I don’t know what the hell to do. I’ve got an old Lexus SC400 that’s getting a new amp and I’m trying to figure out what adapter out there can make it work. Circuit City is shuttered. I should know that since I got a video camera there for nearly bupkis a few months ago. Other than that, well, I guess I’m kinda screwed. Nobody nearby replaces amps and has that friggin’ adapter. Which reminds me . . .
One of the things I’ve noticed through my search for radio amplitude is that different generations seem to have very different types of fear factors. The 35 to 55 crowd in my neck of the woods seem to be the most willing to do basic maintenance themselves. As a group they seem to be the most frequent visitors of the parts stores, and inevitably when I find someone underneath a car these days they’re right about that age. I guess some folks would assume that part of it has to do with being in either a frugal or independent phase of life where money and control issues are important. However, I’m also realizing that it’s not really that simple . . . or even true.
We just happen to be in a very lucky generation. Starting in 1996 cars started using OBDII. A universal computer language that enabled folks to either diagnose their cars with their own cheap little scanner, or go to a nearby parts store and have their cars diagnosed for free. No metal plug-ins needed. No electronic pulses to count and read in a cryptic manual.
Automakers were also making many of their cars simpler to work on throughout the 1990’s and more durable as well. The longevity DNA that made Volvo and Mercedes such coveted brands were gradually coming into all the automakers in varying degrees. Steel became more advanced and durable. Electronics became far less buggy (in most cases). And the smarter ones of the breed were making cars with fewer parts and fewer parts suppliers. The net result were cars that were far easier to maintain and service than ever before.
Enthusiasts in the under-35 crowd or over-55 crowd will do that, and more. The former like their modern metal. The later usually have at least one “classic” car that they play with and are often the oracles of enthusiast groups. But the non-enthusiasts within both these groups are very different animals. Folks under 35 often have all these wonderful fake pieces of plastic that keep them from touching their engines. Period. Changing the oil in some cars requires removing a nice long piece of plastic underneath.
Even today’s cheaper cars (e.g., the Hyundai Santa Fe) are starting to use the plastic design covers that Mercedes, Lincoln and Lexus have popularized over the past decade. Wanna check the tranny fluid? Naahh. Some models will require that you have X-ray vision or drive it to the dealer. The net sum is the younger non-enthusiasts are now given physical barriers that help keep them clueless when it comes to cars.
The over-55 crowd who are non-enthusiasts grew up in a world where each car literally had their own language and idiosyncracies. Volvo, Chrysler, GM, Toyota, and Hyundai each had cars with computers that literally had their own unique diagnostic equipment. Instead of pulling out a little orange (the aforementioned $50 diagnostic tool) an owner had to take it to someone who could actually diagnose it for them. Of course there were times immemorial when carburetors were common and computers were rare. But those older vehicles required someone with either a mechanical background or a tinkerers intuition. As a result of this legacy, many AARP folks these days still prefer having the dealer or independent shop do the “dirty work” for them. Even though the work is often neither dirty nor difficult.
THe cover exists because the engine is ugly.
Try crutchfield for an amp adapter.
was your Lexus a 96? I thought the SC400 was made from 92-96 to come with the obd2.
You don’t need to waste your time looking for an adapter. Just learn how to use a soldering iron to connect the wires.
I second Crutchfield for the stereo related equipment. They should be able to help you.
My Jetta TDI came with a plastic engine cover. It’s been hanging in the garage for the last 6 years.
I’m with GS650G, try Crutchfield. Or Best Buy, maybe? Or hit the aftermarket, rip the entire stereo system out and go old school; buy a high powered head unit and wire around the amp. That’s probably what I’d do.
I like the engine covers, they’re nice and tidy looking. Back in the day you didn’t have hundreds of ugly wires all over the place and you could actually see the beauty of the engine. You could easily look down into the engine compartment and admire the aluminum valve covers and chrome air cleaner you installed, but now all you see is wires and a plastic intake manifold. The decorative cover in a great improvement over that, IMO.
Steven, I find some of your observations about the complexity of cars to be inaccurate. You say that cars have gotten progressively easier to work on?? Are you kidding me? It’s the total opposite, my friend. A monkey could work on a ’78 Oldsmobile, but you’ve got grown men who can’t make heads or tales of most of today’s engine mechanics. Not to mention the space (or lack thereof) in today’s engine compartments. You pop the hood of any hooptie (pre-1980) and see how much room you’ve got to work. You could literally climb into some of those old engine bays. But today you’ve barely got space to manage a serpentine belt change. And forget about getting to an oil filter from above engine.
Nice ride, by the way. Mine’s a ’93 SC400. I’m never selling it. When I’m 65 (a good 27 years off), this will be my “classic car”.
I like the caption on that photo. That has always bothered me about some of Hyundai’s engine shrouds. It’s a transverse engine, stop pretending it isn’t.
As others stated Crutchfield is the answer to the amp problem. Even if you go aftermarket Crutchfield (while slightly more expensive) will have all the necessary info, adapters, connectors, diagrams, etc.
As for engine shrouds, after looking under the hood of our 1.8T VW Passat my wife remarked that these plastic covers scream out to the owner: “stay away, too complex to fix with a screw driver, see dealer”.
I agree with the others. When I come into possession of a car, the engine cover gets the heave-ho immediately. I want to know if there are leaks, etc.
Long live OBDII and my cheapo scanner!
I see people like Crutchfield, I’ve had good luck with sounddomain.com for aftermarket car audio. Circuit City was a waste of time by comparison, good riddance.
Those under-body engine covers actually serve two purposes. Cutting down draft (aerodynamics). And keeping dust and road dirt out of the engine bay. They do their job’s quite well too.
Back before I got my SC400 (which has said under-body cover) I had a ’91 Integra (no cover). The engine needing cleaning constantly (every two weeks at least). While the Lexus can go 2 months easy before accumulating the same amount of dust. All you classic muscle car enthusiasts know exactly what I’m talking about – as your engine bays are totally open to the elements from below. I would imagine those show-ready bays get dusted up pretty quickly when they get taken out on the open road.
I’ll admit it’s a pain when you’ve got to go in and do some under-body work. But I value the cleanliness of my engine bay more. Besides, the previous owner had cut out a portion of it to allow for oil changes. So the majority of the cover is still intact.
“No electronic pulses to count and read in a cryptic manual.”
Hey, I liked my “electronic pulses” to count on the Chrysler products of the 80’s. Piece of cake. Turn the key on/off a certain number of times finishing in the on position and then count the flashing light on the dash. The codes were easily available on the internet and before that in a Haynes book. Chrysler even provided a code 55 which ment that it was finished displaying codes.
SuperCoupe400:
“And forget about getting to an oil filter from above engine.”
My oil filteris is on the side of the engine facing the firewall. It’s closer to the top than the bottom. I can unscrew it from the top but I can’t take it out – the window washer fluid pump is in the way. So I have to drop it and let it fall to the suspension crossmember below. Messy.
The enthusiast will work through things. Non-enthusiasts typically need confidence and a helping hand.
The shrouds on modern day cars are designed to make the engines look advanced, mysterious and clean. The goal is to make the vehicle more upscale… and keep the owner away from the engine bay.
I agree about the SC400 oil changes. They’re a pain… but given the amazing quality of the powertrain it really doesn’t bother me. The same holds true for the mileage. A Solara will give far better fuel economy and somewhat similar driving dynamics. But the 1st gen SC400 has that intangible feeling of quality that I rarely find anywhere else.
Thanks for the tip on Crutchfield’s. I rarely play with stereo systems other than putting the customary CD player in place of an old tape deck. This experience will thankfully be one more notch up the learning curve.
And keeping dust and road dirt out of the engine bay.
Exactly. Not a Lexus but mine without it gets large grains of sand and other grit all over the engine compartment. Not good for the seals or anything else.
Having spent quite a number of years in an automotive engineering department it always amazes me how some make assumptions about how and why something is designed and installed the way it is. For example, a large plastic covering on the UNDERSIDE of the engine must be there ONLY to make the underside of the engine pretty for the mechanic and therefore useless and an improvement if it is removed.
Wrong.
Think of it this way: Auto manufacturers are loathe to spend a dime on a car they don’t absolutely have to. If it is there, some engineer had to cage-fight one or more accountants to keep it on the car, no matter what it is.
Job one is to put everything back the way you found it.
An engine bay’s airflow is designed with all those shrouds in place. I wouldn’t trust myself to mess with that!
Personally, I LOVE the look of the (above) engine bay shrouds. Check out the one for the Lexus LS460: http://www.roadfly.com/new-cars/wp-content/uploads/gallery/2007-lexus-ls460l/lexus-ls460-engine.jpg It’s a thing of beauty – imho. And this coming from a guy who relishes the thought of keeping his car out of the stealership for service by all possible measures. In other words, I perform all my own maintenance and repairs.
SuperCoupe400 :
A monkey could work on a ‘78 Oldsmobile…
I must be the wrong kind of monkey. The last time I worked on a ’78 Oldsmobile I swore I’d never work on a GM ever again. Lots of room under the hood, but they managed to place everything behind something else.
No problem getting at the oil filter in my wife’s Benz, it’s on top of the engine! Don’t even have to take the engine cover off. To me cars are easier to work on today. I’d rather connect a laptop to my car than mess around with carburetors and distributors. I’m 43YO FWIW.
roadracer:
Well, yes, from this standpoint I can see the point being made about cars being easier to work on now vs then. I suppose each car, whether old or new, has it’s pluses and minuses in the serviceability category.
windswords:
I hear you on the Chrysler stuff. I had an 88 Dodge truck with the OBDI computer and the code-reading was nice when I learned about it in the Haynes. I still have it and a 2002 Dodge truck with OBDII. The on-off-on-off-on trick still works. The OBDII P-codes display on the electronic odometer and when it is finished displays “d0NE” and I cannot figure out why ALL car makers don’t do this. Has to be some automaker/Big-“OBDII scan tool maker” conspiracy, no?
I’m 30 and prefer to work on my own vehicles when I can. Between work and kids and life it’s hard and my vehicles wind up in a service bay more than I care to admit. My take on the “older-is-easier” thing is that in some ways older vehicles were easier to maintain, but they required maintaining with such higher frequency that a little difficulty goes a long way. It wouldn’t be right to say that modern cars have a more complicated management system…the problem was that old cars didn’t HAVE a management system. They were flying blind down a path of assumed operating parameters. Any deviation from those parameters required “tinkering” to perform well. Modern engines have sensors and systems that do this tinkering automatically. Anyone who thinks that this is harder or more complicated is speaking from the position of one who throws parts at problems rather than diagnoses the root cause of failure. I know which I’d rather have working on my vehicles, and the folks in that camp seem to wholly embrace the new way of doing things.
1996 is a key cutoff year. The car will have dual airbags, side intrusion beams, and, most importantly for a car over 10 years old, OBDII.
Speaking of “flying down a path of assumed operating parameters” reminded me of the 57 New Yorker I had. This rig showed just over 90,000 miles when I bought it in about 1967, but based on the plates it had and its general appearance I suspected that the odometer had been turned back at some point in its life and that it really had more like 150,000. At any rate, there was enough slop in the timing chain of that big, heavy 392 hemi that it couldn’t be tuned on a scope, yet it still ran well enough that I could get 10,000 miles on a set of plugs, then clean them and run them a second 10,000.
Then there was the time I started it and heard this horrible squeal from the fanbelt. The fan wouldn’t turn because the coolant had frozen the night before. I shut it down right away, and there were no bad consequences.
It makes me wonder…maybe this kind of over-engineering made it possible for people to learn that they could drive their cars, totally neglect them mechanically, and get away with it.
Steven,
You could also try Best Buy. They have audio installers and they stock the mounting kits and wiring stuff. You just have to ask the guys in the car audio section, it is not on the shelf, but they have the stuff and you can purchase it from them.
I also would favor Crutchfield for their wider selection and better prices (BB might not stock an amp bypass/adapter kit for an old Lexus) but if you need to be local, there you go.
Unfortunately, I don’t believe such an adapter exists. I went through this on my 92 SC400 with the Nakamichi system. The head unit died and I wanted to swap in something else. First problem? The opening is a very odd size. You need some thing to fill the gaps. Second problem? Everything from the head unit is sent to the special amp in the back of the car. I ended up just rewiring everything. I found the wires coming from the speakers to the amp and connected them to wires running from the amp to the new head unit. This bypasses the stock amp (which I have no idea how to connect to) and lets me run my new aftermarket head unit. A great design if everything always works, but if you want to get rid of it, sorry about your luck.