Car
Jeep TJ
The Jeep TJ is a version of the Jeep Wrangler made between 1997 and 2006. It's popular for off-roading and has a tough look that many people like.
Term
JT radio
The JT radio is the sound system in the Jeep Gladiator. Upgrading it can give you better sound and more features for your music and navigation.
Term
eight point four display
The eight point four display is a big touchscreen in some Jeep vehicles that shows maps, music, and other information. It's a way to control many features of the car easily.
Car
Jeep Grand Cherokee
The Jeep Grand Cherokee is a type of SUV that is good for both driving on regular roads and off-road adventures. It's popular because it has a lot of features that make it comfortable and fun to drive.
Brand
Stellantis
Stellantis is a big car company that makes many different brands of cars, like Jeep and Dodge. It was created when two companies joined together.
Brand
Alpine
Alpine is a car brand from France that makes sporty cars. They are known for being light and fun to drive.
Term
Apple CarPlay
Apple CarPlay lets you use your iPhone in your car. You can see your apps, get directions, and listen to music on your car's screen, making it easier to stay connected while driving.
Term
Android Auto
Android Auto lets you connect your Android phone to your car. You can use your favorite apps, get directions, and listen to music right from your car's screen, making it safer and easier to drive while staying connected.
Car
Jeep Wrangler
The Jeep Wrangler is a tough vehicle made for driving on rough terrains like mountains and trails. People love it because it can be personalized in many ways and is great for outdoor adventures.
Car
Jeep Wagoneer
The Jeep Wagoneer is a big SUV that tries to be fancy and compete with other luxury cars. It has a long history, but some people think its new versions haven't done a great job.
Term
beefy axles
Beefy axles are strong axles used in cars that need to carry heavy loads or go off-road. They are tougher than regular axles and help the vehicle perform better in tough conditions.
Company
Yukon
Yukon is a brand that makes parts for trucks and cars, especially gears and axles. They are popular among people who want to improve their vehicles' performance.
Company
Dana Spicer
Dana Spicer is a company that makes important parts for cars, especially the parts that help them move, like axles. They are known for making strong and reliable components.
Concept
restyle package
A restyle package is a way to change the look of a car. It includes different parts that make the car look newer or different, like new lights or body shapes.
Part
U-joint
A U-joint is a part in cars that helps connect different parts of the drive system, allowing them to move at different angles. This is important for the car's wheels to turn while the driveshaft spins.
Part
drive shaft
The drive shaft is a part of the car that helps it move by sending power from the engine to the wheels. It's important for making the car go, especially in off-road vehicles.
Company
Stinger
Stinger is a company that makes accessories for cars, especially things that help with sound systems and electrical setups.
Company
DS18
DS18 is a brand that makes audio gear for cars, like speakers and amplifiers, helping people improve the sound in their vehicles.
Term
head unit
The head unit is like the car's stereo system. It's where you control the music and other audio features in the car.
Term
steering wheel controls
These are buttons on the steering wheel that let you control things like music and phone calls without having to reach for the dashboard.
Term
amp
An amp is a device that makes the sound in your car louder and clearer. It helps power the speakers so you can hear the music better.
Car
Jeep Gladiator
The Jeep Gladiator is a truck that looks a lot like a Jeep, which means it's built for tough outdoor driving. It's special because it can carry things in the back like a regular truck but also has the fun features of a Jeep.
Term
sound system
A sound system in a car is what plays your music and sounds. It includes speakers and other parts that make the music sound good, and some cars have better systems than others.
Term
central nervous system
The 'central nervous system' in cars is like the brain that controls everything. It helps the car perform well and can adjust things like speed and safety features automatically.
Car
Ford Model T
The Ford Model T is one of the first cars that many people could actually afford. It changed how cars were made and helped more people get around easily.
Term
death wobble
Death wobble is a scary shaking that can happen in some vehicles, especially off-road ones like Jeeps. It usually happens when parts of the vehicle are not working well together, making it hard to drive safely.
LIVE
SFJ 4x4 Studios presents, in my oversized four-wheel drive Jeep.
A Jeep podcast starring industry experts, curminosity, with mad scientists Scott Brown, use my drill
press as a sort of lathe.
Good morning, afternoon, evening, wherever, however, you are joining us.
This is the I Speak Jeep podcast, and after three or pushing four years, we still don't
know how to use the countdown clock in our studio.
I think the batteries might be dead in the remote.
There is always something.
It doesn't matter whether it's our producer, the Italian stallion, or it is the savage
Davey Thompson.
Neither of them know how to use the actual countdown timer in the clock or in the studio.
I don't know.
So here we are fighting with this.
Is he using the countdown timer when you guys do your YouTube video?
No, he just fights with it.
I mean, we've tried it.
Because I had it set to remember the time every week, and it hasn't been remembering,
OK, he saw an exit strategy.
He saw it.
He said, Jeff, I'm wondering if I had something to do with why, because I remember a while
ago he played with settings and it was doing alarms at us.
I think that's all I'm going off of is from a while ago.
My name is Neil with SFJ 4x4 Simpson Family Jeeps.
And I am in Grandma's Count studio where we can't figure out our clock to save
our life.
And I'm joined, obviously, as I've already mentioned, the Italians down the producer,
Jeff Chiaromonte.
Hello.
And I'm the Madness Mad Scientist, Scott Brown.
And I love that we've got our winter wheeling, tis the season to be wheeling.
Well, with that negative windshield we're supposed to be getting, that makes sense.
There's a cold snap coming across much of the US over the next week or so.
Did you get the emergency alert on Saturday?
I did.
I did not.
I was out of the area.
So because of my proximity, yeah, because I was out of the area, I actually
didn't qualify.
They didn't push it to my phone.
Isn't that interesting?
Yeah.
But if you want to hear about those weekend things and the craziness of everybody
getting these and why, because my wife has a bit of a Jeep experience
with her national weather advisory that happened on Saturday.
Stay tuned to the outro credits for us to talk about our weekend foyers.
For now, we're going to be talking today.
We're going to be talking about sound systems.
We're going to be locked in on gladiators, but much of the information
we'll be sharing with you is pertinent to Jeep production in the last 20 years.
And that's a big word to say 20 years.
That is huge.
Think about the fact that it is 2006.
And quite frankly, the JK, if we go back in our way, our way back time machine,
the production of the JK 20 years ago would be starting to roll down.
And certainly the the engineers paper trail line.
But the the factory line would be starting to produce JKs by, you know,
in the next few months, 20 years ago, you're trying to make make my feelings
be hurt here. Yeah, it's something, right?
I'm just going to read comments real quick, especially because
Nate was not first today.
He's not even in the comments yet.
Daddy Jeep is first.
He says, hey, guys, and then got Jag of Jeep are saying good morning.
Jeannie saying hello.
Everyone stay warm today.
Billy Joe saying good morning, everyone.
Jag of Jeep are saying I got stuck out in that squall on the way to
and over from Chardon Goodtimes and Charles saying good morning for my cold Texas.
And that is relative for so many of us.
I was going to say he says cold Texas, but I was literally talking
to my in-laws and Amarillo over the weekend and it was 60 degrees on Sunday.
So I had a great conversation.
I don't know what part of Texas he's in.
I know Texas is huge.
Robin Teresa in Florida, regular listeners and obviously good supporters
and bringing their Jeep to us and whatnot, talking with them last week.
I think it was 72 degrees.
And they were complaining of cold.
A cold, a breezy 72.
They're going to get jackets.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, you know, I love it.
Love it. And obviously, as this global podcast is,
really, nobody is as cold as Antarctica.
And somebody there should be listening to this podcast.
I will I will give Charles that it is 28 where he's out in Texas right now.
That's fair. That's actually pretty cold.
That's cold. Yeah, I feel that.
But what's it going to be at 2 p.m.
this afternoon? Let's be realistic.
It's probably going to heat up to 60 degrees.
I don't think we're going to hit 28 today.
No, no, be balmy in the in the Midwest.
We would have our shirts off and be barbecuing Midwest.
Well, I did tell Chris and we were actually going to get some Midwest winds
today and tomorrow with that negative 20 windshield,
because when we lived in Iowa, that was that negative 20 was a warm wind.
Nice.
It got cold out there.
Love it. Love it.
Well, as we mentioned, we are going to be talking about sound systems.
And I think there is a valuable enough transition here opportunity.
It is certainly as somebody who is a purveyor of old crappy jeeps
and obviously cut my teeth in old wind noise jeeps.
Objectively, when the top is off, having a good sound system is imperative, right?
And so your top is off, your windows are up,
you're huddling by the heater as you're driving through that that cold night chill.
Oh, he's talking about the the the snow.
You don't because you're authentically a hard top owner,
even when you have, you know, soft top equipped jeeps,
you know, turning and cranking that music up becomes a degree of therapy
and escapism to escape the misery of the cold.
There's warmth in the music because now you're belting out the song with it
and you're grooving to it.
So you're warming up a little bit.
100 percent. I'm with Scott doesn't know what we're talking about.
I have an idea, especially because all that Scott listens to is oldies
from the from the thirties to the fifties.
There's some good classics in there.
I'll give him that. But I do.
When Scott and I first met, he listened to like super heavy stuff
and alt rock music and I think your stereo says otherwise.
I love that a song from like Lincoln Park or Disturbed or any of these
heavy metal ones. And he's just like, those are pretty lyrics.
That was I think that was specifically over corn.
Corn. That's even better.
No, it wasn't over corn.
Correcting you guys, you have to keep your sublime.
No, no, no, it was it was the other folks who have.
Oh, it was the throat singers.
The.
La, la, la, la.
It was the throat singers.
It was the it was a Norse or whatever.
It was it was.
No, it wasn't. Yeah. Well, whatever.
I don't believe them till he tells us now.
All right. Anywho.
So we're going to be unpacking that.
And this was actually at a loose.
We were we were kind of throwing around a couple of ideas.
And we had a customer who was in and Jeff kind of off the cuff asked them
and and said, you know, why don't you talk about this kind of stuff?
And I literally said, hey, I hate to put you on the spot,
but we don't have a topic for our podcast on Monday.
What would you like us to talk about?
And he goes, oh, that is on the spot.
I don't know if I can come up with anything.
And then promptly, like, within seconds goes.
But I'd love to know more about sound systems.
He did without. I was like, all right.
Well, that's our topic. Missing a beat.
Also, Rob Morgan has told me the throat singers are the who.
Not the who of the previous.
No, not W. H.O.
Right. That H.U.
The H.U. is correct.
But that is not who has.
I said this is who's on first and what's on second now.
This is becoming incredibly confusing for any listeners at home.
And I for listeners are not confused.
Greg could would be able to just pop it off.
That's that's because he remembers that moment.
I find joy in it, but it was Slipknot.
I wanted to say they had masks on.
And yeah, I wanted to say they had masks on.
You were two years old when you compared the H.U.
Who with Slipknot?
I but I remember the throat singers first immediately came out.
Your wife was very enamored with them as well.
We do like them. Yeah. OK.
So when you are not listening to this music,
because every time I get into your Jeep, you're listening to soft oldies.
How do we go about?
How do we go about as a business and individuals evaluating
the sound systems produced in the last 20 years?
And I want to give credit where credit's due.
And I want to say that
the mothership has as I I'm biased.
I need everybody to know that I believe that the mothership does.
OK, first and foremost, I suppose I need to set the stage.
I believe that original equipment manufacturing OEM
is a an immovable boulder in a uphill battle.
OK, I mean, I think it makes me sad to say that we're going to talk
two seconds about vintage radios and it's J.K.'s we're talking about.
But something that a lot of people don't know.
And we literally had a phone call while you guys were in on the American Hustle.
So that's why I feel like this is pertinent.
For those that don't know, J.K.'s are vin locked on the radio.
Yes, yes. If you go and you know, your buddies upgraded
and got the stereo sitting on the shelf
because you didn't want to throw things away and you go and put in your Jeep.
The Jeep will say, no, you do not pass code to not collect $200.
You have to have a four pin code.
Yes, which back in the day, you had to go to the dealership and get
and you had to prove ownership and all this stuff.
And and you want to be like, hey, this radio isn't good enough for all this bullcrap.
I'm going to I'm going to go a step further back in the day.
Depending on the reputation of the shop,
the shop could also get that pin number depends.
Yeah, it didn't have to necessarily be.
Well, we used to get the pin number all the time.
Correct. That's just now.
Spade, spade.
Now it's a lock sealed under key.
Signed 20 different confidentiality agreements
and you might get a hint at what that number is.
And we're getting to the age where honestly,
they're not going to have that information nor care about the information.
Right. The Jeep sell well, though.
So and and J.K. Radio suck.
Terrible, the CD changes would break.
All kinds of stuff would happen.
I love that you went to CD changer.
And and I am one of those people that was weird.
And I like to upgrade my stereo and my Jeep to the best that model had.
Like when I had my LJ, I put the six disc
to the changer radio in the dash.
And of course, it was a TJ.
So it was like, cool, I work right on my J.K.
I went from the two knob radio.
It wasn't the base base radio, but it was like the next one up to the GPS.
Equipped radio had to, you know, pat my head, jump up and down.
It was the start of the you can access them.
Yeah. And it was terrible.
And then for them on my Jeep, as far as like serious
and all that was concerned was a different Jeep.
Yeah, the number they showed was different.
The year was different, which blows my mind that that was such a challenge.
Right. So because of that, I've actually looked into what would it
take to upgrade my JT radio and someone somewhere must is listening.
And if you go and you spend all the dollars
and you go to the dealership and you go, I want the best radio I can get.
So on my truck again, it's not the base base like Jeff has.
Right. But it would be you're looking to upgrade to the eight point four display.
If I wanted to go to eight point four and I bought that from the dealership,
I could pull it out of the box in the parking lot, take my dash apart,
plug it in and boom, it'll work.
Right. But then that new unit then remembers the Jeep from there on.
If I understand it correctly, might be wrong, might be right.
I don't know. I haven't actually done it because I'm cheap and that radio upgrade is not.
And that radio upgrade is not in that formal fashion.
And mine is terrible.
Right. So therefore, if I was in Jeff's shoes, I would have upgraded like 14 years ago.
Well, so and to piggyback and kind of go back to where my sentiment was with the OEM,
being a immovable boulder in an uphill battle,
I do think that they are responsive to the community
in continuing to improve sound systems every single model.
They do care about that, right?
And they do care.
And they as as we've always said, they test bed in other models.
So the Grand Cherokee always gets like a premium sound system.
And then eventually we see it roll out into our more utilitarian models.
So with with that said, we've seen over the years, this this dance.
It's kind of this romance.
Think about like a rom-com where there's a room of, you know, dancers.
And there's this kind of, I guess, is we're close enough to Valentine's Day.
There's this this love that you can't have.
And that's how I feel like Stellantis is with Alpine.
They like dance with Alpine and then like send them back off to the corner
and then dance with Alpine and send the next developer and send them off.
Are there any other women, though?
They don't want to actually say they're with Alpine.
Correct. Correct.
We don't want to spin. It's a masquerade ball.
You know what I mean?
They can only dance with them.
Like a mistress.
Right. Right.
With the mask on.
I just got to jump back to the comments real quick.
We had Red jump in.
So he said, what's up?
We had Leslie say, good morning.
Bill said he carried around his Alpine so it doesn't get stolen.
But not the faceplate, the whole thing.
That's right.
If you were around for the faceplate thing, you'll understand that.
And then you got Daddy Jeep saying, wait, you guys have radios?
Well, I understand that you may have disabled one this weekend.
So we'll have to talk about that.
Then it got Jaya Jeepers saying my J.K.
Radio is junk.
J.T. Radio is pretty nice.
No comparison at all.
Yep.
Diana said, happy Monday.
And then Tony said, you need the radio
to drown out all the concerning noises.
That's fair. Which PSA, we do not recommend you just turning up
the radio louder, but we do know that the vast majority
of average vehicle owners do repair their vehicle that way
by just turning that radio up.
Oh, and Charles put CarPlay in the 95.
OK.
That's that's an upgrade.
That's a big upgrade.
And I don't know that we're in exactly touch base on that.
But I do think that Apple CarPlay and Android Auto
is a big part of today's general consumer mindset.
It's a selling point on radios.
I mean, they literally big, bold marketing
comes with CarPlay, comes with Android Auto.
I do feel a little bit like a battered person, though,
because the JKU Connect was terrible compared to my wife's
just slightly newer Subaru at the time.
And now, again, she has a slightly newer Subaru
and she gets in and her phone and her radio are just friends
and you don't have to hook up any cords.
Yes.
And you can use Android Auto and see where you're going.
I'm going to go go ahead and now I have a newer phone
and my phone actually comes up and says, hey, I see you have Android Auto.
But I'm not actually going to talk to it without hooking up a cord.
And so here's the thing, I'm going to go back to Rob's statement
and be like, wait, you guys have radios?
Because I think that that part of that immovable object
is at its highest level.
Jeep is still not concerned with those kind of those
nuanced little attributes that that more luxury
auto manufacturer does concern them.
We're like the middle child.
We get all the hand downs from the grand.
The poor compass and, you know,
Patriot would be owners get the then the head me downs from the Wrangler.
Sure. But we're always behind at least 10 years.
But even but I think that there's an argument to be made to say
that the auto manufacturer themself, right, themself.
And when they tiptoe into luxury brand identity
and to the Wagoneer, they fall absolutely flat on their face.
Absolutely. I've been doing a bunch of research and homework
for an upcoming YouTube video regarding why buying vehicles right now
and not selling and so on and so forth.
And so I really think that this is a top down problem
from the brand itself, whereas we certainly know some import manufacturers,
certainly Asian markets who are highly tech integrated with high functionality.
And we as Stalantis have absolutely no Asian market influence.
And we also don't have the the upper end European influence per se, right?
Well, we're not lighting the world on fire with Fiat
and right now back in the day.
Right. So regardless,
the I do think in the grand scheme of single then and the double then
in the then and a half garbage that we had in the 90s, the 80s, the 90s.
If we if we stay away from that contextualization
that Scott and I love to get into that stuff was the worst.
Yes. And and other than the fact that it was easy to rip out
and put in your own car while driving down the road.
Your buddies change it out the head.
Greg tells that story all the time that I may have installed a stereo
in our college parking lot while waiting for my wife.
I've absolutely done it right on it.
You know, it's it's it was so easy back then.
Yeah, correct. Not anymore.
And and they're integrated now.
Correct. And yet at that time, it still sucked the the power through
the wires, the speakers themselves.
We really did have to approach the the the whole stereo system.
Now we can actually just get into the the head unit.
And we just do the head unit and create some vast improvements to
the inner system.
So what what are some of those things that we've been doing?
And I'm going to pull no punches and I'm going to say that we are a heavy
Alpine business. Yes.
I I just I just put that out not to say that Alpine is the only system
that works, but it works the best for integration in Jeep.
Because that's what they used originally, it just didn't tell you.
And that way they had sort of a backdoor information
and, you know, they're already used to seeing each other with the mask on.
So when the mask comes off and even if there is some dissenters out there
who are like, well, it's not exactly Alpine, blah, blah, blah, you know what?
There is a degree of relativity of at a certain level behind closed doors
of engineers who are shaking hands and sharing information.
Yes. And an Alpine plays that golf game.
That is correct. That is absolutely correct.
It's not Stinger. It's not insane audio. OK.
I don't there's just nothing you can tell me to to to that's
irrefutable conversation information.
Yeah. Now, does Stinger make a nicely integrated
stereo? It does.
Did insane audio come on strong under the JK namesake?
Absolutely. And they did have insider information.
I promise you that that's how they came and kind of blew up under the JK.
And in that same regard,
DS 18 is another one that has made a big name in Jeep.
Yeah, but they've had to do a little bit of reverse engineering.
Correct. And DS 18 does not have a head unit that integrates
in any capacity, like the three that I just mentioned. Correct.
Again, these are lines in sands that that cannot be crossed.
Correct. And the newer the Jeep, the more counseling the Jeep needs
when you go to change the head unit so that it feels good about it.
Right. It actually works.
DS 18 can and I'm sorry.
I just want to American base or American sound bar DS 18.
They can do stereo infrastructure.
Excuse me. There's a speaker infrastructure.
Correct. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker amp pods, you know, all that kind of stuff.
That's awesome. We need them to do that because realistically,
Alpine cares a lot about their stereos and not a lot
and speaker quality, but not a lot about how you're going to fit it
into your vehicle. Right. That's that's the minutia. Right.
Yeah, they've got a little pod this and you can replace the speakers.
That I would like to put a sub in it.
Why? Right. Yeah.
I mean, and I love it.
It reminds me a lot of like Dana Spicer.
OK. Yes. Dana Spicer knows that they are the king of the hill.
And they have the equity and the the the building.
We've seen the torture tests.
We know what they do.
They have a hundred years worth of of of business model to pull upon.
Right. But sometimes they're like, well, why would you want to do that?
Correct. And we're thankful for, you know, our friend,
Zach, who's at, you know, the top end of of of his department over there going,
no, we need these beefy axels.
This is what the industry wants to hear.
This is what they want to do.
But there was a period of time 20 some years ago where they were a vacuum
from the market and Yukon was this no name, you know,
derivative of of Randy's ring opinion, who was able to become the gear
and axle gurus simply because Dana Spicer didn't, you know,
they did dirty their hands with the aftermarket of sorts.
And so enter the relationship Alpine,
Dana being of similar capacity at their heyday and and Yukon,
Randy's ring opinion and and say DS 18 at the heyday.
And that's the extent of where that comparison goes away.
Right. How you can tell on the businesses like that,
you go on their website and you go, how easy can I find information?
If they're kind of old and my way is away and and that like Dana up
until I'm going to say five years ago would give you a hand catalog.
Yes. Now, some old gurus are like, heck, yeah,
I love my paper catalog. That's great. Yes.
But every year you got to get a new catalog because stuff, you know,
yeah, you're using a catalog from 2014.
Yeah, I literally use the other times where they send you the new catalog,
but there's already data in it. That's wrong. We're outdated.
Yep. So it's just it doesn't work well in our fast paced world.
And someone is missing the boats saying, well, why in the world would you want
anything but a paper catalog? I feel that way a little bit with Alpine as well.
You go to their websites and be like, oh, this is a company.
This is how we do things. We're not telling you anything else.
You buy this restyle package, which is where, you know,
which is what they came to the table with.
They said, because we're so cumbersome to navigate,
hence the ultimate axle package with Dana.
Yeah, you're going to do this.
You're going to do it in the complete fashion in which we provide you that
information. Just like the ultimate Dana axle program with you again,
JK, our classic JKs, almost vintage at this point, folks.
You get your ultimate axle, you take it out of the box,
you're all excited and you go sweet and you go, what in the world is this
stabilized your bracket for? Yes. And why do I have it?
Well, it's no different with the Alpine. You take about, you get it,
you get out of the box and go, oh, well, I need this cord.
There's literally a packet of wires that every time I do an install on a JK
for an Alpine, I just grab this packet and throw it because it doesn't belong in the Jeep.
Yes. It's just there to make you wonder why it's there.
It's, well, it's there because there is other applications that you could use
for, but in a standard application, it's not required.
And it literally just needs to be tossed.
The brass tax of it is it just doesn't make it easy for Joe average
in his garage to do it anymore.
You can't sit in the parking lot of your local community college
and put your stereo in, grab the install kit and you're just changing out a wire
plug harness and teeing it in and you're done.
And as we kind of continue to contextualize the culture around these products
and we really do got to get back onto the product itself, it does.
It is reminiscent of my own experience and what kind of put SFJ on the map was
I looked at AutoZone specifically
and you could walk into AutoZone and you'd say, I have a 97 Wrangler
and I need a U-joint auto auto or stick.
Four cylinder, six cylinder.
Yeah. But besides that point,
they would relatively then produce a U-joint across the counter.
Yes. Eight times out of ten.
It's the correct part. Eight times out of ten.
Unless you have a 95. No doubt.
Right. But but but but they would they would produce this part.
You didn't really have to know the the specialized
information about that specific part.
Now, if you were at a drive line shop, you're going to go in,
you're going to say, hey, I have a 97 Jeep.
They're going to go, OK, where's the drive shaft?
Let me measure it with my, you know, do you have a 1310?
Do you have a 13? Right.
And so ultimately, objectively, our goal, my goal specifically was to break down
and make selling this technically heavy components or parts,
which were better, make it easier for the average consumer to consume it.
Right. And that's that's ultimately one of the things that put our business
on the map originally.
And I think that that's where DS18 and Stinger
and maybe a American soundbar excel in going, hey, we're going to make it easy for you.
And and and as you bring up the website conversation and the catalog conversation,
whereas there are brands that are like, well, we make the best possible
product and you might need to use it in these three finite situations.
Yeah. And so we need to now make it more convoluted to buy it from us.
Yes. Yes.
And so Alpine being one of them.
Now, we spent a lot of time on that.
I want to then also share that you connect and Chrysler fall into that category as well.
Oh, so much.
It's highly technical and specific to these outlying.
And there's a you connect module that if you're upgrading,
depending on what you're using, the upgrade, you may have to disconnect
that you connect module.
And if you don't, your phone won't pair like Scott experiences.
But that isn't why you are experiencing it.
Yeah, that's just that's one of those situations.
There's a lot of if this than that stuff that just doesn't make it easy
to judge and before you could literally just pop out the head unit,
put a new head unit in and everything works.
Now you have to program the head units.
You have to make them compatible with the vehicle.
You have to tell it, hey, does it have steering wheel controls?
Does it have volume buttons?
Does it have phone controls?
Yeah, it doesn't have a sub.
Do you do you want to change what these buttons do?
Do you want the buttons to do this instead of that?
Yes. And then do you have it?
Do you have an amp?
Do you have a powered sub?
Do you have any of these extra things?
There's a situation where if you have some of these,
you actually reverse the wires on the speakers.
Otherwise, it won't work.
Yeah.
And again, and I think it's always kind of been the case,
at least with the TJ and newer, if you have factory upgraded sound,
if you have like the best sound they thought they could give you in that
model year, it's harder for you to upgrade after market wise.
Less and less as you go older, older.
But like I know we dealt with a Gladiator had basically the top of the line
sound system had the eight four had a sub had an amp had the upgraded speakers
as far as they were concerned and try it was literally the concept of well,
why would you want to replace this?
And they made it harder to do that.
We're doing like your truck is probably easier because assess for
the head unit size because the truck just doesn't care as much.
So I would love to say that that's true, but it's not.
The truck still cares because it still has some of those modules and
everything and the integration.
It's just more to click the buttons when it has more.
Well, and I think that and mine does have all the steering wheel controls.
So all of that has to get programmed.
Yeah, and the thing is, you can't as part of that programming,
you're not programming it on the head unit.
There's a separate module that you need a computer with internet access.
So you can program all of this on there and it flashes that module.
Then you have to connect that module to the head unit and hope that those two
communicate well, then you plug it into the Jeep and hope that it communicates
well there. It's a multi step process.
I think it's important in the way that I recognize it is that the Jeeps,
our modern Jeeps, since, you know, since the middle of the JK have
a central nervous system that is capable of doing.
It's capable of going five miles per hour or it's capable of
going 100, 100 miles per hour and Jeffries Jeep, as an example,
having a base model interior package and sound package is running at five
five miles per hour.
However, with a few tweaks, it can run at 100 miles per hour.
Just the same because the central nervous system is the same.
It is shared.
They're not changing out those factors as the vehicle progresses
down the assembly line.
It literally has to do with a few added modules and the programming
of some blank software, meaning we back in the JK used to add
a rear windshield wiper to a non hard top equipped JK.
So if you if you bought a soft top JK from the factory,
you lacked a button in the center console at button and special switch
on the stock on the on the multifunction change those and you
literally got a wiring kit and you would they would say find this
plug, you know, take the lock out of it, insert this wire in
pin cavity, blah, and then you're basically patching the
harness so it's like a factory hard top Jeep.
Yep.
And then you had to have it flashed.
You had to go to the dealer and have them use the star
network and tell it that it had a rear wiper, otherwise it
would not park.
It would just keep keep wiping.
And so that central nervous system with the addition of a
multifunction switch, a hard toggle and a basically a single
wire. Now all of a sudden can be capable of a rear, rear
windshield wiper.
And that's actually a good example too of what we've
previously said.
They then updated that kit so that you didn't have to have
flash anymore.
But now it is a more standalone on its own stuff.
So basically now, instead of it integrating into the Jeep,
you're just adding an accessory.
It's more like you put a light on your your pillar and now
you have a separate switch, separate wiring and a separate
relay.
That's what they basically went to.
Correct.
You're bypassing that central nervous right?
Yes.
Now you don't have one of the things that we really
enjoyed as as a business is, and I've said this once,
I'll say it a hundred times.
The the thing that makes me the proudest is that if if after
we're done with the service, you didn't know that we were ever
in your vehicle, I couldn't be happier, right?
On otherwise disclosed.
It's so funny you say that because with the restyles,
especially on the JKs, we literally cut a section of your
dash out.
We remove thought we remove your dash, we cut a section
off, throw it away and put the restyle package in.
And as part of that, it looks factory 100% and that's a great
segue back into what we do do with gladiator and JL sound
systems of sorts and objectively why we choose.
And again, this is not sponsored by Alpine or isn't any
specific endorsement of their product line.
Our objective is this quality fit and finish.
So single then, double then, then and a half radios that we
could change in a college parking lot or as we rode down the
road, oftentimes to be a little loosey goosey or a screw would
protrude a little too far from this direction.
You guys have friends in high school that too have a head
unit sitting on the transmission tunnel sort of held up with
some bricks or blocks of wood.
And if you took a corner too fast, it ended up in the
pasture.
So I had friends that had that.
I remember they would, you know, or it was a it was a
double then or a din and a half and they just had like a like
a caddywampus bracket and then you had these cavernous holes
above and below it and you could just see into the dash.
Yeah.
And and as a as a teenager, it's whatever.
Right.
But there was absolutely the friends that literally cut out
the dash and it's just look a beaver chewed on it so that
there was enough room for that double then to fit.
Yes.
Yes.
So, you know, by today's modern standards and what I
would say is that there was a population and I'm not saying
it was a majority, but there was a population and I would say
that it was a pretty healthy number.
I might even say it's 45% of people were like, Hey, you
know what?
It's an upgrade over the single then or double then that
stopped working GM's had a horrible experience where they're
just their radio stuff would just jank out because the
stereo sucks so bad.
And you were just like, Hey, you know what?
I'm happy I've got a stereo and now it's got a little
blinky LCD screens.
Yeah.
The dolphins diving black down or it was detachable and you
know, Bill McWilliams conversation.
Then the motorized ones that would come down for the CD.
Yeah, yeah.
So we were just happy to have something I would gather to
say it was 45% and if you had cavernous view into the
dash or it was sitting on a pile of bricks, you know,
you didn't care you had music.
That's not today's market as a whole.
I would say that the pendulum has shifted to say that 80% of
people want a degree of fit and finish out of their product.
Charles said it best.
Teens today don't know how to jerry-rig a stereo system, but
it's not just they can't they can't.
Well, see what happened.
The vehicles are not conducive of the jerry-rigging.
Right.
Right.
Well, that too.
And we grew up watching exhibit, you know, putting
PS2s and built into TVs and all that stuff.
And we're like, Hey, that's cool.
I wish I didn't have bricks holding my stereo up.
I want to do that better.
So now we're older, we're wiser, got a little bit of money to
do it with.
We don't want to do the bricks stuff no more.
We want it to look.
Correct.
Integrate.
We want our phones to be friends with our vehicles.
Right.
Tony, Tony in the comments.
I've definitely never sheet metal screwed a double
din into an S 10 in high school.
I'm sorry, that just hit real hard because I absolutely
say that done.
Sure, you done.
Sure, you done.
Asking for a friend.
So so we have this, this, this cultural experience and
I and the conversation is not just about the head
unit anymore that we've spent a swath of today's
talking points on the head units itself and the
high degree of integration that not only do we
desire as a cultural piece of auto enthusiasts, but that
the central nervous system of the vehicles require for a
degree of functionality.
There was a time and it started with the JK that if
it had the premium sound package, the sub package,
we would do a double din replacement.
We used a lot of DS 18 initially.
I have, you know, I love them as I do love them as
a audio supplier company and it flat out wouldn't
work. It wouldn't work because of the modules that
Jeffrey has mentioned and Scott and Jeffrey have
mentioned for the premium sound package for the amp.
Just no sound would come out of the speakers.
Yep. None bit.
We could have it hooked up 100 percent.
We would have to buy basically a converter.
It was a pack module.
Yep.
Put the pack module in line.
Now all of a sudden boom, we have sound basically.
Yeah.
So we had to tell it that it had this so that would
talk the language.
And we're still finding, even with the JKs with the
Alpine words, got the maestro module that you need
that if we're doing accessory amps and accessory speakers,
that sometimes we still need yet another pack module
to help tell the Jeep that it's OK.
It's very touch and go.
Right. And that is a degree of kind of helping
the Jeep understand a bit of a different language.
It's almost like having an interpreter in the Jeep itself.
This is again the functionality of the Jeep and nervous
system kind of remains unchanged model to model.
Right.
But the language it's speaking from those aftermarket
accessories to then how it plays through the Jeep.
Now, as we as we really kind of have to lock in
on the gladiator conversation of the JL.
And I think it's valuable to touch on the JK because
I know we have a number of our Jeep family who are
big 12 volt accessory fans.
The challenge with 12 volt accessories and modern
vehicles is the high electrical sensitivity of that
vehicle itself.
Right. And Charles, I think, hits on it pretty.
He's he doesn't know that he's hitting on it because
I know he's not into the modern, modern vehicles
like, you know, some of our other customers.
But he's he's mentioned listening to an alternator
through the speakers.
Yep.
The high electrical sensitivity of the JK through the
JLJT series makes it imperative that your hookups
don't disrupt the functioning properties of the
electrical load sensitivity of your vehicle.
And that's a big thing to say that your 12
volt accessories screw up how your Jeep works.
Yes.
And and and you have you can't just add stuff like we
used to with our crappy single day.
And she twists the wires together and put duct tape
on the bad news, bad news, bad news, we're finding
more and more of the sensitivity of that and
where we are soldering connections where we used
to use crimp connections and just because of the
sensitivity in the electronics and with the dual
battery systems of the JLJT platform, you're even
more sensitive to those currents and more involved
and fun PSA.
Don't lose your thoughts.
Don't even listen to me if you have to.
Fun PSA little battery is to retain electrical
sensitivity in the off state.
Big battery is to restart the vehicle each
and every time you either hit the key or the
vehicle releases at the stop start system.
And they work together as a team.
Yes.
So if you replace one, replace both.
And you can eliminate the little guy, but our
current recommendation is you don't.
I also, the NPSA, do you remember what you were
about to say?
Go.
So another thing that's important and relevant
in our topic is with JTs and JLs is trying to
get to your speakers.
There's a whole nother ball game.
If you thought, you know, back in the day, you
got your your TJ, you got your Phillips out, you
took your soul speaker grill off.
Oh, look, there's a speaker.
Hey, it has screws on it.
And yeah, we had some weird sizes and little
can and they were in and you had to get a
bracket and all that kind of stuff.
That was a walk in the park compared to that.
Now things are assembled and stages in a jigsaw puzzle.
And the speakers are like step two and trying to
get them out at step F is is interesting.
And I, you know, that that kind of I'm stuck
on this integration and the manner in which
you add sound system and you add 12 volt
accessories and what you have to do is you have
to circumvent.
You have to go around the jigsaw puzzle, both
the electronic jigsaw puzzle and the physical jigsaw
puzzle or utilizing a product that's been
engineered to integrate.
So if you're not using an expensive, typically
it's expensive integrated product, then you
have to go around it.
And I want to jump to the comments.
Jeanie said, I remember the days when the
converter was bigger than the radio.
I love that Jeanie is over here.
So she is making references of some of her vintage
world, you know, stuff from the historic, the
historic perspective.
And I don't know if Scott can read it, but it's
been great so far.
Oh, I've been loving it.
I haven't been able to read all the comments.
But I do want to point out that what's
interesting about that perspective is even
though with technology, things have gotten
smaller, they're making things more compact
because they're fitting more into the dashes
of the JLJTs, the integration modules
that are required of the JLJT because of how
advanced they are compared to what we're used to.
There's added modules and more of that jigsaw
puzzling. There's a whole new module in the
JLJT platform that wasn't in the JK platform
when you upgrade, especially with the Alpine.
Yes. So you've got your head unit, you've
got another metal box, you got another module
over here. And where do you have put it
all? You got to stuff it all in.
And not to mention the fact that the head
unit actually isn't in the center of the
dash where you think it is when you upgrade
on a JLJT, sometimes it gets moved over
below the steering wheel, which if you're
like my truck and you have an inverter
there, now you have a lot of stuff in a
very small package. The new technology,
the display screen is separate of itself.
That's its own little computer screen,
much like an old desktop computer where
you've got a monitor and a tower.
That is how the new radios work.
Right? It's just a display screen and
then the actual computer, if you will, is
elsewhere. Yeah. Yeah. And I think we got to
keep moving. We've been on the technical
and integration and the head unit side.
I think we do need to talk about stuffing,
you know, 10 pounds into a five pound sack
that is our Jeep model, especially if we
want to continue to use them off road.
We really haven't talked exactly about
that, but I think it's pertinent to
mention. Stop putting amps on the
floor of your Jeep.
You want to see me go on hands on a regular
basis? Stop.
If you go and you pay for a 12 volt company
to install a sound system, I don't care
if they're an off road shop and they put
your amp on the floor of your Jeep, get
your money back under the seat where
it gets wet all the time. All the time.
Do you know how many amps we remove
from the floor of customers Jeeps?
Because they're fried from being wet.
The only time I can think of that we've
actually done that was in the CJ five.
We just simply didn't have anywhere but
that to do that. And we literally had a
council session over it.
And then we brought in the customer and
were like, Listen, this is our option.
This is what we can do for you.
But now you have responsibility because
now it is where it's, it's in its
threatened danger zone.
It's in the danger zone and therefore
you have to not leave your Jeep out to
become an aquarium.
And he was okay, I'm here for it.
Other than that, that other than that,
it's not okay. Yeah, we have literally
built surrounds for amps to help protect
them better with the idea that they're
still in danger zones, but not on the
floor. There are a couple Marine
grade sealed units.
Are you going to get that awesome
no base pounding feel it in your
chest experience? Absolutely not.
And, and thankfully, you know, I
remember when, you know, you had a
cutting board size amp. And if you
needed to, then you have two cutting
boards in the back of the vehicle.
And now about the size of my fist
is a pretty hot amp. Yes, this is
crazy. So they've gotten a lot
smaller. That technology has improved
vastly. You can literally hide them
behind the dash. You can hide them
behind the seats. It's crazy.
You don't look the need to actually
put it on the floor is less and less
as that. Right. And I want to stay
away from some of that. The highly
technical stuff because we've already
done a lot of this this program
today's episode on it. But we've run
into amp functionality. And again,
that's not a beautiful scenario either
because we've had stereo systems
just flat out stop because we've
added amps to them. Yep. You know, JT
stereo systems, JL stereo systems.
We've had them reset themselves for
whatever reason. There's there's
again that load sensitivity is
imperative to consider when adding
12 volt and sound accessories to
your modern vehicle. Not to mention
that just because the amp says it
can go that high doesn't mean your
speakers can doesn't mean that your
head unit can. So you can overload
a circuit real fast by not setting
the parameters correctly by not
measuring the RMS and making sure
that that matches across the system.
There's a lot of extra factors in
it that most people don't
consider isn't going to Walmart
anymore. No, 1130 and deciding
this is a speaker they have. I'll
make it fit. Get not your 10 snips
shoving it in a hole. Right. And
the heck with the RMS and the
rating and that kind of stuff.
Not to mention Walmart's not open
1130 anymore. I know. Wow.
It's so different. So outside of the
marine grade componentry that I would
recommend if you are in a an off
road or a high risk environment to
second vent. Okay. Why does all marine
grade electronics have to be white?
Why? Why? Why? It does. I mean, it's
trying. It was the attempt to
differentiate from the
manufacturing standpoint that I
think it has more to do with the
boating folks than it does us.
Give me a logo. It says I'm marine
grade. Correct. Give me a little
emblem. I hate white speakers and
whitehead units back in the day.
I'd argue that that's not so much
the case anymore. But yes, I
understand. Right. You get the
trigger. The trigger. And because
you've mentioned Walmart closing
at 1130 or 11 now, it made me
also realize one of the other
things that was really big on
radios for vehicles was Circuit
City. I mean, really big and
screwing them up constantly.
Absolutely. That too. But you you
used to be able to walk into a
circuit city and just a wall of
stereo options. And you could
just like, Oh, I want that one.
Yeah. And here's the matching
kit for your vehicle to make that
one work. Yes. Yes. And I do
want to address. I mean, our
intention is not to dissuade
anybody from changing their sound
systems. But to understand that
is not the the simplistic
process that we once knew and
took for granted. It's very
rewarding when done correctly. It
is. You can have a really awesome
system. We have a JL. You are
that is just amazing. It's and
it's not just the volume but the
clarity. Yes. And that's
something that in house we care
a lot about. You can make any
system loud. Yes. But can you
make it clear? Yeah. And we had
the opportunity to jump on that.
We had the opportunity. We had
identical twins, basically. We
were we were asked to add the
stereo system to one. And then
the individual had the vehicle
that they're a distance
customer of ours. They took it
to a 12 volt shop.
Independently, they took the
other Jeep, both 2023
Gladiators and basically had
the identical components added
to the vehicle. We basically
built the build sheet. Yep,
ourselves. We did the work of
the one while it was here in our
possession. And that customer
took a similar build sheet, took
it to another 12 volt shop.
Because again, he was further
away and he asked them to do
the install. So we have these
identical twins with largely
identical parts. Yep. And
completely different style of
install, completely different
style of install. Spoiler alert,
we had to redo one. Yeah. Spoiler
alert, we got paid to do the
install over again. When that
went somewhere else. And yeah,
and then the clarity of the
sound output into to your, you
know, kind of credit of
statement was really, really
loud, but it was distorted
and speakers were popping. And
it's it was it's not a
sustainable sound quality or
function because eventually it
will blow amps and it made good
equipment sound bad. Yes. And in
today's world, you don't want to
be changing speakers all the
time. So because of that jigsaw
puzzle conversation, you need to
make sure that they are doing
what they're supposed to do and
last. Right. And as to
mention, we have multiple high
and new model vehicles under
our belt regarding these
improvements and kind of a
proven experience. We also,
since we only touch jeeps, see
lots and lots of vehicles that
have gone either DIYers have
done the service or they've
gone elsewhere for these
types of additions to their
vehicle. And so that's the
perspective we're speaking
from. If I can, if I can do
some kind of continued kind
of summation takeaways as we
we try to keep this train on
the tracks. By today's
standards, we have a lot more
plastic enclosures with
appropriately weather rated
speakers and function for those
enclosures. Yes. Gone are the
days of MDF and thin interior
carpet. Yeah. Okay. Gone are
the days that you should ever
allow somebody to put an amp on
the floor of a Jeep. That's
just a big no no. Gone are
the days of big cumbersome
boxes that are taking up
valuable interior space. And
gone are the days where you
would just rattle dishes off
walls because you thought that
was cool or the air blowing
in the face from the port. That
was cool. That was cool. I will
say you say gone are the
days. However, if you're in
a gladiator and you want a
good subsystem, it is a big
box going under the seat. It's
not an MDF box, but it's not
MDF. Right. Yeah. And that's
kind of and so that and it's
also and I don't know that
you exactly have this
perspective. I'm speaking from
the experience. Where you open
the trunk and it's the
entire box. Well, YJs. No, yes
and no. Yeah. I mean, that's
fair. But YJs. YJ specific
CJs and YJs. We used to have a
six by nine box that was a
shoebox basically a shoebox with
a little angle. It went on
the the fender wells in the
back. Yeah. And then the
little bit of space how much
money you had. If you were
poor, you went to Wal-Mart and
they had like a universal wedge
box. Yep. And you tech screwed
that through and then it fell
apart because it was MDF. Right.
If you had a little bit of coin,
you bought the ones that were
made to go in the front. Yes,
the car roll bar between the
roll bar and the wheel well.
Yeah. But I didn't have that
coin. So I had the MDF boxes
on the fender wells and then
the whole back, which would
have been this ideal usable
space for, I don't know,
anything. Yeah. I thought it was
most pertinent to put a plywood
box. Just didn't even work with
MDF in that regard. A plywood
box with two 10s behind the seat.
And so any usable interior
space was now toast. Right. Right.
I was going to the other kid
that was in woodworking class
and it was like, Hey, what make
me a custom box? I wanted to
make my own custom box. I want
to do everything the hard way.
Right. And then we had these
really cumbersome pods that
would go up at the kick panel.
They would take up your interior
foot well space.
Yeah. You push the speaker when
you push the clutch in. That's right.
That's right. That's what you were
supposed to do. Gone are those days.
Now, a big, beautiful box and a
big soundbar. Oh, I want to
talk. I want to touch on those.
But you want to. Yeah, I want to
jump in comments because we got
Jerry, who is saying you guys
are too young to remember that adding
the fifteen dollar JC Whitney
reverberator to a CJ AM
radio and thinking you were on
top of the world.
That's awesome.
So I know that.
I know that I know about
reverb units. I know.
I but I did live it.
Right. I wanted every little extra
is right. We were not
living it in the same real time
that he was there.
But then Jeanie said you guys
are young and you miss the days
of audio file and audio
mark for both vehicle and sound
systems.
And then you got Daddy
Jeep talk about bass tube on the
fenders. Yes.
You got Charles saying the wedge
box had a cup holder.
That was a super fancy
upgrade that I couldn't afford.
So yeah, I think there's
a lot of historic
things that we can all remember
and I love that that
nostalgia piece.
And unfortunately, every bit
of that creates the perspective
that we should be able to easily
modify our modern day vehicles
and we can't.
Right. And the problem is we think
we can. There's one of those
situations and then you can start
getting in there with a screwdriver
and fumbling stuff around.
And I will say just because we are
Jeep centric, we don't see
the lay of the land with
other models and other
makes. Right.
We're at least we do
have an easier way than, like
say, Subaru's
in the late 2000s.
The heater controls are literally
part of the head unit.
You get rid of the head unit.
Now you have no heater controls.
Yes. So while, yes, we can
go in and change our heaters with
the JLJT, there are
separate buttons and separate
abilities.
So we don't have it the worst.
Correct. I mean, I look at my
Mini Cooper and I can't do much
of anything about the head unit
system there because of its degree
of integration. Correct.
And so we are fortunate
with the aftermarket support.
And that's why I encourage people
to make good choices when
pursuing and choosing their
accessories and sound system
options. Now, I do want to
note that the whole JT
specifically, because the interior
gets so much smaller than
the JL and we have that JL you
are, it's got a in floor
sub and a whole bunch of things
in the in the back.
The JT, the sound bar,
American sound bar that we're
using is
if you are going to have
large kids or adults
in the back seat,
your headspace is gone.
You're referring more to the DS
18 sound bar.
The DSC teen sound bar is
the JT and the JT.
The American sound bar is a little
bit lower profile.
So you get a little little more
headspace, but it's still bulkier
than you. I was going to say,
it's still when I sat in the back
of one of those Jeeps, actually,
and I sat in both of the Jeeps,
the JT specifically that we're talking
about. That one's interesting
because we did use the DS 18
red sound bar in J5
in J5.
But we use the American sound bar
in blue. Correct.
Yeah, you have that slight
differential and you'll notice
that it's not good, but you're
looking at the box.
You're looking at the box,
regardless, regardless.
It's just, are you looking at
three inches of the box or are
you looking at an inch of the box?
And that is, but that is
what I want to share with the
humans, right?
Anybody who is listening, who
cares, headspace
is gone by
comparison to what was
originally engineered into that
vehicle. Additionally, going
back to the big box under
the seat, DS 18
and others make a nice
supplementary box.
We've primarily used the DS 18.
Any of the space underneath
the rear seats that
was good for recovery
gear or, you know,
your jack spacing and, you
know, for your jack and
accessories, that's all
gone as well.
Yes, you know, so prepare
to sacrifice
something for the
gain of
the stereo system.
Yeah.
And granted, we love our accessories.
We love our tech to cool boxes
and deck units and molly
panels on on racks
and caps for Jeeps.
Yep. And so anything can kind
of be, you know, a shell
game of move it from over here
to over here on the Jeep.
Just need to know that you're
going to lose that.
Correct. So you know what to do.
That's exactly correct.
You understand that this is not
the same seamless approach.
We have made some very custom
amp mounts that have placed
them vertically at the back
of the behind the seats.
You want to consider airflow
in in this conversation.
You want to consider wire routing.
And in that regard, not
all JTs are equal.
There are there the way
that we did it in J5 did
not work in the way that we
tried to do it with the other
one, despite the fact that they
were both twenty twenty three
gladiators there.
The way the trim is
behind the seats, depending on
what trim level of the vehicle
it is, affected how we could
install and mount those systems.
And if you have the little
speaker that you could take
away and put back, correct,
that changes it to.
And so all of this is to say
that kind of being fully
conscientious about your bill,
the other piece that I kind of
strongly encourage you as
a summation piece regarding
upgrading our latest and greatest
the JLs and JTs is
do it in a in a comprehensive
manner. Yeah, this is not
like the olden days where you
can do a little piece over
here and a little piece over
there because of the jigsaw
nature, because of the high
integration, the nervous system
conversation, you're going to
want to plan
out your stereo upgrade
and then proceed into it
in kind of one shot.
You you can do it in stages,
but you're going to pay labor
twice or three times or four
or it will be your labor
that you're doing this, right?
If you are going to be going
into it each time you take
stuff apart this plastic,
you're risking breaking things.
That's correct. Clips going
stripping out screws.
Yeah, there's a lot of manner
in which the the pieces
are held together again,
are not like we once had where
we had metal screws
of fixing metal pieces
with just kind of a plastic
facade. Oftentimes we're
plastic in the plastic
with a metal clip
or a coarse metal thread,
a screw that is going to
waller out that plastic
each and every time we put
it in and out.
Yep. Also, that has changed.
You know, talking about amps
and you got to have power for
those is our battery
connections are not what
they used to be with the
vehicles and the JLJT and
JKs are so battery
sensitive. You got to be careful
where you're stuffing your
powers in your grounds.
There's a reason why there's
tons of ground studs
under the vehicle hood of the
vehicle. It is always
your best choice to go to
the battery and make that
direct connection bad.
We've seen that a lot.
Right. And again, this
is all to say that it is
doable and yet we
want to encourage people
to kind of be mindful
of the modern technological
advances.
We're not trying to scare you
away from trying to do your
own radio. We're trying to
educate you so you understand
it's not as simple as it
used to be. It can still be
done.
But it's going to take you
longer. It's more involved.
And and arguably it's more
expensive parts.
It's very. Yes.
And it's better to know
that what challenges you have
the face than before you tore
your Jeep apart.
Now things aren't fitting
correctly. Suddenly the
check engine lights on.
It's upset.
All that is real stuff.
And and I would rather
know myself before
I've screwed up the vehicle
so I can properly
make it what I want to have.
Yes. The last piece and we
didn't touch at all on 24s
that have the absolute
massive game changer
completely interior
panel display panel
harder for anything.
Anything that's coming down
the pipe has these massive
basically tablets mounted
to the dash.
Your latest and greatest
you know full size pickup
trucks all have like a 10
or a 12 inch screen in them
on the higher end models.
Again in some new vehicle
research that I'm doing
most recently were
I mean we're talking just
within the last few months
the auto industry has changed
significantly with
geopolitical posturing
and consumer reporting.
I literally my parents
just had to buy a new vehicle
and the standing from behind
they open up the hatch and I'm
like oh we can watch
the football game on the
screen.
It's a large TV and you're
pretty much dash.
And one of the things that
has come out through a number
of consumer safety reporting
that is kind of seeding
into the automotive industry.
And granted I always
believe we're living in a
ripple effect.
So we're not going to see
any major changes for
probably another five to 10
years.
We're going to start to see
small changes happen
but that the touch screen
specific.
Not necessarily the display
nature but the touch screen
of these big screen TVs
that are being formed
into vehicles has actually
increased driver distraction
and decrease the safety
of the vehicle with occupancy.
I agree.
So long as we continue
to have human driven cars
the likelihood is we will go
back to smaller screens
based on current seeds
that are kind of getting
moving at some safety
and manufacturing levels.
I have another PSA is for
those that listen to us
and that can change things.
Please, please make it so
that you can be going down
the road.
And yes I can't type in
the address or what I want
to search.
Like I was looking for a home
improvement center.
That is not an option in there.
I have restaurants.
I have gas stations.
I have all this stuff
that I can press
and not be distracted.
So I said, please take me
to Lowe's.
And it said, I don't know
what you're trying to say.
From your talk, you are
your audible choice.
So I'm trying to do
the appropriate thing
and not be distracted,
not play with the screen.
And you literally have to pull
over, get your phone
that's cooked up to
with the cord.
Type in what I want to do
on Google,
which I don't understand.
It's supposed to be just
mirrored onto my head unit.
And then it was like, oh,
you want to go to Lowe's.
Yes.
Why is it so hard?
Well, and so one of the
challenges I hate to say,
it's got some of it is just
that you're a boomer.
That's true.
I was trying to avoid that.
But you said it for me.
Yeah, I'm going to say it.
One of the last piece
I was going to say,
and if this is your cup of tea
and it is what it is,
part of the issue,
not specific to our listening
audience, per se,
but a lot of this
center stack
multimedia entertainment systems.
Right.
So that's one of the terms with
this, you know,
with this TV in your dash.
And again, not the Stalantis
because as we go back to the
JKs, Stalantis 20 years ago
figured out how to start
to lock down these units
with their own proprietary
software.
Not Stalantis, but some of the
other ones are being able to be
jailbroken, much like when
fire sticks originally came out.
Yep.
And a degree of this jailbreak
is allowing people to do things
with their center stack
multimedia entertainment centers
that auto manufacturers never
intended to be able to do.
Correct.
And so I think we're going to
start to see an increased
regulatory expectation
out of auto manufacturers
and that head unit assembly.
Correct.
And so, you know, as I kind of
crest it into these major display
centers, we're only going to see
that more and more with the next
few years because we'll probably
start hitting the regulatory wall.
Something is going to happen or
yeah, I think there's going to
be something to happen because,
as you mentioned, that big screen
TV in front of your parents'
vehicle.
Oh, it's crazy.
Now, I don't know what they
can actually do with it,
but just the screen size itself.
I know the screen size
and the light pollution
while you're driving.
Correct.
Everything is integrated into that
on your parents' vehicle
because my wife's similar.
And I recognize that.
I'm just saying, like, I know that
the jailbreak that he's talking
about, you can literally watch
cable TV essentially
while driving down the road.
And I don't know that
that's the same level
because I know there is some
protections are ready to prevent
that from happening.
But what extent?
Yeah.
So as all of this is spoken
and like I said, that summation,
we're not trying to dissuade
anybody.
We're trying to kind of
A, I actually think that
the manufacturer has done great
forward progress in giving us
good sound systems
with topless vehicles
run it on the highway
or the trail in a capacity,
better capacity than we've ever had.
But we all grew up with
home improvements and no bigger is better.
I mean, really, the biggest thing
with this is you need to
have a plan for your builds
from start to finish.
You need to go in and purchase
the vehicle that you know
you can upgrade or can't upgrade
depending on what you want to do.
If you're completely fine like
me where you like the factory system,
well, then the big screen doesn't matter
because you're kind of happy
with what you have.
But then you want to make sure you have the sub
and the function
out of it from the get go.
If you want to upgrade,
then maybe get the cheaper model
and don't pay for that big fancy screen.
Get an older model that you can go in
and change stuff around.
So look at the market, see what's available.
Call a shop, get some expert advice
on what you want to do.
You just can't do it willy-nilly like
used to where I'm like, oh, I had to get oil
and look, this dolphin radio is really cool.
So I'm going to go put that in in the parking lot.
Yeah, you can't do that anymore.
And again, please have an appreciation
for the electrical sensitivity
that these new modern vehicles do have.
Yep. That's pretty much it.
That's until we're next time.
Jeep on. Jeep on.
So I kind of alluded to it,
but I was driving a lot in my truck this weekend.
Yeah, sounds like it.
Trying to find a dishwasher
because ours is as we are integrating electronics
into everything,
I've been having my appliances fall one at a time,
much to my wife's dismay.
First, it was the washing machine
that went down.
So we had to get a new one.
And as we're setting that up,
we had to come up and say, well, what is your Wi-Fi system?
And my wife's like, why does my washing machine
need a Wi-Fi?
I don't know.
Here we are.
So then the dishwasher started screwing up more and more.
And I'd already been in there and tried to repair things.
And you have to reset it and that kind of stuff.
So we were trying to procure a new one.
I had taken a couple of days off.
So we were trying to get that done while we were off
because once kids are back in school,
they were off for Martin Luther King's Day and that kind of stuff.
So we're trying to get that stuff done
because we know we're just we're just
treading water during the week when people are in and out
and got meals to make.
We're just average American households.
We want the dishwasher, the wash dishes,
when I'm doing something else.
And it is not doing that right now.
So I just wanted to go procure one,
put it in the cabinet and be done with it.
You can't do that.
It's really funny because of the way that you described it.
And then I shared with you this morning in our household,
we literally are using our dishwasher as a drying rack
right now because I don't want to deal
with buying a new dishwasher.
I don't have the additional funds or ability
to put on the debt right now.
The bandwidth of having to deal with it.
Correct.
I'm just making it happen.
So it's just it's a drying rack.
We're hand-washing dishes in our house at this point.
I already threatened my wife.
Do you want to hand-wash dishes?
She's like, well, we have children.
Do you want to deal with the whining that we will incur?
Our kids have a role of a set number of dishes
every day that they have to wash.
And if they incur extra dishes for whatever reason,
they will have extra to do.
And it has been working for the time being.
But I understand where you're coming from.
And there is sometimes a little bit of a fight.
Do I have to?
Yep, you do.
You made the dishes, you get the help.
It might help the cup situation at my house
because my son does not understand.
I wish that that helped.
It has not helped.
Oh, dear.
No, it doesn't help.
They just wash more dishes.
I don't care.
But other than driving and looking for a dishwasher,
I was able to kind of I nerd out on this stuff
because I'm expecting everybody else to get as excited as I am.
But putting the steering column in the Model T project,
the steering shaft usually has to change length
because you're taking something from one vehicle
and putting it in something else.
I'm going to ask you to pause.
Don't lose your thought here.
But I looked at your update this week and on your socials,
which I encourage everybody, if you
want to know what's going on in our lives.
Scott and I certainly are open to you
following along on our Instagram or Facebook pages.
But I looked at your update and I
thought that is just one of the most Scott Brown things that
just sums up the 20 years of our friendship in the sense
that I remember you obsessing over steering,
intermediate shaft, steering column construction,
and function on some of your earliest projects we used
to sit around and bench top build.
And now you are living in this moment
where you can do the most mundane, ridiculous,
relatively unnecessary, but so incredibly clean
and how it should be done.
And I looked in on a number of our customers
who have taken us up on the follow along conversation
and friends at this point.
And I thought I really hope that I
don't expect them to understand the technical nature
of what you just did.
I get it.
Over here.
That's me.
Jack.
I'm looking and going, holy crap.
Scott's going to be able to drive this in a few months.
Which is not.
I know he's not.
But not for you.
I'm saying that out to the world.
But I recognize from an outside perspective
and not having that technical minutiae,
just seeing how cool it is and how much progress he
is realistically making in such a short amount of time.
And yet, having the full appreciation
as an individual from my perspective
where I am closer to the problem of sorts.
So the average person looking in, it's in my opinion,
it's like a three or four out of 10.
Like my mom or my dad's going to be like,
that's a really cool thing that Scott did.
And I can read it.
And I can appreciate it.
And I can see a shiny part and a not shiny part.
And they can get that.
But from like my standpoint, that's
like an eight out of 10 cool factor.
Because I'm like, that is, it's going to look correct.
It's something that nobody else is
doing because they're not taking the time
to have that much pride in their workmanship.
Because they race through the finish line
because they just want to drive it in three or four months,
like you're saying.
They look in and they go, well, I just
need to hack it here and cut it here.
And weld it in this and that.
Absolutely.
All right.
Now go back.
And so I was dealt with this problem
that if I need to shorten this shaft,
but if you cut it in the middle and weld it,
you should sleeve it.
That's the best practice.
That also helps keep everything true.
But then you can't literally take the box apart,
the stirring box apart.
So later person that you know, hopefully it's you,
if you're the one that made this problem,
then you should be the one that have to deal with the problem.
The serviceability or lack of thereof.
You're cutting it off again to service it.
And I'm like, I'm not, I'm not doing that.
Will I ever need a service again?
Probably not.
I don't want, I will, that would be my luck.
I would have a bearing fail or something.
I need to cut it apart.
Regardless, that's just not who you are as a person, right?
You're trying to set up for success.
So I'm looking at this problem.
It actually took me about two days to figure out
how I wanted to do this.
And finally, I think in the most part,
Neil will really enjoy this.
I have a spare hook off the quick attach
off my tractor for the three point system
that is an inch, inch and a half thick.
And it causes a big hunk of steel.
I didn't throw it away.
I had it on my shop press
because you need big hunk of steels on your shop press.
Absolutely.
And I'm like, I bet you that hooks distance is about right.
And I had a gear.
I had to press off the shaft of the steering box.
I'm like, Holy crap, that fits perfect.
So I drilled and tapped two holes in it.
And I used my steering wheel puller with two long bolts
and was able to then press the shaft out of the gear,
which is almost impossible
because it is pressed on at least three inches
of interference fit.
So it is like on there.
Yes.
And so, and to the point,
it's almost impossible to get it back on.
Like once I got it off, I was like, cool.
Now how am I gonna get this back together?
But because I was able to do that,
I was able to put the shaft without the gear in the mill
and make a new keyway further up.
Then I was able to literally cut it off
so that now it's the shortness I need.
I did put in the lathe and true that up
and that kind of stuff.
I actually had to turn off about 2000s or so of shaft
so I could get the gear back on
because it was such an interference fit.
They must have back in the 40s or 30s when they put this on
must have heated it up and chilled it.
They did a thermodynamic process.
But I literally put this thing in my chuck.
So we again have an inch to two inches.
Actually, probably more than that.
Two to three inches of engagement with three jaws
and I could not get the gear back on
with just mechanical advantage.
And I had to laugh when I was looking at your update
and our intro to this particular program
is one of the things from years ago
before you had an actual lathe
and some of this equipment.
And you say you use your drill pass as a sort of mill.
And I looked at your absolutely completely caddywampus
sketch utilization of a steering wheel polar.
And I also, again, the picture doesn't do it justice
for the rest of the world to understand
that was not an ideal situation.
Well, you can't tell.
I actually made an adapter to go in the shaft
to make it more ideal.
But yes, it was not perfect.
Yes, and I thought they're good for you.
Still doing hillbilly jank stop.
Just a little nicer.
Love it. I love it.
That was a, I thought that was a great update
and I was hoping you would share with us.
Yep. Excellent.
My own experience, I was a very family
and a household-centric weekend.
Again, trying to just control the uncontrollables
and the chaotic, time-blind Simpson household
over and above everything we do conversation.
This Saturday was almost a holy
and entirely dedicated to my son
and his wrestling pursuits.
No, don't need to go into too much detail there,
but had a great, great day with that.
I did test drive a customer's Jeep in that capacity
and I have actually never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever
in my whole entire life had a death wobble situation
like that particular Jeep,
which I'll be unpacking for,
I don't know, a really long time.
So this one really tried to kill you.
This one is proving to be super extra.
Super extra, super special,
and yet probably the greatest frustration is that
everything under the Jeep is perfect.
Yeah.
Let's replace Stephen.
Yep.
So we gotta get back in the 80s
and get like triple quadruple shocks.
I am here for it at this point, right?
So outside of that,
so I spent a good bit of time
with some death wobble diagnostic over the weekend
in conjunction with this wrestling tournament.
Now in the same time,
my wife, who, you know, just,
she is such an interesting soul,
took it upon herself to get the weather forecast alert
Yep.
That impending doom was coming to Northeastern Ohio.
I don't recall ever getting this kind of alert
so the way that it came across and how many...
I don't either and it came up
when I was in the store and I was like,
is this where I want to die?
I was, this sounds bad.
I literally was like,
how bad is it gonna be that they're doing this
because this is not usual?
It's sunny outside.
There is nothing going on.
Yes.
And honestly, I feel like it was a big oversell myself.
I saw a little bit of...
Neal's hands up.
A little bit of wind, some snow and it was over.
I was like, we got this kind of notified.
So my wife is by herself, right?
My daughter is at dance practice.
My son is with me at a tournament.
My wife is by herself in this moment.
You could hunker down at your house.
You could feel like, hey, I'm glad that I'm toasty warm
in this X-L-Y-N-Z situation.
I have food, I have heat source.
If the power goes out, whatever.
Jen probably decided I need to go drive somewhere.
I am going to get in my big built Jeep, my 4B4
and I'm going to drive to the beach
so that the peak of the squall.
That's actually kind of fun.
Can hit me.
Yeah, yeah.
I have no objection.
I am going to the storm, to the...
I'm going to stare it in the face.
I'm going to stare at the squall.
I want to stare at the eye of the storm.
That's right.
That's what she did.
I think that's super fun.
And she went down there and she was by herself
as she watched this squall come across the lake.
And she got off, out of the Jeep, didn't she?
Oh, she put the window down
and she's taken pictures of the storm.
The storm was in the Jeep.
I got it.
Was in the Jeep.
She's like sharing them back to my family
and obviously me at that time.
And I think the urgency of the message
wasn't necessarily about how severe
and how long it would last,
but more about how fast it was coming in.
I did happen fast.
And it was literally, there was nothing.
We actually had a customer walk in the door
and it was sunny.
And he got from the front door to the front counter
and snow was blowing in under the door at us.
And I'm like, oh, that came in quick.
Yes.
And I think you hit the nail on the head
that it went from lights on to lights off
with white out snow conditions
and some blowing winds within seconds.
Right.
And I think that that was more
why it got so prioritized.
I don't think it was necessarily
about the exact severity,
but how fast it changed.
And it could have been worse.
It's hard to say with whether the way it can change so fast.
Right.
I just, I love, I mean,
and I know that we talk about a lot of our customers
and their therapeutic experiences with their Jeep
and kind of how that Jeep becomes
an extension of ourselves.
And my wife's emboldened nature with her.
I love it.
Her built Jeep.
I'm going down to the beach
and gonna face this storm and I die head on.
Oh dear.
What a funny, funny Jeep moment, if you will.
Yeah.
And just to leave people on a teaser,
there are big things happening in my life
that may or may not come to light.
There is a acquisition of sorts that may be happening.
And it is a business endeavor
that could drastically change my life
and how things operate here.
Cause it would change a lot.
I am not able to discuss those details right now.
If it goes through, I'll have a really big announcement.
If it doesn't go through, it'll be,
hey, nothing happens.
Life as usual.
Life as usual.
So my weekend was spent very heavily vested in that,
but I still wanted to make sure
I prioritized family time.
And we did sit down and do a movie night with the kids
and we watched Bad Guys 2,
which was actually a pretty good movie.
I have to say I like that.
There's a lot of good, you know,
family oriented movies out there right now.
Yeah, so.
Well, we do have a lot of jeeps to get to
and we are officially over our time.
Until, oh, I should mention today is MLK Junior Day
and in the past I've gone on a big tirade
and we've actually had some geared conversation
towards it.
I think that the biggest thing by today's standards
is kind of understanding that there are things
out there greater than ourselves.
And I hope that you find that moment
to recognize that in your own life.
And I wish you an inspiring MLK Junior Day.
Until next time, jeep on.
Jeep on.
Jeep on.
About this episode
Exploring the evolution of sound systems in Jeep vehicles, this episode dives into the complexities of upgrading audio setups in modern models like the Gladiator and JL. The hosts discuss the challenges of integrating aftermarket components, the importance of planning upgrades, and the nuances of electrical sensitivity in newer Jeeps. With anecdotes about their own experiences and listener interactions, they emphasize the need for quality installations and the impact of OEM systems. The episode also touches on nostalgic audio upgrades from the past, contrasting them with today's technology.
Original notes
We want to hear from you, Send us a Text
This episode focuses on Audio system upgrades in Jeep specifically. Our industry experience details why you should use the certain systems over other ones. How do you fit all the extra amps and speakers? Can I just pop out the head unit and toss in a double din while driving down the road still? Remember to stay tuned after the episode if you want to hear the team's weekend updates.
Thanks for listening, give us a review and check us out on YouTube -SFJ4x4 and visit our website to grab some great gear or products for your Jeep, SFJ4x4.com. Don't forget, you can email [email protected] for special content requests, blind react videos, suggestions, special guests, or general questions. Check out our Patreon patreon.com/ISpeakJeep
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