Yaj95ES300

Okay, so Ive decided to install my Alpine. I went to a few shops and most of them sounded like they didnt even want the job. One shop wanted 300 just for the labor. And Best Buy was gonna do it for 100, but thats just the basic harness install. Ive asked the shops to see if a bypass was possible, but they said they would have to rewire the whole car.

So I went to the last shop before coming in to work, and the guy there said he could get it done for 250. It sounded kind steep still, so I threw in a window tinting install to get a better bargain. Hes like yea, both for 300, 50 for the window tinting, which includes taking off the old tint.

You guys think this is a good deal?

draikonz

what kind of alpine headunit do you have? And when they say they would have to rewire the entire car just to do a bypass, BS....alpine bypasses shouldn't have to do that. I assume they are bypassed by the same methods as pioneer...I'll look into it for you

aparker813

Not to sound condescending at all but is this at a low quality shop or something? Might want to check into the quality of tint they use, place I used charged $60 (one of hour of labor) just to remove the old tint, a long process if you have rear defroster lines.

Yaj95ES300

Its just a regular head unit.. and yeah, i thought that was kinda taking it to the extreme when they wanted to do a whole rewiring.. might as well have them hook it up to a 4 channel amp and get that out of the way too.. id appreciate any info!!

Yaj95ES300

Yeah thats what im thinking too.. but 250 for installing a head unit, they should hook it up.. but yea, im gonna check on their warranty for sure..

Choas

Your best bet is to get a 4/6 channel amp and bypass the whole thing if you wana go that route. What you would need to go is remove the wiring from the factory amp and wire it to the new amp (NOT REWIREING THE WHOLE SPEAKER SYSTEM) then just use composite wires (rca red/white) to the amp. This is not hard to do at all you should really try it yourself and like aparker813 says what kinda shop charges 50 for tint? What are they doing rolling black paint on.

Yaj95ES300

Okay, so if i swap out amps, would I still be stuck w/poor music quality if I install the aftermarket head unit. Or would this setup fix the problem?? <--By bypassing the stock amp..

Choas

Yea if you put a good amp in and you might also want to look at a 2 channel or mono block amp for the factory sub and more subs in the future. You may also be able to run the factory sub off a 4/6 channel amp but i'm not sure i need someone to chime in on that one.

Yaj95ES300

I will definetley be putting in my 2 channel Phoenix gold Xenon in the future.. But my bro in law mentioned to me that, for 300, I better off getting that new Alpine i saw at the shop, and make sure the shop does free installations!!

Choas

I wouldn't trust a shop to do an install on an es. They need a special harness to hook up to the amp or do a complete amp bypass to do it right. I would not even bother changing the HU is your not gonna do an amp bypass. Unless you have the namaguchi amp.

kphu

iTrader: (8)

You should try installing it yourself! There's a great thread on this forum on how to do it.

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=210521

Shoot - if you were close to MA I'd do it for $200. LOL
I've been installing car radios in my own cars since I was in high school - eons ago. I can agree that doing the lexus was the most PIA.

TORTOISE

dunno bout radio im still tryin to figure mine out but on the tint prices 50 is way cheap. The cheapest place around me wants 300 to install 5% on all windows except windshield and i dunno if that even includes removal.

aparker813

If thats with removal thats almost exactly what i paid about two weeks ago here in florida. As with most everything you get what you pay for and with tint it completely makes or breaks the car. If you have some crap tint job with bubbles and bad cuts and such it really brings down the look of the car whereas a good tint job will make the car look way nice.

Even if you have to wait a little to save up more money, wait and save for the good stuff.

maniax

iTrader: (3)

yeah like everyone else said. $50 for a tint job and removal sounds like Bull****. Cheapest for a tint job in NY is $99 and is usually pretty ****ty.

As for audio, I would get new speakers, an aftermarket amp, and a aftermarket radio. What you do is put in the new speakers and wire it directly into the aftermarket amp. This whole process will be very time consuming but worth it in the end. Then run some RCA cables from the headunit into the amp. And you're done. You just bypassed all the factory audio mess.

For 6x9 speakers, if you can find the discontinued JBL 3 way T595s, buy them! I have those in my car and it's the best sounding car speakers i ever heard. The highs are crystal clear and the lows hit very hard. They're rated at 150watts RMS and 300watts max each.

Choas

You can still use the stock speaker wire if you don't want to run new wire just extend it from where it goes into the amp.