be 3dB quieter overall, but wouldn't the response curve be more linear? I'd give up some "hi" bass for a lower range capability. I'm not sure I want to go with a second amp, unless someone has a wiring harness that allows be not to have to cut into the factory harnesses.

No way a Supra will go even close to 200 with only 320 HP. Gearing is but ONE factor in top speed, along with power, frontal area, and coefficient of drag. If the formula was a 1:1 relationship, a 100 HP Civic that tops out 100 MPH with optimum gearing could go 200 with 200 HP and optimum gearing. I would suspect that a Supra with 550-650 HP *might* top 200 MPH.

Actually, drag triples with the square of the speed.

Huh, I wonder why my search didn't pick that up? Oh well, I'll stand in the corner during class today. :chairshot: Edit: I figured out why- You have it listed as "Trunk Space," which I wouldn't have searched for, since we're discussing a cubic measurement, hence my phrase search for "Trunk Volume" and "Capacity." The use of the word "Space" never occured to me.

LOL! That's true.

As a 1G DSM owner for 7+ years, I'll second that call about DSM's and 100 HP gain just from intake and exhaust. Expect 30-40 HP from a full 3" exhaust without touching boost. There's little to be gained by messing with the intake track (with the exception of a FMIC) without raising boost, and raising boost requires more fuel, and some way to control it. Most of the big HP gains floating around come from people running race gas, but who can afford to run race gas on the street every day? Adding 100 HP on pump gas isn't going to be that cheap, but certainly cheap compared to most other cars.

Yeah, I could measure it, but I figured that if someone just happened to know a factory advertised spec, it would be more accurate. Search came up empty.

Curt, just in case he doesn't see your post, I'll answer your question. According to the info sheet that the dealer printed out for me, all of the 17" IS wheels are 7" wide with a 50mm offset. The only exception to this, the optional rear-only 7 1/2" wide wheel on the hatchback (whatever they call it) version of the IS300. 99.9% of the 17" IS wheels you'll come across will be 7" wide. As to why he put 245mm tire on a 7" rim, only he can answer that one. FWIW, there are GS400 17's that are 8" wide, also with a 50mm offset, IIRC.

Unfortunately, I have more questions than answers, so I'm afraid that would be like the blind leading the blind. Maybe someone more knowledgeable about the SC audio system would like to do it.

Maybe we could get PIONEERSUBY to write a general troubleshooting section for this, since you can't always count on external sites? Also, coming from a DSM background, I think that the format of this site: http://members.shaw.ca/costall/1000Q/quest...italinformation would be excellent for an audio FAQ section. It could be in this format: _________________________________________________________________ SC400 Audio FAQ What size are the stock speakers in the Nakamichi system? The Nakamichi upgrade uses a total of seven speakers. Two tweeters and two 4" mids in the doors, two 4" mids in the rear deck, and one 10" "freeair" style subwoofer in the rear deck. How many watts does the amp put out? The 5-channel amp in the Nakamichi system is reported to put out 280 watts. Can I upgrade my base system to the Nakamichi system? Yes, but you'll have to run the necessary wiring to the trunk, since only cars that came with the Nakamichi system came pre-wired. _____________________________________________________________ And so on... Unfortunately, I'm just a newbie to this at the moment, so my knowledge is limited to what I've read by searching. Maybe PIONERSUBY and other regular audio contributors can help here. I don't want to post incorrect information or hearsay, but I really think this type of FAQ will help the newbies who can get 99% of their questions answered on one easy-to-read page.

Parenthesis fixed. AJ, do you want links to search results, or outside links? I don't know of many external site other than what I posted, but I'd be happy to do the searching within LOC to provide the info I was have been reading through. Edit: On the subject of the SC subwoofer, and general freeair sub information: http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index...ic=5900&hl=subs http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index...35&hl=subwoofer http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index...61&hl=subwoofer http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index...37&hl=subwoofer http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index...56&hl=subwoofer http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index...22&hl=subwoofer

It seems that the SC forum gets the same audio questions posted almost daily, so I thought it might be a good idea to have a FAQ for SC audio all by itself. There is much information to be had through searching, but a fair amount of it is vague or conflicting, partly due to the fact that some people posting in the "General" audio section don't bother to mention which Lexus they're referring to. In addition, it seems that many people are simply too lazy to search, so it have a "SC Audio FAQ, read this before posting questions" section. This FAQ should include, but not be limited to: -Aftermarket equipment integration with factory system -How to diagnose common problems/ links to repair sites http://www.technicalhelp4u.com and http://carstereohelp.com/strlexus.htm -Audio wiring diagram located on this site -How to remove door panel/rear deck/CD changer/amp on this site -Links to all 20,000 subwoofer threads This is a great site with lots of helpful information. I think that putting it all in one place will not only limit the redundant posts, but will make the job of dealing with the excellent, but problematic SC audio system that much easier for everyone. :)