jjski78
10+ year member
Bazooka Tube Installer
Well, on Black Friday I bought one of the Harman Kardon Drive+Play iPod interfaces for my truck. It sat in the box until this past Friday and then I decided to install it. Here are the lessons I learned during the install.
1) This unit has an awesome interface! It is pretty much exactly like your iPod's click wheel which makes it very easy to learn.
2) They gave me waaay more wire than I would ever need! Although, I'm sure if it wasn't enough I would be spitting fire right now!
3) Here's the bad part.....alternator whine absolutely BLOWS! After installing the unit, I had the worst case of alternator whine in existence! In troubleshooting this problem, I learned my biggest lesson of the day: DO NOT USE FACTORY GROUND ON YOUR HU!!!! Actually, my HU was grounded by the antenna. Stupid me forgot to look at the vehicle side of the wiring harness and just took it for granted that there was a ground wire. DUH! ISO-DIN...well, at least I can admit I screwed the pooch on this one! After installing a solid 14 gauge wire direct to chassis, the whine was gone! I'll never assume the wire is in the vehicle harness ever again.
Another lesson I learned, while troubleshooting the whine was one I already knew from reading the MECP basic installer book, but just wanted to find out on my own....GROUND LOOP ISOLATORS DON'T WORK! Actually, they may work in some applications, but in mine, they actually introduced more noise! Glad Wal-Mart has a liberal return policy!
Also found out today when perusing my local Wal-Mart, well, one of the 6 in my town anyways, that they are starting to carry Monster cables. Maybe not the best cables in the world, but they are a hell of a lot better than the crap they used to sell.
So all-in-all, I learned a little more about installing, and even re-learned some things I already knew. Just wanted to share my experiences wit the rest of you. Now I have CD/iPod/Sirius in my truck, and I will never run out of music choices!
1) This unit has an awesome interface! It is pretty much exactly like your iPod's click wheel which makes it very easy to learn.
2) They gave me waaay more wire than I would ever need! Although, I'm sure if it wasn't enough I would be spitting fire right now!
3) Here's the bad part.....alternator whine absolutely BLOWS! After installing the unit, I had the worst case of alternator whine in existence! In troubleshooting this problem, I learned my biggest lesson of the day: DO NOT USE FACTORY GROUND ON YOUR HU!!!! Actually, my HU was grounded by the antenna. Stupid me forgot to look at the vehicle side of the wiring harness and just took it for granted that there was a ground wire. DUH! ISO-DIN...well, at least I can admit I screwed the pooch on this one! After installing a solid 14 gauge wire direct to chassis, the whine was gone! I'll never assume the wire is in the vehicle harness ever again.
Another lesson I learned, while troubleshooting the whine was one I already knew from reading the MECP basic installer book, but just wanted to find out on my own....GROUND LOOP ISOLATORS DON'T WORK! Actually, they may work in some applications, but in mine, they actually introduced more noise! Glad Wal-Mart has a liberal return policy!
Also found out today when perusing my local Wal-Mart, well, one of the 6 in my town anyways, that they are starting to carry Monster cables. Maybe not the best cables in the world, but they are a hell of a lot better than the crap they used to sell.
So all-in-all, I learned a little more about installing, and even re-learned some things I already knew. Just wanted to share my experiences wit the rest of you. Now I have CD/iPod/Sirius in my truck, and I will never run out of music choices!
