Dear Forumites,

Although I was - somewhat - satisfied with the original sound quality in my Jag, I missed three major things:
- Proper Bluetooth phone
- Proper Navigation
- Music Streaming capability

I tried to solve these topics by using a FM transmitter to stream Spotify to the radio and bought a Plug & Play Garmin device to get proper navigation.


Well, that left BT Phone and the sound quality of Spotify via FM transmitter was...improvable...so I finally decided for a complete overhaul - take a look:





The details:

• Pioneer SPH-EVO62DAB (the "box" lives in the glove compartment now)
• 2x Rainbow GL-C 6.2 2-way Speakers
• 2x JL Audio 6W3 6" Subwoofer
• 1x Gladen/Mosconi D2 100 DSP 4x100Watt amp
• 1x DBA Antenna

Now this enables full Apple Car Play (or Android Auto), choice of navigation systems (that can actually be seen on the screen), Music streaming via BT or direct connection, DBA radio, external Video play (neither tested, nor needed) AND proper, very good Bluetooth phone calls.
I did not want to change the "technical dashboard" and left the original radio in the dash. It´s not working now, but all of this can be reversed, kept the original parts.

Note, that the screen is by far not so reflective and shiny in real life - my iphone camera seems to be oversensitive.

Yes, I lost some wood veneer, but I think the workshop did a great job in applying matching leather to this part and I´m very happy with this solution.

Ah, BTW - is there a fuse I can remove, so the antenna does not work anymore? I definitely don´t need it and never liked the look of it extending from the car.
Thanks for your pointers.

Cheers,
Berglmir

 

Beautiful job. Great solution to an ongoing problem.

 

Fuse #9 in the trunk is for the antenna motor.

 

Thanks MRomanik!
The workshop I had made this conversion offered to put a switch in, so I COULD listen to Radio (I do have DAB Radio, so I don´t know when this need may arise ), but in the meantime I will "pull the switch".
The strange thing is, that according to the information I got on this forum, none of the fuses in the Trunk would control the antenna motor - may have to try some.

 

Thanks a lot for your positive feedback!
I know some of our Forumites abhor any deviation from the original, so I´m glad to have at least one vote of support here

 

So long as originality and resale value isn’t a priority, do whatever you want.

What you’ve done looks great .... and more importantly works for you!

I’ve non stock tyres on all four corners, my car sits funny, but with the punctures I get (10 so far in 2019) , it’s easier for me to deal with. Hell... works for me, so purists be damned! The Car still looks beautiful!

 

I don't have any problem with deviation from original. I am all for trying to make our cars better than original.

I just have problems with deviations that look so obviously not original that an uninformed observer would immediately notice. Sadly, most deviations seem to end up in this category.

 

"the "box" lives in the glove compartment now" can you show us what the looks like. Did you put the amp in the trunk?

 

Berglmir, tell us something please. If you are using any external amp(s) , how do you manage crossovers for speaker protection and proper bandwidth allocation?

The stock amps have internal active crossovers, none of the drivers except the super tweeter in the sail have crossovers. Wanted to see how you handle it.

Of course if our assumption that you use aftermarket amps is false this is moot.

Thanks

John

 

I've managed a conversion of my dash with the useless original sat nav and it looks like that:



no nav, no bluetooth, no streaming but a smile on my face.

 

Looks nice. Good conversion for a black interior

 

I wonder if you could just cut the wood piece and then use some time of nice molding to fit in the unit. But it looks good as is!

 

Beautiful wood in this one for sure. Wish mine looked that good.

Cool how the grain can have shapes that your mind recognizes. In these I see a lot of skulls and a couple faces.

 

Agree with rothwell, that is very nice wood, did you get it from a car or de novo from the wood people (i.e. Myrtle or others)?

 

Actually this is'nt a pic of my dash, just got it from a sales brochure in the net. But mine looks similar and i was lucky, got an almost pretty good fitting center piece from ebay.

sorry, was not my intention to highjack Berglmir's thread, he did a fine job with his conversion. But i'm depending on visual impressions and therefor the changes have to be in line with the interior and the outer shape of the car.

 

John,
Not sure I can properly answer your question as I just paid a car hifi company to do the conversion, but as far as I know, the crossovers are set up in the external amp itself and I also have a lot of options in my onscreen settings to play with HPF/LPF´s, Subwoofer switches.
But as I said this may not be the answer you want, so all I can do is
a) provide you with the technical spec sheet of my new amp:


b) Ask the guy who did the installation how he did it.

Let me know if I should address b)

 

I think this is a great interior and I probably would not have gone so far, if my car had that (especially the three gauges).
As you can see I have this strange green-ish wood and the super-crappy Navsystem installed, so that was a no go from the start.

I´m also using my Jag quite regularly and not being able to "properly" use it as my car (which includes having the opportunity to hear the music I want to hear and have a proper hands-free phonecall) was kind of infringing on the fun I have with the car.
I had a TR6 before - none of this modern nonsense in there of course.

 

That would have been my most favored approach as well.
However the dash pieces are made of aluminium (?), or some kind of metal and have just a very small veneer of wood applied to it.
Molding and forming this might be very difficult (wood cracking and splintering; metal bending etc.) - I´m actually happy they were able to do it as it is right now.

 

The good thing about a car 'hobby' is that you can take it in any direction you so desire. Some go full, original stock, while others go full wild custom. Who is correct? It just depends on your personal wants and tastes.
For me, I am somewhere in between. I like a car that looks almost original, but on closer examination one can see a few things that begin to be just l little bit "no so original".
Berglmir's conversion is so good, I almost wish I had my car in Vienna so that I could take advantage of his electronic personnel. Not such good converters here in S.W. Fla.

 

Cheers muchly, Sam!