Hot Import Nights

How about some cool new sounds for your hot street machine?

Sound good.

We'll stay right where you are

today on horsepower TV.

Ready for some high performance mobile entertainment. We'll show you how to install a cool yet affordable sound system in your street machine.

And if that's not enough, we'll take you to the wildest indoor car show ever. It's a Florida Festival of Wild sounds and sights and

well, more sights. Plus we'll show you how to graphically change the personality of your ride with a kit you use at home.

So hang on for horsepower TV.

Hi, welcome to horsepower TV.

Let's face it. Everybody wants to make power under the hood and a powerful statement on the street. But when you're out cruising,

don't you want a sound system that jumps pumps and bumps with the best of them?

You get the idea. Well, today on the show, we're gonna explore some of the extremes and mobile entertainment going on now and later show you how to install a system that's cool, yet affordable for yourself.

But to get you in the mood for all this madness, let's head to an event that showcases some of the wildest sights and sounds you'll ever find on four wheels.

Destination, Fort Lauderdale land of endless summers and snow, white beaches. Playground of the rich and famous.

Then. There's that beautiful blue water

that we just had to check out before going to work here.

Well, back on dry land, what we're really here for is to take in the coolest new concept in car shows called Hot Import Nights.

What's so hot about

it?

Need I say more.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh,

yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's all about hot, hot girls, hot music, hot cars, whatever's hot right now. For the, for this scene, the import culture, even the automotive culture. If it's hot, you're gonna see it here at the show

to be competitive. It's gotta be wild. So we gotta do something that nobody else said. Yeah.

Eddie Park on, brought his wild BMW from New Jersey.

He loaded it with not only a killer sound system

but no less than five TV. Monitors and two or three video cameras. Do you ever watch too much TV, while you're driving?

No, but I will tell you

the car had a DVD player before my house did. The stuff in here is worth more than the car itself.

So,

this is a BMW.

Yeah,

a

lot of

stuff

in. I've never seen myself in the trunk of a BMW.

You

are?

This guy brought his 95 Honda from Georgia all tricked out. With the colors,

the

perfunctory stereo

and to make that individual statement, a hood that opens a lot of, I

of course, winning one of these trophies is a motive. But what else?

Get

magazines, get on TV,

you

know,

get sponsored,

cooking out cars. Led to a successful business for a Miami entrepreneur called Fishman.

This Corvette is one of many, he's customized for celebrities and other well heeled hot rodders. I was brought up in Puerto Rico, really poor.

So we didn't even have money to buy toys. So I used to do my own toys.

So as a little kid, I was always working on my hands,

I literally sit

and I just draw with my fingers. Everybody makes fun of me,

even my employees.

And I just,

I can take me a day, could take me a week.

All of a sudden ambition just comes to my mind

and I just got

so many cars, so many people, so many girls,

an estimated 20,000 tuna types passed through the doors here on this one night

and the average age, well, let's just say that I've got socks older than most of them.

And sometimes, well, it shows music, music,

our music.

Hey, you got any grateful dad.

Great for dad,

for dad,

grateful dad.

The owner of this 97 turbo eclipse is no kid by any means. In fact, he's a baby boomer who fits the Tuer passion profile. If not the demographic. My brother had a Pontiac GTO. We used to work on it and I love that.

I wanted a sports car and I looked all around for a sports car and I fell in love with the eclipse. And when I first entered that one show by accident,

the people were so nice

and the, and the kids, you know, I'm an old guy thinking, you know, they're not gonna accept me. They have been so nice to me.

Hot Import nights has landed a hot ticket for the new hip lifestyle. That's all about music. You

energy and it's always cool cars,

cars they use in the timeless expression of individualism. Every single car out there is different. It's like a fingerprint, not no, two cars out there are the same and no matter how you put it, they're all different and,

and it's just, it's amazing how much

I, I can't even believe how much these guys can do with their cars. $50,000 plus into a Honda Civic.

Hi. Welcome back to the shop where very soon

we're gonna use our horsepower Honda here to show you how to install a sound system that'll turn heads without turning your wallet upside down. Meanwhile, I want you to check out its tricked out cousin here. Now, this 94 Civic is owned by Steven head who's got a place called Audio Nuts down in Ocala,

Florida right

now. You went nuts. Turning this thing into a national win.

What was your game plan?

Well, Joe, the main goal was to create a mobile audio system that would give the listener the sensation that they were at a live concert, front and center.

Along the way, we've managed to push the envelope of custom installation techniques.

Yeah, along the way, you also won a national award at the Nope Nationals and you were named mobile Entertainment System of the year. Gotta be some good reasons. Take us on a tour. Ok. Well,

let me show you what we've got going on in here, Joe.

Uh this car was basically designed about around the principle of you build the car around the system, not the system, around the car. We've gone to great lengths to try and reproduce a tower speaker array borrowed from home theater use where it's a four way tower on either side of the dash

in the middle of the dash is a large monitor which displays the L CD read out for the portable computer

and through that computer and this touch mouse in the center console, I'm able to tune the system on a software driven program

just below that monitor

is another monitor which displays radio functions such as FM, what disk you're on, what volume you're on track selection

and things of that sort.

Just behind the gear shift. There are a couple of decoded digital gauges which monitor amplifier, temperature and system voltage.

You'll notice the joystick remote there. That's the remote that

controls all the functions of the audio system

just behind the remote underneath the armrest

is the face plate for the CD player

that's pretty stealthy.

And the rest of the CD player is located right behind it

in the quarter panel here behind the driver's seat is the six

inch uh CD changer.

Above that is noise gate circuitry to eliminate noise from the system.

On the other side, behind the passenger seat is the digital Sony Mobile es processor which interfaces with windows 98 program.

And then in the back, we've got 412 inch shas audio free air subwoofers and a custom fiberglass enclosure.

It's not really an enclosure. It use, it uses the airspace in the trunk as the enclosure.

Well, speaking of the trunk, let's take a look there. Yes, sir.

Ok, Joe. And at first glance,

the trunk looks rather simple but looks can be deceiving you

pull this floor mat up. You've got the heart of the system there.

Custom fiberglass amp rack. You've got four amplifiers just to the side of those. You've got 1000 cranking amp battery on either side

system diagram, all concealed in custom fiberglass panels. Cool deal. I couldn't help but notice Steven, that looks like you got more than one gas tank. What's that all about? Well, since the batteries are in the rear of the car, I needed to put fuses somewhere. So I went down to the junkyard, grabbed a couple extra civic gas doors and molded them into the wings. West ground effects kit

inside is a custom fiberglass tub holding twin 150 amp circuit breakers for proper protection.

Now, I gotta tell you, nobody brings a cool car into this shop without looking under the hood. Well, I'd hate to disappoint you there, Joe.

Oh,

you didn't? I tell you. Nice performance mods. But what else? Well, the entire electrical system's been upgraded. 100 and 50 amp alternator was added. The power cabling has been upgraded to a higher capacity wire

and the factory battery has been changed out for a high

am

deep cycle model. Ok. I guess that's what it takes. Now, the obvious question,

how much money?

Well, I saved a small fortune by doing the labor myself, but I've got roughly 20,000 in parts, materials and equipment. 20,000. I got a great idea. Let's swap Hondas. Yeah, I'll get back to you on that. I bet you will.

The choices of entertainment for your street machine are mind boggling these days. Hey, right now I want you to meet a friend of mine, Mike Mettler who's editor in chief of mobile entertainment magazine. Now, Mike, you keep up on all the latest hot new toys. What do you have here? So, I may think we're listening to a CD player right now, but we're actually listening to the audio from this DVD player.

DVD goes right in the slot here. This is a unit from pioneer,

but you can also watch it too.

Have a screen that motorizes out and you can watch DVD video right in your dash. Look at that looks like a shot you took driving on the way to the shop that

we also have a CD player here which opens up,

you slide the CD right in the slot

and we have a 10 gig hard drive inside, which basically means you can get 200 albums worth of music. Are you kidding? I, I remember when eight track tapes were pretty high tech. Now, this toy here, there are speakers, then there are monster speakers. What's this? This is an eight

18 inch subwoofer from Memphis Car audio.

It's known as the loud volume subwoofer or Elvis for short

Fat Elvis, Fat Elvis

and this one handles over 1000 watts of power. Well, that ought to be quite enough. Now, listen, we've installed a lot of nitrous bottles here in the shop.

This one here though, takes it to extreme. What's this got to do with audio? Well, this is an enclosure that looks like a nitrous bottle. This is from a company Sas makes Bazooka brand tube subwoofers.

If you go around at the front there, Joe, you can take that grill off. See, we've got an eight inch subwoofer inside and that one handles 300 watts that is cool and a nice conversation piece too.

Now, you also brought some more gear though. Tell him what that's about. Yeah, that's gonna be for the horsepower Honda, which we're gonna install

right after the break. Stay with us.

Welcome back to the horsepower shop where it's time to get to work. Mike and I are gonna take you through the basic steps of installing a cool yet affordable sound system in your street machine. Maybe we'll get Steven to help us. Now, do most of your readers install their own systems or have somebody else do it?

Now, most of them are do it yourselfers, although some people feel more comfortable taking them to a specialty installer.

Uh Either way it's best to know how everything fits together. I agree. Now it looks like we're mixing and matching components much the way some guys do when they build an engine.

Yeah, that's right. You don't necessarily want to go with the same manufacturer for every piece of gear.

Uh I'd say your main considerations are price features in cosmetics.

Uh My recommendation is that you listen to them in as many vehicles as possible and don't necessarily go with listening to gear on a board in a shop

for a head unit on the Honda. We go with this CD receiver from Alpine.

It's got a removable face for security purposes

and Joe, it's also XM satellite radio ready.

Yeah, I like that.

Now, Mike brought us this Kicker four channel amplifier that's gonna run the whole system. Now, this thing's rated at 25 watts by four. But you could expect up to 50 by four and of course, has all the signal processing that you're gonna need.

Speakers are the most important choice you're gonna make in a stereo system.

Uh For me, I took about two years to decide on the speakers I put in my own Explorer, but uh, we don't have that kind of time.

Uh But the choices that we have here are a pair of five and a quarter inches from lightning audio, which can be mounted in a number of different ways.

And then for the subwoofer, we have a jail audio subwoofer box with a 10 inch speaker inside.

Ok. Wired the school system together. We've got this eight gauge wiring kit from Scot.

And I think our first order of business is to disconnect the battery and connect this power cable.

Next, we wire in the fuse and fuse holder

which we amounted to the firewall

using self tapping screws.

We run the rest of the power cable through this factory drome

in the firewall.

From there, it goes under the carpet

and into the trunk where we mount the amplifier.

What I'm doing in here is removing the factory ashtray trim panel to access the screws which pulled the factory radio

to the bottom of the dashboard.

Next, we'll use this Honda wire harness adapter to plug our alpine right into the Honda Factory wiring harness behind the radio.

We'll also need to attach our RC A signal cables as well as a turn on lead for the amplifier and some speaker wire.

Now we simply slide the radio into its cage,

install the faceplate trim piece

and attach our face plate.

You remove the door panel so we can get to the factory speaker.

Here you go Jill.

That way I can disconnect

it

in order to accommodate the deeper speaker,

we needed to modify the splash guard.

And this is how we did it over on the driver side,

we've tapped into the factory speaker wire

and we've attached a passive crossover that splits the frequencies.

Now we can mount the speaker.

Now, let's put the door panel back on.

So I decided to mount this amplifier on the back of the seat here

on this piece of wood to prevent metal to metal contact. Hey, that's a neat trick, Steve. And I guess the shroud will help hide the wire. That's right.

There we go. Joe just secured the subwoofer box with a couple of L brackets. Awesome job, Steven looks great. And I can't wait to hear it

now, anytime you drill holes in your trunk, you know, to be careful there could be a gas tank down there and you don't want more boom than you bargained for.

All right. Well, here's the big moment. Let's see how the system sounds

like the way it loads up.

Hey, man, that sounds cool.

I wonder if Steven would trade cars now.

Well, I have to think about it.

Hi. Welcome back. No doubt. Over the past few weeks we got this budget horsepower Honda running better riding, better, looking better and well, of course, sounding better. Thanks to that new stereo system.

Now is icing on the cake, so to speak. We're gonna make a cool yet uncomplicated graphic ST I admit that you could try yourself

and helping me out on this little project is our old friend Matt Taylor who helped on the ignition project a few weeks ago, didn't you?

How's your civic running man? Doing well? Doing well. Looks good. Looks good. Now, do you feel a little artistic today?

Sure, you do.

Let me show what we got. All right,

you could spend hundreds of dollars getting a professional to paint your graphics. But these days there's a more high tech, more affordable way to do it right at home.

What we've got here is a kit we order from a company called Strike Man.

They have a variety of these universal kits on their website Strike man.com.

And if you don't like any one of these kits,

you can design your own.

What you'll get.

This is computer cut decal

optional Squeegee

and razor knife. Oh And don't forget about the masking tape. You gotta have some of that.

Now, the design that Matt and I came up with for the Civic can be used different ways here. But

you know, I like this. What do you think?

It's pretty good? Sure. Let's get started on it. Ok.

The first thing you wanna do is clean the surface with rubbing alcohol.

Once you're satisfied with where you've placed the graphics,

you wanna put a piece of tape on each end

and you wanna put a piece of tape in the center and we'll call that the center hinge.

Now, remove the tape from the end of the panel,

peel away the liner paper and tear it off at the center hinge.

Then use your squeegee to rub it into place from the center hinge to the edge.

Next, we can remove the center tape, pinch

the remaining backing paper

and squeezy the back half of the panel into place.

Finally repeat this process for the front half of the graphic.

Now it's time for the moment of truth,

you're gonna peel the transfer tape away from the graphic

and you wanna do so in a slow, smooth

and steady motion.

Hey, how's it going there? Matt going good.

I'll say you made it look easy.

Now you will get some bubbles here and there, of course. And the tiny ones will disappear on their own.

But the large ones, well, like right here,

you just take your knife and

make a tiny prick,

rub the trapped air out and there it's gone. Now for the doors,

it's a good idea to take some masking tape again and

lay down about an eighth of an inch from the edge

as a guide,

then take your knife

and lightly make your cut.

You also want to cut around places like door handles

and the trim as well.

Its good Joe. Thanks.

Of course. You wanna repeat this on the other side.

Eyeball on this side to make sure they look about the same.

Yeah, that's a good job for you.

Yeah, man, I'd say we uh gave this horsepower Honda a brand new radical personality

or in case you guys are wondering

a graphics job like this ought to last you easily 3 to 5 years. And with the wax check the bottle to make sure it's compatible. Good advice. Well, in any event, in less than two hours and a little over 100 bucks, we turn this thing into a tough little Tuer that really ought to turn some heads. There was only one way to find out which, oh,

I should have known this was coming.

See you.

Hey, don't bring that thing back. Empty

horsepower TV S hot parts is brought to you by Wyotech,

the nation's premier technical training school.

Well, since we're talking Tuer this weekend here are a couple of parts from ZEC to perk up your Honda or Acura.

They're the new B

series V

tech cam shafts for dual overhead cam engines. Now, the lobes have been designed to increase horsepower and torque. In fact, the manufacturer claims the chassis dyno

increases of 15 to 20 horsepower in stock motors

more. If it's modified,

how much should you modify your budget to get a pair? How about $500

earlier today, we installed a pretty killer amplifier in our horsepower Honda. But if that's not enough for you. How about this new Titanium 1000.2 from Phoenix Gold? We're talking over 1000 watts here enough for the most demanding system

with a pair of unregulated power supplies and two variables speed fans to keep it cool for the long haul. How much long green do you need for one of these

1100 will do the trick. Now, look at next week's horsepower TV.

He's the winningest post doc racer in N hr A history or in the professor Johnson.

And he's our special guest in the shop. As we build a new 572 cube race engine you can get in a crate

and the horsepower hauler heads home to North Carolina where the Mopar

mavens are showing them and racing them at this wild annual batch.

Horsepower TV is an RTM production.