Dino Saga 080817 _ Radio, Tires, Wheels, Roads

Dino Saga 080817 _ Radio, Tires, Wheels, Roads

Had a chance to really try out all the goodies in the new radio. Pioneer DEH-2000MP. 3 FM bands, AM, CD Player, Stereo In from anything you have. 4 each 50 Watt outputs. Hell of a lot of technology for 100 bucks. You can read the display in any light that can get into the car. The Channel Select pushbuttons work fine by feel while my back stays firmly in contact with the seat back. Volume control and scan buttons work fine but I have a problem with the feel of the Volume knob. Half of the knob is buried in the scan button bezel. You can only grab the knob with the tips of your fingers and it is polished. Slippery! If knob was ¼” longer it would be OK. I will look into moving it out.

The 200 watts of available power is ridiculous. Old radio would do 60 (15 per channel) and I never went over about 20 total in such a little car. Engine noise drowned that out once you were at Freeway speeds (65+) so I would just turn the radio off once I got going. The new radio can argue with the engine up to the sixties but you can’t live in the car. If you hit traffic and slow down, the audio is deafening. You grab for the volume and cut things way down. The engine noise doesn’t bother me but the combo is bad news. I certainly don’t have to worry about clipping the peaks on anything I will ever play. All things considered things are great.

Been fun following dinodan as he bought 16” wheels for his Dino. Sounds like everything worked out fine with more modern tires. He used the same size combo that I use (straight off later 308s) and noticed the same things I have raved about since I bought my car. Just checked the pressure in my four and all are OK. Wheel rebuild is holding up nicely. New Falken tires ride and hold just fine. Noise is reasonable.

We are lucky in the Santa Barbara area to have an asphalt cap on almost all roads. The freeways start out concrete but truck traffic is very high and blocks move. The state will try grinding and grooving which helps for a little while but wide stiff tires flop or sing in a variety of tones. The variable pitch tread blocks on both the Kumho and Falkens cuts down on noise from transverse grooving but the slap stays. Asphalt cures everything. Concrete slows down its movement and slapping, singing go away. Nothing but white noise, good traction and great visibility of lane markings. The County and City do a good job of sealing most secondary asphalt roads so we can play with abandon.

A run to LA wakes you up real fast. Literally! If you keep on going South things get nasty. God knows when the 5 will be driveable with pleasure to San Diego. There is a long way to go. In the meantime, sports cars with 20” wheels and high performance tires are suffering. I hope they go directly to the asphalt cap for the sake of FChatters. Or figure how to make expansion joints that are locked vertically. And use straight rails and in-line graining for the concrete finishing machine.

We drive Ferraris and the roads should be of the same caliber. Right?

John
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