75/ZT double din arrived and installed

[David Lawrence]

Originally Posted by mayor

Hi I assume you have gone into setup and chosen ' europe' for the radio set-up, otherwise I would check you aerial connection. I get very good reception on FM and AM

Got some radio reception now, but still not great. Also the sat nav screen now brings up a chinese error message. Any ideas? This worked fine yesterday, but now no. The GPS antenna connection on the back is quite loose. Don't know is this is related

[David Lawrence]

Originally Posted by David Lawrence

Got some radio reception now, but still not great. Also the sat nav screen now brings up a chinese error message. Any ideas? This worked fine yesterday, but now no. The GPS antenna connection on the back is quite loose. Don't know is this is related

OK solved the sat nav problem. Managed to find a screen that changed the chinese in to English and then followed the on-screen menu to set up IGO8. All I need to do now is find a manual for IGO8 somewhere. Does it give voice directions ? It hasnt spoken to me yet.

Got some reasonable radio now, it seems to get better after a few minutes and the noise reduces. Still something wrong there though. It may be something to do with my Symphony Aerial amplifier on the back pillar, because I did have a problem with that some years ago when I had a new rear screen fitted. There was a 2 pin connector from the screen going in to a 6 pin one on the amplifier. I notice that the unit has an output called "AMP control" so I need to investigate what that does.

Played a few tracks from USB OK though so I confirmed the sound system is pretty impressive, far superior to the SYmphony, with much better bass.

[David Lawrence]

Hmmm...discovered a snag maybe. My old HU was a Symphony and RAVE says the following:

"A second smaller co-axial cable provides an IF output from the head unit. The IF output from the radio follows the RF input from the aerial diversity amplifier in a linear fashion up to an RF level of 1 to 3 mV. This output is sensed by the aerial diversity amplifier which selects another part of the screen aerial which gives an improved signal reception".

So my questions are:

1. Has anyone else upgraded from a symphony to one of these units, and if so what did you do with the spare IF lead which used to connect to the symphony?
2. Anyone got any ideas what the diversity amplifier does when the IF signal isnt there? I suspect I do.....NAUGHTY WORD-NAUGHTY WORD-NAUGHTY WORD-NAUGHTY WORD- reception !

Studying RAVE further I find that the harmony HU doesn't have this arrangement so my solution may be to change mine to a harmony amplifier instead. What do you think?

[75ConSE]

Originally Posted by David Lawrence

Hmmm...discovered a snag maybe. My old HU was a Symphony and RAVE says the following:

"A second smaller co-axial cable provides an IF output from the head unit. The IF output from the radio follows the RF input from the aerial diversity amplifier in a linear fashion up to an RF level of 1 to 3 mV. This output is sensed by the aerial diversity amplifier which selects another part of the screen aerial which gives an improved signal reception".

So my questions are:

1. Has anyone else upgraded from a symphony to one of these units, and if so what did you do with the spare IF lead which used to connect to the symphony?
2. Anyone got any ideas what the diversity amplifier does when the IF signal isnt there? I suspect I do.....NAUGHTY WORD-NAUGHTY WORD-NAUGHTY WORD-NAUGHTY WORD- reception !

Studying RAVE further I find that the harmony HU doesn't have this arrangement so my solution may be to change mine to a harmony amplifier instead. What do you think?

I haven't gone over to one of these yet (I am waiting for the model with TMC), but I have swapped my Symphony for one of the typical Chinese units. I must say though, I also get very poor reception from it, whereas before, the Symphony was excellent. I have been 'living with it', but would love to hear a solution. Now you have mentioned this 'smaller co-axial cable', it sounds quite likely that it is the culprit. However, I don't remember disconnecting anything other than the multi plugs and the one main co-ax. Could this smaller co-ax be part of one of the multi plugs which isn't connected when swapped to these Chinese units? I'm sure someone would know. If that IS the case, it looks like we won't be connecting any 'smaller co-axial cable' to anything!

MacGyver mentioned earlier about adding a cheap amplifier found on ebay. Forgive me if I am wrong (I usually am!), but I thought it is a no-no to add another powered amplifier to an already powered amplified signal? If it is OK to do it without the risk of burning something out (or indeed burning something!), then I guess that is the way forward. Can someone with better knowledge point us in the right direction please?

[David Lawrence]

Originally Posted by 75ConSE

I haven't gone over to one of these yet (I am waiting for the model with TMC), but I have swapped my Symphony for one of the typical Chinese units. I must say though, I also get very poor reception from it, whereas before, the Symphony was excellent. I have been 'living with it', but would love to hear a solution. Now you have mentioned this 'smaller co-axial cable', it sounds quite likely that it is the culprit. However, I don't remember disconnecting anything other than the multi plugs and the one main co-ax. Could this smaller co-ax be part of one of the multi plugs which isn't connected when swapped to these Chinese units? I'm sure someone would know. If that IS the case, it looks like we won't be connecting any 'smaller co-axial cable' to anything!

MacGyver mentioned earlier about adding a cheap amplifier found on ebay. Forgive me if I am wrong (I usually am!), but I thought it is a no-no to add another powered amplifier to an already powered amplified signal? If it is OK to do it without the risk of burning something out (or indeed burning something!), then I guess that is the way forward. Can someone with better knowledge point us in the right direction please?

I think that MacGyvers suggestion won't work until I first get a stronger signal from the back of the car to amplify. My idea is to swap the Full diversity amplifier from the symphony set up to a non diversity type like the Harmony uses. This doesnt have the smaller cable, and the amplifier just permanently connects to the same part of the screen. This will be fine for me I think because my rear screen only has 2 wires coming from it anyway. What I suspect is that the symphony selected one area of the screen, but without the small cable it is probably looking at a different section. Later I may try to just plug the 2 pin plug in to a different pair of terminals. It may be that the new unit will be satisfied with that. If not then next step will be to change the amp.


I found this very useful thread on the subject so you can see what I'm talking about.

http://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/foru...?t=4125&page=3

[paulads]

Originally Posted by David Lawrence

Got some radio reception now, but still not great. Also the sat nav screen now brings up a chinese error message. Any ideas? This worked fine yesterday, but now no. The GPS antenna connection on the back is quite loose. Don't know is this is related

the gps antenna is the one that screws into the rear of the unit...shouldn't be loose at all.
my cdti had an iovox cd80 in it - and i connected that up using the supplied leads and also plugged the long silver aerial adapter (supplied too) into the rear of satnav/dvd...then my aerial lead connected to that - and the radio reception is extremely good

[David Lawrence]

Originally Posted by paulads

the gps antenna is the one that screws into the rear of the unit...shouldn't be loose at all.
my cdti had an iovox cd80 in it - and i connected that up using the supplied leads and also plugged the long silver aerial adapter (supplied too) into the rear of satnav/dvd...then my aerial lead connected to that - and the radio reception is extremely good

your iovox makes yours a later car I guess, so you dont have the diversity amplifier with the extra cable. The gps antenna was a red herring, I tightened it up and all was fine with the sat nav. I was thrown by the chinese message, but once I happened across the language selection i was fine. (Didnt help that the button saying "Language" was also chinese)

[David Lawrence]

Originally Posted by David Lawrence

your iovox makes yours a later car I guess, so you dont have the diversity amplifier with the extra cable. The gps antenna was a red herring, I tightened it up and all was fine with the sat nav. I was thrown by the chinese message, but once I happened across the language selection i was fine. (Didnt help that the button saying "Language" was also chinese)

I moved the 2 pin plug from the rear screen aerial to two different pins on the diversity amplifier and got a marked improvement, so definitely on the right track there. Its still not as good as the symphony was, but its more acceptable now and I can get plenty of stations. They do break up a bit though around town. So I'm now on the look out for a "Harmony" non diversity amplifier like this



If any one has one going spare I can try I'd be interested.

[TaiChiMan]

Originally Posted by Ajd1

I mounted mine in the middle of the dashboard right next to the glass.

Hardly notice it's there and very good reception.

Andy

Has anyone got a photo of the gps antenna in place ?

[Ajd1]

Originally Posted by TaiChiMan

Has anyone got a photo of the gps antenna in place ?

Here's a couple of mine, excuse the quality please.



You can get a larger version if you click on them.

Andy