How To Power a Car Subwoofer Without a External Amplifier

A car subwoofer need lots of rms power to produce hard hitting bass, if you dont have an amplifier or you dont want to buy it, then you can wire your car subwoofer to the head unit, but you will have to sacrifice a rear or front speaker in your car. Wiring a subwoofer to the head unit will power your car subwoofer without any problems, but your subwoofer will not play bass really loud because most aftermarket and stock head units produce like 25 watts rms on each channel. Hooking you sub to your deck will make the sub not play exact bass frequencies below 100Hz, as the head unit will send mids and highs frequencies to the subwoofer.

To wire your car subwoofer to your head unit, connect the speaker wire to the car subwoofer and remove a rear speaker connection thats connected with the speaker connections on the headunit plug. To get access to the headunit plug, you will need to remove the head unit from the cars dashboard using din tools. Once you have disconnected the connections that provide sound to a rear speaker in your car, run your subwoofer cable through your cars interior and connect the subwoofer cable to the rear speaker connection on the car head unit wiring plug. When you have made the connections to the subwoofer, use insulation tape to cover up any exposed braid of the speaker wires; this is to prevent crackling to occur.

Once you have done that your subwoofer will be powered with the built in amplifier inside the head unit. To optimize the bass response of the subwoofer, turn down the treble to the lowest level and turn up the bass to the maximum level. To cancel out the mids and high frequencies that are sent to the car subwoofer altogether, install a crossover over with a low pass filter in line with the subwoofer and head unit. 

To make you subwoofer play bass loud and hit harder, you can disconnect another rear or front speaker and bridge the channels on the head unit. This will allow your head unit to produce more power for you sub. Head unit bridging can actually damage the amplifier inside it because the internal amplifier inside it can overheat. So i suggest you place a cooling fan on the rear of the headunit to blow cool air inside it.

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What Causes a Car Exhaust To Backfire

A car exhaust that is backfiring is caused because of the engine is misfiring. If the exhaust on your car is backfiring, the cause why it is backfiring can be because of damaged spark plugs. Damaged spark plugs can cause poor timing to occur to your cars engine, which can be one cause why a car exhaust can backfire. So i suggest you examine all the spark plugs that are currently in your cars engine, if they look bad and then replace them.

The air filter inside your car engine can also be blocked, which can be the cause to your car to backfire. A blocked air filter can cause misfiring and poor fuel consumption. So locate were the air filter is in your cars engine, remove it and clean it if necessary. To give it a quick clean, rinse the air filter under warm water, which will get rid of all the grease.

If you have replaced the spark plugs and have also clean out the air filter and the car is still backfiring, then the timing belt or chain inside your cars engine needs replacing. If you have not changed it for a while, what can happen is the teeth on the belt can be worn out, which can cause the car exhaust and engine to backfire, due to poor timing. So head your local garage to get the timing belt or chain inspected.

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What are The Symptoms Of a Dirty Blocked Car Air Filter

If the air filter inside your car is blocked you will notice that your car needs a refuel of fuel more often at your petrol station. A blocked air filter reduces the amount of fuel consumption of your cars engine produces because the air filter prevents a reduced amount air flow that is required for your cars engine, if the filter is blocked with dirt it cant allow air to flow freely.

A blocked car air filter can show symptoms of reduce performance of the cars engine. If you car doesnt accelerate correctly and is jerky when doing so, then the car air filter may need replacing. If a car air filter is blocked with dirt, it cant allow the required amount of air into your cars engine,  therefore reducing the performance of the engine.

Another symptom that indicates a car air filter is dirty and blocked, is if you hear unusual noises when you car is at idle. Noises such as: coughing or spitting when your car is during idle can indicate the car air filter inside the engine needs replacing. The reason why you can hear them strange noises is because the cars engine is not gaining the correct amount of airflow.

If your car gets any of the listed symptoms above, you probably need to change the air filter.

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How To Make Your Own Car Sat Nav Have More Reliability

Does your car sat nav always let you down when you need it? Well I have some top tips that will increase the reliability of your sat nav when you hit the road, tips which I use for my own car sat nav that I want to share.

1)Always check if there is any software updates available for you sat nav, as you might have a really out of date software version running on your sat nav. Older software versions have older maps, which can reflect on the reliability of your sat nav guiding you to the correct way. For example: if a new road was created in 2011 and the maps for the sat nav are created in 2009, the you sat nav will not guide you on that road, leaving you puzzled. To update the software on most sat navs, all you need is a computer with a internet connection, a disc that is supplied and a usb cable, to connect your sat nav to your computer via usb port.  If you own a TomTom, I have a brilliant blog post explaining instructions on how to update the software on it, which is below:

2)Make sure you don’t leave the sat nav charger behind when taking it on long motorway journeys because the battery life will die on you, making it unreliable. Using a fully charged sat nav without plugging it into a car charger, is ideal for local journeys, but for long distances.

3)Double check the address of the detestation your are wanting to go to, a wrong address can make you annoyed and blame the sat nav and saying it is not reliable for you.

4)Make sure the sat nav is placed near the front car window because it can find more gps satellites. Placing the sat nav on your car seat or in your hand will block incoming gps signal from the satellites, therefore you sat nav could lose route calculation.

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