I just had the dealer install the OEM CD Changer in the glove
box compartment. (BTW, the CD Changer w/
bracket kit was $198 from the dealer).
The glove box door does not close and open like it used to. It
is a little tight and has to be pushed in hard
and pops out when opening it. The tech said that this is normal
with the CD Changer installed. Is this true?
The other thing is the panel underneath the glove box (knee bolster?)
is slightly loose at the inner end.
Where do I tighten this?
Much thanks.
There are many things you should never let anyone but a certified
Volvo technician touch, and then there
are things you should never let a certified Volvo technician
touch.
If there is one thing you should never do, is let anyone but a
professional car audio installer, install ANY
piece of sound equipment.
I can't really help you with you problem as I own an 850 and I
don't want to assume the body panels and
interior are similar enough for me to give advice to, but I just
want to let as many people know, car audio is
for car audio experts.
I have an Alpine 6 disc in my glove box as well. It's been in
my car for more then 2 years now, and the install
was absolutely perfect. It sits flush against the driver side
inner wall of the glove box to make acces from
the driver seat easier, and to leave enough space on the passenger
side inner wall for storage of small
items like sunglasses, pen/pencil, notepad, lock nuts, cell phone,
charger, etc. I personally keep a pair of
sunglasses, a pen, two pencils, and a note pad with my changer
in the glove box. I have no problems with
the door not being able to be closed properly, or with loose
panels.
I pulled the CD Changer out just to have a look see. The work
seems to be neatly done. I finally discovered
that the washers provided with the screws to hold the lower part
of the glove box in place was slightly
interfering with the glove box door due to the fact that the
head of the screws were now protruding. I took 2
of the 4 washers out and the door is closing smoother now. (It
seems that not all OEM is a tight fit?)
My only complaint now is the panel underneath the dash. It is
tight up front but when I reach underneath and
push it up there is some play. I checked out our other S70 and
it is tight. How can I tighten this?
I'm not sure what you mean by play in the panel. I'm going to
assume you're talking about forward part of
the knee panel (the part that sits farthest forward and is bare
plastic rather than vinyl coated). This part of
the panel slides into a groove on both sides. It is very easy
when trying to put this back in place to miss one
of them and not the other. This would cause the panel to stay
in place but have some degree of freedom to
it. The only way to fix it is to pull the panel down and line
everything up again to put it back. This can be a
pain though so if you don't have a bunch of free time available
I would suggest putting it off. Basically what
you have to do is remove the glove box insert (screws are easily
seen once you open the door) There are
six screws i believe. The insert will be tough to pull out but
it will come out if all screws are removed and it
wont break i promise. once you have that out you will see the
top edge of the knee panel along with the two
screws holding it in. pull those out and the panel should fall
right into your hands. Then pull forward to
remove it from the grooves. You may or may not be able to see
where it's supposed to slide into
depending on how flexible you are but you should be able to reach
down and feel it. Get the front of the
panel near where it should be then slide BOTH SIDES in at the
SAME TIME. If you try to do one then rotate
the other in you won't get anywhere. Thats where it gets tough.
Once in lift the back of the panel back up
and rebolt. Put the gloveboc back together and your done. As
for Sins comment. I agree to a point. Stereo
installers are there for a reason and should be utilized rather
than a mechanic. Just as you wouldn't ask a
carpenter to build you a rock wall. However, experienced DIY'ers
can accomplish a great deal with a bit of
time and effort (eg. last night it took me four hours but I successfully
managed to replace the trim piece
surrounding the radio and heater controls). If you doubt your
skill dont try it but if your fairly confident and
have some experience, the money saved and the satisfaction of
doing a difficult job yourself is well worth
the extra time. My $0.02
--
1998 S70, heavy mods
I'll try it out. -Cheers, Brian
I purchased the same player from the dealer, installed for around
$500; I'd say you got a better deal! My
glove box cover has the same problem but I didn't want to take
a chance with the so called "audio
professionals", I'd rather pay a little more, get OEM equipment
& have a volvo dealer be liable. All in all,
adding the CD changer was one of the best accesories I have added
to this car!
(NOTE: if you have a CDRW drive in your computer, pickup a Rio
Volt MP3 CD player from
www.sonicblue.com
for 10+ hrs of music on 1 CD!!)
Actually, the cd changer from Volvo is the cheaper model from
the one I installed. It is essentially the same
player, however, it does not have a digital output. Unless you
purchase the dolby digital surround sound,
audio system from Volvo, you can't get a digital sound system
from Volvo.
Find an audio shop that participates in audio competitions and you won't have to worry with custom jobs.
That mp3 player idea sounds like a good one. But I'm so used to
burning my regular wav format music onto
CDR's and CDRW's. Since I make my own, I can cram up to the low
80 minute range.
Actually, talking about MP3's, my friend has a 240 with a Pentium
III computer hooked up to the sound
system of the car. He uses an external drive to go between the
computer in the car and the computer at
home.
Digital surround sound (add homer simpson drool)! I wish! But
I can't complain, this one is doing the job
well (it says Volvo but I think it's an Alpine 6 CD).
Anyway, regarding the MP3 Rio Volt, look it up on ZDnet.com and
pay attention to the user reviews, this
one wins hands down! I purchased a D-link model which was horrible,
returned it and replaced it with the
Rio Volt. Words can't say how much better this player is than
the D-link!! Having a PIII computer in the car
to play MP3 files gives unlimited play time but this handy little
unit is much more portable and the battery
life is EXCELLENT! (I record my own MP3's at 64kbps w/ music
match jukebox & use this to study for my
MCSE classes.. can you say computer geek?)
The Volvo issue 6-disc changer is made by Alpine. In fact many
of the head units of the 850 are made by
Alpine. Just open up the cassette deck door, and look inside.
You should be able to see a golden chip that
has Alpine printed upside down on it.
Alpine has this exact model badged as an Alpine 6-disc. They also
have a high end model that has a
digital output. The price difference is about $250.
"Having a PIII computer in the car to play MP3 files gives unlimited
play time but this handy little unit is
much more portable and the battery life is EXCELLENT!"
Battery life?! I thought you were talking about the mp3 in dash
players that use memory cards. How do you
wire the output from the mp3 player to the sound system?
64kbps?! THAT'S HORRIBLE SOUND QUALITY!!! I never use anything
less then 128kbps. For those that
don't know what kbps stands for, it is kilobytes per second.
Basically the higher the kbps, the better the
sound quality.
In my entire mp3 collection, the lowest kbps I will download is
128, the highest I have are usually in 160 or
even 192.
This MP3 player looks like a standard, portable CD player but
plays data CDR's and CDRW's. Right now I
use a cassette tape adapter to get the sound into the car's stereo
but I wish there was a better way. My old
indash sony CD player from years ago had an input jack for a
portable cassette player, wish this player
had the same feature (the bearings on the cassette adapter by
sony make an annoying vibration after they
heat up).
I use 64 kbps because it's like books on tape, it's not music
so I really don't need the 128 or higher bit
rates. I read the material as I study and using Musicmatch Jukebox
I encode at 64kbps. I've put about 18
hours of audio on these cd's (one CD per course) and still have
plenty of space!
You may know this already but for music encoding there are 2
types of MP3 files, CBR and VBR. Most
likely you use CBR, constant bit rate of 128 & up, takes
128kbits per second so you can calculate the file
size based on time: 128Kbps * 1bit/8Bytes * 1min * 60sec/min
= 960KB on disk.
But VBR (variable bit rate) adjusts it's bit rate based on the
complexity of the music..WAY COOL! but VBR
isn't too widely used. The RIO volt player supports VBR from
the most recent version of Musicmatch. So, if
there's a quiet part in the song, the bit rate goes down to save
space. If the music gets really complex the
bit rate will jump up so you don't miss any quality.
Since all of the songs on Napster are pretty much encoded using
CBR, you have no choice. But if you rip
your own songs off CD, try VBR and see if you like the quality
better, then compare file sizes & sound
quality!
By the way, I didn't like Andrew's original post about drag racing
but I sure enjoyed reading your response!
Damn you know your stuff!! Under the stories section, did you
read that post about the Sunday drive in a
volvo where the guy had a corvette engine mod in his 760 wagon?!
Thanks for the info and the compliment.
I'll go see if I can find that thread with the 760 wagon and the
760 wagon.
That should've read 760 and the Corvette engine.
If you have any experiences, facts, hints comments or data that you think might be useful on the site, please
and I will post it, with an acknowledgement of your contribution (if you so wish).