How to : A Car Stereo Installation Guide

Want to save some money? Ever wonder if you could do a car stereo installation yourself? Yes, you can do it yourself! Go ahead, spend that money on your hardware! Don’t spend it on labor. Besides, doing a car stereo installation yourself can be a very rewarding experience, not to mention you can learn a lot from it too. Nothing beats the feeling of seeing your “creation” in action, running smoothly and perfectly.

But be very careful, you really won’t want to damage your expensive hardware. Well, most car audio hardware are no-brainers to install, you’d find that most of the time the parts have specially shaped sockets and slots etc. and would only fit where it’s supposed to be installed. Still, it’s best to proceed methodically.

In a car stereo installation, you have to determine what kind of rig you’re going to put into your vehicle. If you’re a beginner, it’s best you do a car stereo installation if it’s just a simple system. You may want to leave the complicated stuff to the professionals, like installing delicate equipment like LCD panels, motorized parts etc. especially if it requires the creation of custom panels and such.

Head units are one of the easiest to do in a car stereo installation. Fortunately, most units follow the same size standards (DIN). In many cars, once the factory radio is removed the aftermarket radio will fit in the hole. In many other cars, a kit is needed if the factory hole is too big, or not deep enough. In some cases the dash has to be cut.  Any car stereo store should have kits required for installation.

There are two types of mounting in a car stereo installation. ISO mounting is when the radio can be screwed to existing factory radio brackets, such as in most Japanese cars. Ring mounting is when an aftermarket radio comes with a metal ring that gets mounted to the factory radio hole or aftermarket kit via bendable tabs. In many cars, dash and trim rings have to be filed to enlarge the radio hole. Once the ring is installed, the radio slides in and is held by snaps. In most cases, special tools are required to remove the radio.

Speakers are very critical in a car stereo installation. No matter how expensive your speakers are, if they are not properly installed, the sound will not be up to par.

In a simple car stereo installation, you’ll probably be using speakers that fit into a factory location. Just make sure there are no gaps or holes. Sometimes building a wood or fiberglass baffle helps reduce holes and gives you much better sound. But always be careful when using power tools around speakers. Car stereo installation warranties usually don't cover holes in speakers.

For unconventional speaker locations, sometimes metal has to be cut. You might want to leave this to the professionals, tools like plasma cutters and pneumatics drills are required. But if you’re going to insist, a pair of metal snips (left and right cut) will do.

A car stereo installation has to put up with vibrations and other noise sources in its environment. Even though it is impossible to eliminate these completely, there are products that will greatly decrease the noise and rattling, particularly on non-luxury cars. Liners, sprays and adhesive strips and even carpeting applied onto the panels can make a world of difference.  

Mobile Multimedia : A New Peak For The Alpine Car Stereo

We all know that brand names matter when purchasing car audio hardware. There are brands that are surely more reputable than others. When you are at the store and they offer choice after choice after choice, suddenly you feel overwhelmed on what really to buy. But you can be assured of one thing, if they offer you an Alpine car stereo you can’t go wrong with it.

Alpine car stereo and electronics, founded in 1978, is a world leader in the industry of high performance mobile electronics. They specialize in mobile multimedia, an integrated system approach incorporating digital entertainment, security and navigation products for the mobile entertainment.

Alpine car stereos are a new breed of units which feature the convergence of high performance audio, video, navigation and telematics in the form of Mobile Multimedia. Navigation systems act as the resource center of the Alpine car stereo Mobile Multimedia lineup. 

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), DVD players, Dolby Digital systems, satellite digital audio radio, mobile data linking and communication through telematics devices will be fused with navigation systems to create a platform of products. 

Mobile Multimedia integrates Alpine's innovative audio, video, security and navigation products, as well as its new GUI for Drivers, human interface and information communications technology.

To grasp what the Alpine car stereo Mobile Multimedia is, take a look at the IVA-D901 Alpine car stereo Mobile Multimedia Station/CD/DVD Receiver/Ai-NET Controller.

The IVA-D901 has 400% more pixels than a conventional in-vehicle display, meaning that it has 1.15 million pixel elements. It has 50W x 4 built-in power and 3 PreOuts (4 volt), SAT Radio ready, a Hard Disc Drive (HDD), and Alpine car stereo Navigation. Key features include:


- 7" Fully Motorized Wide Screen Monitor

- 18W x 4 MOSFET Amplifier

- Built-in Dolby Digital/DTS Decoder
 

- Bass Engine® Plus
 

- Subwoofer Level Control
 

- Bass Center Frequency Control
 

- Bass Band Width Adjustment
 

- Treble Center Frequency Control
 

- Subwoofer Phase Selector
 

- Bass Type Control
 

- 4-Ch Digital Time Correction
 

- 3 Position 12 dB/Oct Crossover
 

- MediaXpander™
 

- SAT Radio Ready
 

- MP3 Text Information Display
 

- Quick Search Function
 

- CD/CD-R Playback
 

- CD Text, Text Display, Text Scroll
 

- M DAC
 

- MaxTune SQ Tuner
 

- 3 Auxilliary A/V Inputs with Remote Control Input
 

- Dedicated Navigation Input
 

- Dedicated Camera Input
 

- 2 Auxilliary Monitor A/V Outputs
 

- Navigation Audio Mix
 

- 3 PreOuts (4 volt)
 

- MM Driver (Hard Disc Drive) Ready
 

- MobileHub Ready
 

- Ai-NET Control Center DVD/CD/MP3 Changer Controller
 

- "Digital Art" Spectrum Analyzer Display
 

- RUE-4190 Universal Wireless Remote Control Included

If these all seems too much for you, Alpine car stereos also have more conventional head units to offer. The CDA-9835 Alpine car stereo In-Dash CD Player/Ai-Changer Controller lets you fully customize both illumination and sound, with a range of 512 colors and super-versatile Bass Engine functions like digital time correction and parametric EQ. 

You can download audio parameter settings and connect and control as many as eight amps. The BioLite display, Menu key and rotary knob make operation extremely easy.

Like most Alpine car stereo units, it is also SAT Radio Ready, giving you a much greater choice of listening options than ordinary local AM/FM radio. You can select from among a wide range of music genres, news, sports, and talk programs with digital quality anywhere.
 

Using Lease Calculators

Want to calculate your monthly lease payment? Consider using a lease calculator

If you are considering a car lease, then you might want to know some key figures involved in the deal: the monthly lease payments, the overall cost of the lease and how much savings can be made compared to purchasing the vehicle.

A lease calculator relieves you from the stress of having to know the complex underlying lease formulae used in calculations. You simply plug a number of figures into the calculator and hey presto! You get a detailed rundown of detailed payments, taxes and total lease costs.
 
Figures you need to get from your dealer about a specific lease you’re interested in include: capitalized cost, estimated residual value at the end of the lease, the number of months in your lease and the money factor. 

Make assumptions and change some of the figures to see how it affects your lease payments. For instance, residual value is an “estimated” value of what the vehicle will be worth at the end of the lease. You can input different estimates to cover different scenarios and assumptions.

As a final note of caution, bear in mind that lease calculators only do calculations and check the accuracy of abstract mathematical formulae. They do not tell you whether a lease is good or bad. 

The Residual Value of Leasing

If you are in the market to lease a vehicle, you will hear the term “residual value” recur like a leitmotif. A residual value does not only affect your monthly payments, but is equally used by leasing companies to determine any penalties should you break your lease early and how much to pay if you decided to buy the vehicle at the end of your lease.

Let us first start by looking at the meaning of residual value. The term “residual value”, refers to the value of something after it has been used for some time. In leasing lingo, it refers to the depreciation of the vehicle’s value over the life of its lease.

So how does it exactly affect your monthly payments? When you lease a car, you pay for the car’s value that you use over the lease length. Suppose you leased an $18,000 car for 2 years: the leasing company needs to estimate the value of this car in two years time in order to know how much of the car you will be using during your lease term. 

That’s where the “residual value” comes into the equation. If the residual value is estimated to be $13,000 at the end of your lease, then your monthly payments will be calculated on the $5,000 you will use over 24 months, giving an average monthly payment of $208.3 (plus interest, tax and fees). 

How about if the car is expected to lose half its value over the same period? In this scenario, you will be using $9,000 over the same period, leaving you with a higher monthly payment of $375 (plus interest, tax and fees).

As you can see, residual values are a key factor in determining how much money to pay on your lease and the higher the residual value, the lower your monthly fees. This works in reverse if you build a bond with your car and decide to purchase it at the end of your lease. 

If we stick with the same example above, the lower monthly payments in the second scenario come at the cost of paying substantially more to buy your car at the end of the lease.

So, since the residual value is so important, how do I know which one is best for me? Well, it all depends whether you want to purchase the car at the end of your lease. If you don’t want to make a large down payment and you want low monthly payments, then a car that holds with a higher residual value is a good deal. 

If you are thinking of purchasing the car at lease-end, then you need to balance low-monthly payments with a moderate residual value.

Single-Payment Lease

A prepaid lease is a new type of lease which has made its foray into the market in recent times. In this lease, consumers forego the cycle of lease payments if they make a large payment at the beginning of the lease.

There are two amounts in a conventional lease that incur charges and determine your monthly lease payments. First, there is a depreciation charge which accounts for the value the car loses during the lease term. 

Second is a residual amount which is the projected value of the vehicle at the end of the lease. The sum of these two charges gives the monthly payments on your lease.

The idea behind a pre-paid lease is to eliminate the finance charges for depreciation and only account for residual value charges in a single, pre-paid payment at the beginning of the lease.

Single-payment leases are devised with spendthrifts in mind: no cycle of monthly payments, a new car every two to three years and no interest in purchasing the vehicle at the end of the lease.

You should only consider this type of lease if you are concerned about not being able to make monthly payments and have a lot of cash upfront.

Luxury Cars and Resale Values

When it comes to ultra-luxury, high-end vehicle leasing, there is no doubt that the best deals are those cars that hold their value. With this in mind, we single out a few truths about residual values that consistently apply to high-end leasing.

The most determining factor when it comes to resale values is public perception of the brand, not its reliability ratings in quality surveys. Take the Jaguar for example: it is consistently rated as a quality car, but because of questionable reliability perception among the public, it takes a sharp dip in value at the end of its lease-term.

Higher-tech options and other cutting-edge features do not necessarily mean the car will fare better.  By the time your car is two years old, better and cheaper systems will render the laser-guided cruise control, navigation systems and built-in cell phone obsolete. Look for functional features, such as automatic transmissions, power windows and wheel-drive to enhance the vehicle’s value in the used-car market. 

Used-car buyers view less favorably luxury vehicles that come with big incentives. These are perceived as questionable in quality and reliability.

Leasing with Bad Credit

Have you been refused a car lease? Chances are you have less flawed credit history. Know what’s involved and what you can do to build good credit history.

Credit score is a measure of your credit worthiness used by leasing agents to determine whether you are eligible for a lease. You credit score is based on your past and present credit history, and can range anywhere from 350 to 850.

  

A measure above 720 is considered a “prime score” and will land you the best rates. If you are below 640, then you are “sub-prime” and will be considered bad rating by the bulk of leasing agents. This is where all the trouble in getting that lease comes from.

 Ask for your FICO Credit Score from the Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) which details your credit score held by all three leading credit score agencies in the country. Compare the three credit scores and determine if any agency is holding erroneous credit data about you.

Contact the reporting agency and getting corrected. If there are no mistakes in your credit report, then you can take some steps to maximise your score to go above the threshold of 640. Pay your bills on time and pay down any credit card debts you have. Do not take any new accounts as this might increase the likelihood of you getting into bad credit thus worsening your credit score.

Leasing Used Cars Explained

Leasing a used vehicle can be an attractive deal in many ways, no least getting you into that luxury model or SUV, for lower monthly payments than a brand new one. Be prepared, however, to do some more homework to dissect a good deal.

As with new car-leasing, your price research should focus on the key figures that are the initial market value and the estimated residual value of the used car. This is harder to predict since there is no factory-set sticker price on used cars, and the residual percentage is very much pegged to a subjective current retail value. 

Use different sources to get a rough idea of the value of the used car: your local dealerships, internet car-evaluating tools, such as Edmunds and Cars, to name but a few. Another way to pin down a good estimate is to compare the lease on your given car to a lease on a new-car with the same make and model. 

This should give you a better picture of the difference between leasing new and going for used. Just like leasing a new car, used vehicle leasing is more attractive when residual values depreciate the least. You stand a better chance of finding a bargain in the high-end, luxury vehicles that keep their values better as used cars. 

Next, you need to check the initial mileage and the overall vehicle condition. The maximum mileage on a used car should be no more than 12,000 miles a year. A 3-years old car with 50,000 miles on the clock is very unlikely to make a good used-vehicle lease. 

Check for signs of excessive use, like worn seat fabric, worn pedal pads and dirty engine, which might indicate that the odometer has been rolled back. If the car is not certified, you need to get it thoroughly inspected. Ask your dealer for a manufacturer-sponsored certification program or have your car certified by a qualified mechanic or inspection service.

Most used-car deals don’t come with gap coverage. This is a special type of coverage, normally offered on a new auto-lease, to cover the consumer if the leased vehicle is lost, stolen or damaged. Typically, auto-insurance policies cover only what your car is worth at the time of loss, not what you still owe on the lease. 

The difference could run into thousands of dollars. For peace of mind, do not enter into any used-car lease without gap-coverage. Arrange it separately with either the lease dealer or your auto-insurance company.

Leasing Glossary

In order to get a good leasing deal, you need to understand leasing jargon. Read through this leasing glossary to get an overview of the basics:

Acquisition fee:

A fee charged by a leasing company to begin a lease. Not all leasing companies charge an acquisition fee but if charge it starts at about $300 and is seldom negotiable.

Capitalised cost: 

The total selling price of the leased vehicle This also accounts for taxes, title, license fees, acquisition fee and any optional insurance and warranty items you elect to fold into the lease and pay overtime rather  than upfront.

Depreciation fee: 

Forms part of the monthly lease payment charge and accounts for the loss in the value of the car at the end of the lease. The vehicle’s list price minus the expected residual value at lease end is divided by the number of months in the lease to give the depreciation fee. 

Suppose you decide to lease a vehicle with a retail price of $23,500. The leasing company estimates that after a three year lease, the vehicle will be worth 35% of its original retail value, or $8,225. The difference, $15,275, divided by the number of months in the lease, 36 months, gives us the depreciation fee ($424)

GAP insurance Pays off the lease balanced if the vehicle is wrecked, stolen or totalled.

Inception fees any fees that are due at the beginning of a lease. These typically include a security deposit, acquisition fee, first monthly payment, taxes and title fees.

Mileage allowance The maximum number of miles a leased vehicle can be driven a year without incurring an excess mileage penalty. A typical mileage allowance is 12,000 to 15,000 miles a year, although this is negotiable with your leasing company.

Mileage charges a penalty that you incur if you exceed your mileage allowance on a leased vehicle. Typical mileage charges are 10 to 20 cents per excess mile.

Money-factor A fractional number, such as 0.00043, used in calculating your monthly lease payments. You can get a rough estimate of the annual percentage rate on your lease by multiplying the money factor by 2,400. If a dealer quotes a money factor such as 3.4 than you can get the equivalent APR, 8.16, if you multiply by 2.4.

Residual value Residual value is the amount of money the leasing company says your leased vehicle will be worth when your lease ends. Higher residual values lead to lower monthly payments but higher lease-end purchase cost if you decide to keep the vehicle.

Security deposits an up-front amount that your leasing company required at the beginning of a lease to safeguard against non-payment. This is generally refundable at the end of your lease.

Termination or Disposition fee The amount you have to pay the leasing company at the end of your lease if you decide not to purchase the vehicle.

Wear-and-tear charges Extra charges you have to pay at the end of your lease for any wear and use the leasing company considers above normal

Leasing and Your Credit Score

Your credit score is part of the leasing decision. When you apply for a lease, your lease company will typically look at your credit score to decide whether you to approve the application.

The leasing contract stipulates that you make regular, monthly payments over your lease term. The credit score you lease company requests identifies how likely you are to make such payments. It is simply a number calculated according to a model that takes into account your payment history, any amounts you owe and credit currently in use.  

It is very important to keep a good credit-score, usually above 700, to qualify for a lease or any other lending decision. Start by ordering your credit report from Fair Isaac Corp, the company that creates your credit score. 

If erroneous data is held about you, then contact the creditor responsible and get such information corrected. Your payment history is the single most important factor in determining your credit score, so get in the habit of paying everything you owe on time and keep the balances low in your credit cards.

Lease Trading

Ever wanted to terminate your lease early, comfortable with the thought you weren’t going to be hit with hefty fees? You can if you transfer your lease to someone else.

Trading a lease is the best option for people who want to terminate a lease early and don’t want to pay the large termination imposed by most lease agents. 

It can also be an alternative to get out of a lease for far less than you would otherwise pay your original lease company for extra mileage and wear-and-tear charges that can run into the thousands of dollars. 

For a small fee, you can advertise your car lease for assumption to a large number of potential buyers on the look-out for leases on the Internet. Such services include LeaseTrader, the originator of online lease-trading and the biggest online marketplace where most lease transfers take place, and smaller marketplaces .

Before swapping your lease, make sure your leasing company approves lease transfer transactions. Caution must be exercised in choosing a lease swapping service: make sure they facilitate the whole lease transfer process, offer online or telephone customer-service help and registered buyers undergo stringent credit checks.

Lease Financing

For auto-consumers, crunching the numbers is one of the most difficult and confusing aspects of leasing.Take the finance charge on a lease for instance.

Most people just don’t understand how this is calculated on capitalised cost AND residual value instead of just the capitalised cost.

For most, it seems plainly obvious, just as is the case when purchasing, that a charge should be levied on the capitalised cost of the vehicle.

Well, no quite! When you lease a car, you’re only using the car over a specified period of time with the option of buying the car. The residual value represents the “loan balance” at the end of the lease.

If you add it to the capitalized cost and divide by two, you’ll get the average capitalized cost outstanding over the lease term.

Let us suppose you’re leasing a car with a capitalized cost of $25,000 and a residual value of  $15,000. You average balance over the lease term, irrespective of how long it is, is $20,000 – the sum of the two divided by two -.

Using this sum works because the money factor is the annual interest rate devided by 24, rather than 12. Continuing with our example and assuming an interest rate of 6% APR:

$30,000 X (6 per cent / 24) = $75

(Capitalized cost + residual value) X (interest rate / 24) = Monthly finance charge.

This finance charge is added to the depreciation charge to calculate the monthly payments on your lease.

Independent Car Lease Companies

To lease, you have two possible choices: either lease through a dealer’sfinance source or through an independent lease company. 

A conventional dealer has a captive finance source, which can be the car manufacturer’s financial company, such as BMW Financial Services, Honda  Motor Credit or General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC), or a major national bank such as Chase Manhattan. 

 Independent lease companies are no financial obligation to any single one manufacturer financing source, but work with dealers anywhere in the country.

So which one is better?

Conventional dealers provide better lease-deals on limited-time promotions. Factory-subsidized cars that have subvented money factors and residuals are very attractive lease deals and can be very hard to beat anywhere else.

Independent lease companies can offer you unbiased and professional advice on vehicle selection regardless of make and model. This is because they are not tied to a single manufacturer or financing source, unlike conventional dealers who have to sell specific models. 

They can also be more flexible regarding negotiating lease terms like residual value and mileage. Ultimately, if you prefer a more personal and customer-oriented relationship with your leasing agent, then you will do well with an independent leasing company.

How to Spot a Good Car Lease ?

Leasing has been lauded as your cheapest ticket to keep up with the industry’s hottest vehicles and trends. The jury, however, is still out on leasing: with the industry long on hype and short on detail, it is difficult to distinguish between a genuinely good deal and a downright up-selling exercise.

So how do you spot a good deal?

First, you need to find out if there are any down payments on the lease. A down payment refers to the lump sum amount that you pay upfront, either in cash, non-cash credit or trading allowance, to reduce your monthly payment.

You should think twice before putting money down on a lease: not only are you getting a rough deal, as you’re essentially forfeiting the general rule of leasing:  not putting any cash upfront, but the money is not recoupable at the end of your lease. There is another big disadvantage: in the event of your car getting damaged or stolen, you insurance and the gap cost will not cover the loss.

Mileage Limit

Most leasing companies allow you a limit of 45,000 free miles over the length of a 3-year lease. This may seem like a good deal at first sight, but when you consider it only comes to 15,000 miles over a 12 month period it’s not difficult to foresee why it might be difficult to stay within this limit.

Even people working from home have little trouble putting 15,000 miles on their cars. If you exceed the mileage limit, the penalty for each excess mile can be as high as 20 cents. This can add up quickly over the length of your lease: an additional 4,000 miles a year over the length of a 3-years lease contract, will end up costing you an extra $2,400 in excess mileage charges!

Be realistic about your mileage needs, especially if you have to regularly commute over long-distances, before you sign the contract. Consider padding the miles that you expect to use since it is less expensive to contract for the extra before you sign than it is to pay the extra charges at end of your lease.

Sales Tax

Sales tax is usually capitalized and added to the monthly payments. However, some dealers choose not to include it in their calculations to drive the advertised lease payments even lower. What they do instead is state in the small print that the monthly payment excludes “sales tax”. 

Make sure you carefully read the fine print for any extra, hidden costs not included in the advertised monthly payment. Unscrupulous fees that typically slip through the cracks include sales tax, registration and title fees. 

How to Get Out of a Lease Before Your Contract Expires ?

 

When your lease is up, you can simply turn in the keys and lease another car or buy a new one. But how about getting out before the lease ends? Maybe you can’t afford the sky-high payments on that silky Jaguar JX V6 model anymore or you’ve just had a baby and you need a larger and more spacious vehicle?

Unfortunately getting out of a lease is not as easy as getting in! A leasing contract is difficult and expensive to terminate early. Simply turning in the keys and walking away from a lease can result in stiff penalties. You credit could be ruined and you could even get sued for breach of contract.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. Actually, there is a number of options available to you. You can sell the car yourself and pay off the bank. This can be cost effective if the market value of the car is close to the buy-out number. 

Do not hesitate to exercise this option even at a loss if it happens to be lower than the termination fee. Your best option, though, is to transfer your lease for someone who would “assume it” and take it off your hands. There is a whole set of potential buyers looking for short-term leases without all the hassle and extra costs. 

Check with family and friends or use the services of lease-assumption websites, like swapalease.com, to list your car. Make sure you check the credit worthiness of the new lessee and provide the car in good condition.