November 26, 2015

HK's Musical Pal

I've looked at a LOT of different music-into-your-car-interface things in the last year. So far a lot of them, in fact all of them get an input into your car. After that they tend to either shine or crash. Harman is an interesting group that makes (through it's various brands) some mind blowing technology. Rather than give you my pat I-didn't-touch-it-but-here-is-my-opinion-anyway, I've put out a feeler to someone I know at Harman to see if I can get my hot hands on a demo unit. Until then, check out what Engadget tells us.

Posted by Lionel Felix at 06:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 03, 2015

SEMA - Gigalumen HID Kit

HID "style" kits have been all the rage since the kits to convert your car to HID have been prohibitively expensive. During my Bataan style march through the 3.5 million sq/ft of SEMA show floor I came across a small but extremely bright booth for Gigalumen. The very nice duo had a dark, almost welders lens dark shade over a bulb. So what do I do, crane my neck around the shade to see the bulb. It was a bad idea. It was superfreakinbright. The bulb in the other side of the booth was submerged in a fish tank.

They told me that not only does it plug right into your existing bulb sockets, it's street price will be about $300 for the kit. Compared to the $1200 kits out there now, this might blow the other sellers out of the water. They're looking for American distributors. [email protected]

Posted by Lionel Felix at 11:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 02, 2015

SEMA - Real Life Tonka

It's not car tech but it's so cool you just have to know about it. International, makers of big-rigs has adopted their "light" truck platform to a pickup. Yes, a pickup. Their RXT line starts at $70K. Now before you freak out about how much that is, a loaded Escalade from the dealer is just about that price and Range Rovers are more as are Mercedes G-Wagens. The CXT version, a bigger, more truckier size up starts at $110K, whick I think is about what a G55 Mercedes SUV would cost, so dont get all road warrior on us, or actually, with this you can go ahead and do just that.

I'll be in the Mobile Electronics area today. No free Internet on the show floor so it may be a few hours before there are more posts.

Posted by Lionel Felix at 12:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 21, 2015

MP3Car.com Forums - *Release* FrodoXM Service (Now Free!)

Frodo (of Frodoplayer fame on MP3car.com) has released a free Windows DLL that can speak to and control any XM Direct unit. He uses this DLL in his own Frodoplayer Car PC Front end as well Meedio plugin Meedio plugin. If you've ever wanted to integrate XM control in your custom Car PC app or any application for that matter, this will save you a ton of work.

Posted by dstolarz at 07:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 18, 2015

F This, F That

This has nothing to do with any car YOU would drive every day but the photo is so cool, I just had to share. They make everything out of carbon fiber now... I should make carbon fiber silverware. People would buy that, right?

Posted by Lionel Felix at 04:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 11, 2015

iPod Gold Stabdard Installs

Get me near a machine shop and I get all ooooogy. I love CNCs, lathes, welders, you name it, if it's about metalwork, I'm there.

Eli sent over a link to the Tuner Tricks iPod gallery. They have some outstanding iPod instalations as well as great photography. Hey, that counts.

The trick is always finding good vehicle real estate. The win-win here is that a lot of the installs look stock and don't require dash destruction.

Posted by Lionel Felix at 11:50 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 08, 2015

Carhacks Stickers & Shirts - w00t

Well, we had to do it. By popular demand, we're offering up some first run shirts and stickers. More to come but these r0x0r!

Team Banzai will be the first ones sporting the new stickers. Don't be the last one on the block without one.

Posted by Lionel Felix at 08:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 28, 2015

Tracking Smokey

A Definitive Studios is releasing a cable that connects your Valentine to your on-board PC allowing you to get a better handle on the nature of fuzz density in your area. Now that is cool and all but I have a challenge for them. When real speed traps are found, the software should upload the GPS coordinates to a database and send that info down to other people on the system, creating a virtual anti-fuzz grid, distant early warning system. How you like them apples?

I used to have a radar detector. I had a few of them over the years with varying degrees of success. There were two reasons I needed one in my car, I drove fast and I drove very fast. The kinds of things I used to do with my car made the chase scene in Ronin look tame. After a few decades of stupid driving and getting away with most of it, I decided to just drive normal. Perhaps it was my involvement with the fire department, responding to numerous accidents and seeing earless people ejected from vehicles that tempered my need for speed.

When I lived in LA, radar detectors were pointless. The amount of rogue RF made any unit schizoid. In the end, there were too few places I felt like I could speed and it just wasn’t worth the ticked because I couldn’t depend on any unit being accurate enough.

I know quite a few people who say the Valentine is the only one to have and all others are pointless in comparison. I've even witnessed one in action and thought it was impressive. Since my Yukon isn't the speed demon my old Bimmer was, I don't have a burning desire to get my hands on one. It also helps that once a day my fire department pages goes off and I get to tear up the streets with lights and sirens, running red lights and making all sorts of noise. It's a good offset.

Posted by Lionel Felix at 03:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack