My '05 V70

[Tiggie]

Stance is much improved. Funny how slight changes like that make a large visual difference.

[87gtVIC]

Yes. Immediately agreed to it looking better.

[sly]

Even spacing around the wheel is preferred for myself as well. I can appreciate the stance life and lowriders, but some factory low for mpg stuff is just a little too low.

[Arquemann]

Yup, a small change makes a big difference. Also small wheels and big tires don't go with a low ride at all.
Also I'm returning the "quality" LEDs. Beam pattern is nice and they spread light wider better but they not any brighter than the standard halogens... They're also missing the hot spot in the middle of the beam, the thing that's supposed to light up the road far up. They're like shitty old projectors in terms of light.

Anyways, Volvo is doing a fucky wucky.

Since the fall has come and I've driven in the dark, I've noticed a couple times where the lights flicker faintly. Some times it's been so faint I've thought I was just seeing things.
On friday at one time the car didn't want to lock from the remote. I started the car, lights flickered alot. I shut it off and it locked just fine. Later it unlocked and started just fine too.

Today I moved the car in front of the garage to check on the leds and the alternator. Charging voltage seems fine, if a bit on the high side. Just idling there after sitting since friday evening it was at 14.7-14.8, after about 20min it was around 14.5-14.6. Also tried checking for AC ripple, which I'm not sure I did right. What I got was a bunch of numbers bouncing all over the place. Between 7 and ~1300 mV (I think). Which would be bad I guess.
After a while of oggling at the multimeter like an idiot, I shut off the car and swapped one of the led high beams back to a halogen. Turned the key on and had the lights on for a couple minutes to take a few pics and stare at the light pattern on the garage door. I noticed the LED high beam went out suddenly, battery had went flat in the few minutes I had the lights on. Starter would barely even groan. The fuck?
I had battery charger on it for like 10 minutes and she fired up without much fuss. Had to move the car from in front of the garage.

I dunno what the fuck is going on... Do I have a bad alternator? Flickering lights would say yes. Do I have a bad battery? Or both? Is the alternator killing the battery? This stupid thing can sit for a week and start, and today it's stone cold dead in an instant.
Guess I'll take the car to a battery / charging tester in a day or five. If it starts...

[friskyfrankie]

Intermittent parasitic draw?

[Arquemann]

Battery tested bad, surprisingly bad considering how well it has behaved. I popped in the new battery from dad's Pontiac and the lights don't seem to be flickering anymore.
Also redid the AC ripple test with a multimeter that I can actually read and I got about 70-110 mV, which is very good.

I guess I need a new battery, dad's gonna want his back. Atleast getting a new battery was the cheapest possible outcome in this issue. Alternators for these things ain't cheap. Though 353mm batteries aren't cheap either. Gonna try to get me a Biltema battery, they are the only ones I can find with a 3-year warranty, some even got 4 years.

Still entertaining the idea of getting leds for the high beams, maybe I should just go for the high-power ones to not get disappointed in terms of light output. That's what I get for trying to be responsible. Though my friend is still trying to scumbag me into putting his three 9" round aux high beams up front on the Volvo. It would be quite obnoxious, but that's kinda the point
Bummer is that they're all narrow beam pattern, which is nice if I want to light up the next kilometer of road, but I'd mostly like to see the ditches and sides of road better.

[Arquemann]

Since the last post I've acquired an oversized 90AH battery and haven't had any electrical issues, except for the remote locking range sometimes being barely a meter and like 15 meters otherwise.

My gas gauge has been fucky, last week it always shows empty with the light on when I started the car and climbs to the correct level after a minute or two.
Today I filled it up and it has barely from the full mark, even though I drove it enough for atleast a quarter tank to have gone.
I haven't the faintest clue on how a CNG gauge would work. Pressure maybe?

And as if inspired by me reading kishy's stereo thread and subsequently browsing stereo stuff online, yesterday night the passenger front door speaker seemingly blew out. That speaker only makes garbled scratchy noises to the tune of my music, sometimes loud, mostly very quietly.
Stock replacements are hard to find cheap and they're 6.5" or 8" but built into stupid propietary brackets and riveted into the doors of course.
Guess I gotta pop the offending side open some day here and see what I got first.

If they're 6.5", what do you say DerekTheGreat?
-Kenwood KFC-S1766
-Pioneer TS-G1710F
-JBL Stage1 621
What's the least shitty pair?


Oh and the long crank issue hasn't reappeared after new years', for whatever reason...

[sly]

Going off the specs... the Kenwoods would be most efficient with the typical head unit powers (best match). They also have the best frequency range. The JBL speakers are in the middle on frequency and power requirements based on specs. The Pioneers would be the lowest volume due to requiring the most power and sound a little duller due to the fall-off on the high end. That said, Both the Pioneer and Kenwood would sound fine for most folks since hearing in most over 30s falls off above 14KHz. The JBL would sound like it lacks low end on some tracks due to the 55Hz low end limit. The cones are all pretty much the same material... so they may all sound about the same. In that case, go with the Kenwood for better RMS power matching.

That's my

[Arquemann]

What a fucken PITA, took over 2 hours to get the damn factory speaker out and prep things for a new speaker.
Complaint nr.1: the speaker adapter/base is installed onto the door with glue and 4 large STEEL rivets.
Nr.2: The speaker is installed to the adapter/base with glue and twist lock tabs.

MFW the factory Volvo speaker is 8 Ohms.

[Arquemann]

Oookay the insanity continues...
From my limited reading and understanding of amps and things, replacing an 8 ohm speaker with a 4 ohm speaker isn't great, but it's not too bad.

Now, because VOLVO, the system isn't actually 8 ohms per channel, but 4. That's because VOLVO decided to put the front & rear door speakers in PARALLEL. 8+8 being 4 ohms.
And now if I replace one of the 8 ohm speakers with a 4 ohm speaker, the channel impedance falls to ~2.7 ohms....

So I don't know if that is gonna be okay for my amp or not.

EDIT: apparently it is the front door tweeter + main door speakers that are in parallel, and the rear door and trunk speakers in parallel.
In that case I could just unplug the tweeter and run a regular 4 ohm speaker as a replacement for the blown 8 ohm factory one.

[Arquemann]

Found an actual OEM wiring diagram that confirms that indeed the 2 speakers in the front doors are wired in parallel.
So I'm gonna do a pro gamer move and leave the tweeter disconnected, keeping the channel impedance at the correct 4 ohms.

Ended up picking a pair of the Pioneer speakers I mentioned above. I guess the frequency range is better than the others and the wattage matches the original.
Highly likely that the overall sound quality will be much better with just the single Pioneer coax vs the stock 6.5" and tweeter. I don't like treble anyways.

[Arquemann]

Speaker is in, probably wired the right way, tweeter is left unplugged and the connector tucked away to keep it from rattling. Sounds fine now, so I guess it was the speaker that was the problem.
Gotta say, removing a door panel off of these is a quick job, but anything beyond that is a real pain in the ass. The plastic rivets that hold the panel on are pretty handy, but the little center pins are easy to lose. I managed to lose one, but a piece cut from the shaft of a pop rivet fit perfectly.

Also noticed probably the most asinine design choice I've seen in a while: The door weatherstripping seals against the edge of the door panel, instead of the metal on the door. The seal is far from perfect as the surface of the door panel is textured and it has the clips all around, also the door panel doesn't exactly seal against the door, so all the humidity and filth from the door jamb area can creep inside the door. Bottom edge of the door panel is just filthy and the inside of the door ain't pretty either. Atleast the door panels won't rot because they're fiberglass.

Should probably install the other speaker in the driver door soon, but it's snowing and the windchill is around -15°C for the next few days. Fuck that

[sly]

Yeah... When Jack Frost is giving you that cold of a shoulder... best to stay away.

+1 that's a bad design on the door seal.