Electronics upgrade report

[GTOger]

We just got done with the "infotainment system" and keyless entry upgrades on the 90 ZR-1, and figured I would share.

First off, for about $100 the keyless entry package was a no-brainer. The remote on this one looks very similar to the later-model GM fobs and is of nice quality. The horn will honk on door lock/unlock, or not, depending on how you push the button. It's also tied into the lights so they flash on lock/unlock. The "option" button pops the back hatch.


Thought about spending a little more money on an alarm system, but (a) the car will not be out of my sight very often and (b) nobody honestly pays a bit of attention to an alarm anymore. The keyless entry was really what I was after, as I was getting a little tired of having to insert the key carefully into the lock so as not to accidentally scratch the handle or the door. I know... it's such a small thing, but if you're accustomed to having the fob, it's hard to go back! (The pic above, BTW, shows reflection of my garage ceiling which has that "popcorn" texture... it's not orange peel in the paint!)

The main upgrade went into pulling the aftermarket radio that the previous owner had installed. We kept the rear speakers that the previous owner had installed. We removed the ported subwoofer enclosure that took the majority of the back storage area and removed the Alpine amp and JL Audio 10" W1 speaker and had a new cabinet built for it. The new cabinet is a non-ported wedge built to the correct dimensions to match the speaker. The speaker now faces up and forward rather than up towards the glass. The difference in sound and response is night and day. Here's what the new setup looks like:


Up front, we installed a set of FoCal component speakers in the factory locations. There's nothing really to see, so no picture of that.

The most striking difference is the head unit. We went with the Kenwood DNX-6160. The reason we chose this is two-fold: #1, it fits perfectly into the radio opening of the Corvette. #2, it features GPS nav by Garmin, which after sampling some others we felt to be generally superior. Here's what it looks like in the dash:


It's playing tunes from a little USB thumb-drive. The USB connection is in the center console.

The speakers (except for the sub) are all powered by the head-unit, and are matched up accordingly. The system sounds amazingly good considering the front speakers are shoved up by your feet. Actually, we got some very good advice on equipment and installation from the shop we purchased the equipment from. The cost to have them install was negligible when compared to the value of my time, so it was an easy decision to have them do all the work. The installation was first-rate.

In the next shot you can see a GPS screen, although since there's no GPS reception in my garage it's not "live":


The unit is fairly customizable, so it was easy to make the back-lit buttons match the same color as the rest of the instrumentation in the car. I like that. And as I said before, one of the great things about this unit is how it fits directly into the car without having to trim or file anything down. It does all the standard AM/FM/CD stuff you would expect as well as iPod controls, the aforementioned MP3 playback via USB.

It also does handsfree Bluetooth for your cellphone. It paired up instantly with my Blackberry and my wife's Android-based HTC phone, even pulling the address book and call lists. The microphone is placed discretely by the driver's side visor and calls at highway speeds are reported to be nice and clear.

With these upgrades, the car really has all the creature comforts of the new cars, and the expense was not extreme. Including labor, we're into the project for just north of $1500. Worth every cent, so far as the wife and I are concerned.

And with some pending road trips in the car, one of the wife's big concerns was cargo space. The previous system took up the vast majority of the rear hatch area. The new smaller and more efficient wedge leaves us considerably more space.


Finally, I spent $40 on new headlights. I went with Sylvania SilverStars and then spent a few minutes aligning them properly. I must say, they are much brighter than the regular halogens they replaced. I drove the car around this evening and I have much greater confidence when tooling around after dark.