Don’t Forget Aftermarket Options When Buying a New Car or Truck

Are you thinking of buying a new car or truck? Are you interested in a model with heated seats, a remote starter, blind-spot monitoring systems, backup sensors or a backup camera? In many cases, these upgrades are part of a premium option or technology package.

Take a look at a popular vehicle like the Ford F-150. Sure, the XLT comes with alloy wheels and different trim options. Still, for more than $5,000 over the price of an XL, you get rear parking sensors, color-coordinated floor mats, a rearview camera, blind spot monitoring and a few other elements of an advanced driver-assistance system.

What if you’re buying a work truck and want a backup camera? Don’t fret; your local specialty mobile enhancement retailer has exactly what you need. Let’s look at how you can upgrade your new vehicle to make it safer and more convenient.

Backup Camera Upgrades

Seeing what’s behind a pickup truck or SUV when backing up or maneuvering into a parking spot can prevent damage and accidents. Having a backup camera system added is a great way to ensure that you can see what’s behind the vehicle. These camera systems work with either the factory-installed display on an infotainment system, a rearview mirror with a color display or a stand-alone display in a commercial vehicle. In addition, the image from the camera displays automatically as soon as you put the transmission in reverse, so you don’t have to remember to push any buttons.

Aftermarket Options — Companies such as Momento offer high-quality rearview mirrors with integrated displays to let you see the image from a backup camera.

Forward-Facing Camera Upgrades

If you drive a large SUV, pickup truck or commercial vehicle, you may want to ask about adding a forward-facing camera to the front grille or bumper. These cameras can often be integrated similarly to a backup camera with a factory-installed display or an aftermarket rear view mirror. The cameras not only let you park nice and close to a wall or curb, but before you drive away, they let you see objects that might have been left in front of the vehicle.

Parking Sensor Systems

Parking sensors are another great upgrade to help prevent accidents. These small ultrasonic sensors can detect objects as small as a 1-inch signpost and produce a loud beep to let you know something or someone is behind your car or truck. Because these systems command your attention with a warning, they’re called active collision avoidance technologies. You don’t need to remember to use them; they’ll tell you when something needs your attention. You can choose from parking sensor systems for just the rear bumper or premium systems with front and rear sensors. Ask the retailer you’re working with about having the sensors painted to match the bumper cover perfectly, so the system is nearly invisible.

Camera- and Sensor-Based Blind Spot Monitoring Systems

The blind spot is the area beside your vehicle, typically from the B-pillar to where you can see objects in the rearview mirror. If your side mirrors aren’t adjusted properly, a car or motorcycle can be completely invisible to you unless you do a shoulder check. Two types of blind-spot monitoring systems can help prevent accidents when you’re changing lanes and someone is beside you. Camera-based blind spot monitoring systems will show you what’s beside your vehicle when you activate the turn signal. The images from a camera mounted on the side mirror can be shown on the factory infotainment system display or an aftermarket rearview mirror with a built-in color screen.

Another option for blind spot monitoring is a microwave-based sensor system. These are the most common solutions, and they work similarly to the ones in many new vehicles. A small indicator will illuminate if someone is driving in your blind spot. These indicators are usually mounted at the base of the A-pillars and flash a bright orange light to get your attention. If you activate your turn signal while someone is in this space, the blind spot monitoring system will start beeping to let you know not to change lanes.

Remote Car Starters

Letting your car or truck run for a few minutes before you drive away on a cold winter morning can save you time and make life easier. Having a remote car starter system makes it easy to warm up the vehicle while you’re putting on your coat and finding your wallet. Likewise, the air conditioning system can run for a few minutes to cool off the interior on a hot summer afternoon. Ask the shop you’re working with about automatic activation of the rear window defroster, heated seats, or a heat steering wheel when the car or truck’s interior is cold.

Heated Seat Upgrades

Wouldn’t it be nice to have seat heaters in your vehicle for those cold winter mornings? Did you know that they can be added as an aftermarket option to most cars and trucks? High-quality heating elements that use flexible carbon thread elements can be added to the back and bottom of your seats to add warmth. Most of these systems have high and low temperature settings. You can leave the control switch on and the seat heaters will start working with a remote car starter.

Floor Mats and Seat Covers

If you’re buying a new vehicle and want to help maintain its value, ask your mobile enhancement retailer about vehicle-specific floor mats. These molded mats not only help keep water, dirt, sand and slush contained, but they extend up the sides of the footwells to keep the carpet cleaner. Most high-quality mats are available in color options that match the vehicle’s interior and are available for front and back row seating. You can also get matching cargo mats to prevent spills from damaging the trunk or carpet in the back of an SUV.

Window Tint and Paint Protection Film

Window tint and paint protection film are two options that car dealers love to encourage new clients to add on. Just as with buying car stereo speakers, you’ll want to research these products before proceeding with a purchase. Window tint quality can vary dramatically. Inexpensive tint can fade quickly, turn purple, bubble and peel. The low-cost tint films also don’t offer much heat rejection compared with premium solutions. If you want your tint to perform, you’re better off dealing with a shop specializing in these upgrades.

The same goes for paint protection film, or what’s often called clear bra. These transparent polyurethane films are designed to protect painted surfaces against scratches and chips from gravel and stones, stains from tar and bugs and scuffs from jewelry or long fingernails around door handles. An expert will show you the films that are available and let you choose the surfaces you want to protect. At the very least, the front bumper and, depending on the vehicle design, the hood are good starting points. If you live somewhere where it snows and find yourself kicking your boots on the rocker panels, having those surfaces protected with PPF surfaces is a good idea.

Upgrade Your New Vehicle Today!

Before you check off the box for a technology package with options you don’t want, or have the dealership install window tint, paint film or a car starter, drop by your local specialty mobile enhancement retailer and ask what they have available. You may find much better pricing and much higher-quality solutions. At the very least, you can select the exact features that meet your needs. If there’s an option you want that we didn’t mention, be sure to ask them if it’s available as an aftermarket upgrade.

Lead-In Image Credit: Special thanks to Mat Romain from Wedgeport, Nova Scotia, for the photo of his awesome 2019 GMC Sierra pickup truck! We look forward to seeing the rest of the upgrades you have planned!

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Product Spotlight: Rockford Fosgate P1-1X12

Picking a subwoofer system for your car or SUV should be easy, right? If you’re looking at products from Rockford Fosgate, the answer is yes. With three series of amplifiers, subwoofers and enclosures to choose from, they have a solution for every budget and performance level. In this spotlight, we check out the Punch Series P1-1X12 12-inch single-voice-coil vented enclosure.

Design Elements of the Rockford Fosgate P1-1X12

The P1-1X12 is a bass reflex (vented) subwoofer enclosure loaded with a single 12-inch P1S4-12 four-ohm subwoofer. The woofer and rectangular vent face forward on the enclosure, so you don’t have to worry about the proximity of vehicle trim panels changing the tuning frequency. This is an issue that enclosures with vents on the sides can suffer from.

Rockford Fosgate includes a trim panel for the enclosure’s front panel that serves three purposes. First, it features a mesh grille over the vent, which prevents your friends from putting candy wrappers in there. In our experience, it also keeps kids from putting their Hot Wheels cars in. Second, the trim piece’s tapered shape works as a radius at the vent opening to reduce wind chuffing and distortion. Finally, the trim piece’s matte finish and Diamond-R logo look cool.

The enclosure is finished in a durable, high-density black “trunk liner”-style carpet that blends with most vehicle interiors.

Rockford Fosgate offers the P1G-12 mesh grille as an upgrade. Adding the grille is a wise choice if you carry cargo in the trunk. The woofer cone slapping into your groceries or sports equipment is a surefire way to cause damage.

P1-1X12 Subwoofer Enclosure Specifications

The Rockford Fosgate P1-1X12 enclosure measures 19.125 inches wide, 15.125 inches tall and 15.75 inches deep at the bottom. Its angled back panel fits tight against the seatbacks in your car or SUV. Wedge-style enclosures can save you several inches of storage space compared to enclosures with vertical back panels. This type of enclosure is more complicated to design and manufacture, but it’s a worthwhile investment in maximizing the usable space in your vehicle.

The enclosure is constructed from 5/8-inch MDF to balance weight and panel rigidity. Speaking of weight, the enclosure comes in at just under 40 pounds.

The P1S4-12 subwoofer has a single four-ohm voice coil rated for 250 watts continuous or 500 watts maximum. This makes the enclosure ideal for use with two- and four-channel amps in a bridged configuration. A solution like the P400X4 would be perfect, as it produces up to 200 watts from a pair of bridged channels. You can use the other pair of channels to power a set of component speakers in the front of the vehicle.

Electrical connections are handled by a custom-tooled terminal cup on the left side of the enclosure. The cup accepts 10-AWG speaker wire and features spring-loaded terminals to ensure a solid connection.

Punch Loaded Subwoofer Enclosure Family

Rockford Fosgate offers a complete line of subwoofer enclosures in the Punch family. There’s a single 10-inch version of this enclosure called the P1-1X10 and larger models with dual 12- and 10-inch subwoofers called the P1-2X12 and P1-2X10. If you want a solution that will play louder, then the P3-1X12 with a Punch P3 subwoofer rated at 600 watts continuous is an option. There are also P2- and P3-level dual subwoofer enclosures available. Your dealer can help you choose a model that fits your vehicle, performance goals and budget.

Upgrade Your Car Audio System with Rockford Fosgate Today!

We’ve said it dozens of times, but it bears repeating. The first and best upgrade you can make to your car stereo system is to add an aftermarket subwoofer. This applies even to higher-end factory-installed systems, as few will dedicate enough space to getting that deep, impactful bass that car audio fanatics expect.

When it’s time to bring your car audio system to life, visit a local authorized Rockford Fosgate retailer and ask about Punch Series loaded subwoofer enclosure solutions like this P1-1X12 and its counterparts. You can find an authorized retailer by visiting their website and using the locator tool. Be sure to check out Rockford Fosgate on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to stay up to date with their latest product releases and the events they attend.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Understanding Light Color and Illumination

We took our first look at measuring light sources a while back as our first step toward understanding the differences in automotive headlight options. In this article, we’ll provide a practical demonstration of why it’s crucial for the lighting on your car, truck, motorcycle, ATV or side-by-side to emit light that covers the entire color spectrum evenly.

Light Sources and the Human Body

Light waves work similarly to sound waves in that both our eyes and ears are sensitive to a specific range of frequencies. For sound, most adults can hear from 20 Hz to around 15 kHz and see light in the range of 400 to 790 THz (terahertz). Sounds above 15 or 20 kHz are imperceivable as our ears don’t detect those signals and send the information to our brain. Likewise, energy below 400 THz (which is infrared) isn’t seen by our eyes but can be felt as heat on our skin. Frequencies above 790 THz, which is ultraviolet light, are also invisible to our eyes but can cause skin damage in the form of sunburn. Butterflies, some birds, reindeer and sockeye salmon can see ultraviolet light. At the other end of the spectrum, some snakes, fish and frogs can see infrared light.

How Our Eyes Perceive Objects

If you shine a white light at an object, that object reflects specific colors to our eyes. Those reflected colors match the color of the object. So, if you shine white light on a blue car, then blue light wavelengths are reflected to your eyes. The same goes for the yellow lane markings on the road and green grass on the boulevard or median.

Headlight Color — We see objects as being a specific color because only specific light rays from a source are reflected to our eyes.

Let’s put this concept into a set of simple rules. First, we’ll consider the sun on a cloudless day as a near-perfect light source. The sun emits light energy that’s very evenly distributed through the color spectrum.

If you look at the spectrographic analysis of the light from the sun shown above, you can see that from light blue through to light red, the spectral density is fairly similar.

What if Color Is Missing from a Light Source?

We’ll set up a demonstration to show what happens when a specific color of light is missing from a light source and how that affects the way we perceive objects. We have a set of RGB LED strip lights set 18 inches away from a selection of Hot Wheels cars for this demonstration. We can use the smartphone app to choose which of the LEDs are on. First, we’ll take pictures of the cars with the camera flash, then with just the red, then the green, then the blue LEDs on so you can see which cars light up and which don’t.

If you compare the photo of the cars illuminated with the flash to those with only single colors of lights, we can see that some vehicles are quite dark. In the image with the red LEDs, the green and blue cars remain dark. In the image with the green lighting, the red and blue cars are dark. It should now come as no surprise that the red and green cars look dark in the image with the blue lighting.

Going back to our rules concept, if our light source doesn’t offer light energy that matches the color of an object, we won’t perceive that object as being illuminated.

Just for references, we’ll include spectrographic analysis of the red, green and blue LEDs so you can see how narrowly focussed their light output is.

We are getting close to a point where we have enough information and understanding of how light works to analyze and understand the color content of different headlight bulb options. So please don’t fret; we’ll get to that information soon! In the meantime, if your headlights aren’t bright enough, drop by your local specialty mobile enhancement retailer and ask them about options to upgrade the lighting system on your car or truck.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Product Spotlight: Rockford Fosgate R165X3

Whether you enjoy background music while commuting to work or are serious about your car audio system offering studio-quality or concert-level performance, Rockford Fosgate has speakers, amplifiers, and subwoofer solutions for every application. The Prime series products are the most affordable offerings and include trickle-down tech from their industry-leading Punch and Power series. In this spotlight, we are going to look at the Prime Series replacement speakers, particularly the R165X3 6.5-inch set.

Rockford Fosgate R165X3 Design

The R165X3 is a three-way coaxial speaker with a vacuum-formed polypropylene woofer cone and a rubber surround. Rubber surrounds last much longer than foam and are usually not found on speakers at this price point, so you can expect many years of enjoyment from the set. Each driver features a silk-dome midrange and a silk-dome tweeter, whereas most speakers use polyetherimide (PEI) plastic dome tweeters at this price point. The mass of the textile domes typically allows the drivers to play lower, so the R165X3 will be less directional in the upper midrange while still offering excellent coverage thanks to the compact tweeter.

The drivers feature Rockford Fosgate’s Integrated Concealed Crossover (ICC) design. This design choice mounts the crossover parts to the stamped steel basket to save time during installation.

The R165X3 set includes a set of metal mesh grilles for applications where you are surface-mounting the speakers.

Rockford Fosgate R165X3 — The R165X3 set includes a pair of 6.5-inch speakers, grilles and mounting hardware.

Mounting Options

One of the challenges of upgrading speakers is finding a driver that fits your application. The R165X3 speakers require only 2.15 inches of mounting depth. The tweeter post protrudes from the driver’s front side, but this keeps the factory grille away from the woofer surround. The total protrusion from the mounting surface is 0.44 inches.

Rockford Fosgate also provided every common screw pattern in the mounting flange. There are 22 holes, which sets a record for any 6.5-inch speaker we’ve come across.

Driver Specifications

The R165X3 set is rated to handle 45 watts of power continuously with a maximum power rating of 90 watts. Sensitivity is rated at an impressive 91 dB when measured with one watt of power at a distance of one meter. The frequency response is 52 hertz to 20 kHz. All the driver specifications comply with the ANSI/CTA-2031 standard for car audio speakers. The woofer Xmax is 1.9 millimeters in each direction. Rockford Fosgate typically uses an Xmax specification where the driver reaches 10% total harmonic distortion. So, while the number might seem lower than competing products, these are raw laboratory measurements that reflect real-world performance.

The woofer features a one-inch diameter voice coil and a winding with a nominal impedance of four ohms. Regarding Thiele and Small electromechanical parameters, the woofer has a resonant frequency (Fs) of 69 Hz, an equivalent compliance of 12.9 liters, and a Qts of 0.75. These numbers indicate the driver is designed for an infinite baffle application like you’d find in a typical car door or the rear parcel shelf of a sedan.

Prime Series Speaker Family

The R165X3 is just one of seven speakers in the Prime coaxial family. The solutions include 4-inch, 5.25-inch, and 6.75-inch two-way coaxial speakers, two-way 5×7 and 6×9 speakers, and a three-way 6×9 speaker.

All are designed to offer great efficiency and power handling. This makes them ideal for use with aftermarket radios or basic factory-installed units that produce roughly 20 watts per channel. You can also extract even more performance and enjoyment by using the drivers with an external power amplifier.

Upgrade Your Speakers Today!

If you want an affordable 6.5-inch car audio speaker with great efficiency and clarity, drop into a local authorized Rockford Fosgate retailer and ask to audition the R165X3 set. We think you’ll be impressed. You can find an authorized retailer by visiting their website and using the locator tool.

Be sure to check out their Facebook, Instagram and YouTube feeds and channel to stay up to date with their latest product releases.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Understanding the Science Behind Automotive Headlight Bulb Colors

When it comes to lighting the road in front of your car or truck at night, most enthusiasts focus on light intensity instead of headlight bulb color. It’s straightforward to see the difference between yellowish light produced by incandescent halogen bulbs and the white/blue output of HID or LED bulbs. The science behind these light sources is interestingly similar to what professional car audio technicians measure to calibrate a digital signal processor in your mobile audio system. If you’re intrigued, read on, and we’ll explain in detail.

How Light Works

There have been many detailed scientific dissertations on how light works. These papers explain the electron and sub-electron concepts that allow us to see objects. In short, light is made of photons. Photons are packets of electrons that have been released from atoms. These packets of photons have energy and momentum but have no mass. This means you can shine a light at an object to illuminate it, but the energy from the light source doesn’t make the object heavier.

If we excite a group of atoms, the negatively charged electrons that orbit the nucleus absorb that energy. As more energy is added to an atom, the electrons circle faster and farther away from the center. When the energy source (electricity or heat) is removed, the electrons snap back to their original orbit path but release that added energy in the form of photons. Under specific conditions, the photons that are released produce visible light. If you studied electrical theory in high school, you’d recognize this pattern as similar to how electricity works. The only difference is that electricity involves electrons jumping from one atom to another to transfer energy.

When the light photons escape from an atom, they can have varying energy levels depending on the electron’s position when it leaves the atom. You can think of this as the photons having a specific resonant frequency. As a result, different types of atoms release photons of different wavelengths. The result is differently colored light sources.

Light and Color

We know that light sources have different colors. An incandescent bulb gives off a very different kind of light than a fluorescent bulb, a gas-discharge arc lamp (high-intensity discharge or HID) or a light-emitting diode (LED). Some light sources appear yellow, while others are white or blue. How these light sources illuminate objects can make them look very different.

Let’s take a giant step sideways. You’ve seen plenty of rainbows, but do you know what turns the supposedly white light from the sun into a color pattern that shifts from violet through to blue, green, yellow, orange and red? Water molecules refract the light from the sun. Because white light is made up of many different wavelengths, and each is reflected at a different angle as it passes through the water molecules, the light is divided into its primary components. Sorry, I know. We got all technical again.

An expensive-for-its-size electronic device called a spectral illuminance analyzer or a spectrometer can analyze the frequency content of a light source. The spectrometer works precisely the same way that a real-time audio analyzer (RTA) looks at the amplitude of the different sound frequencies produced by an audio source. As you may have guessed, we’ve added one to the BestCarAudio.com lab.

If you compare the two spectrographic measurements, you can see that the water vapor in the clouds is blocking increasing amounts of green, yellow, orange and red light. Unsurprisingly, we are left with a light source that makes everything look dull. This is because the water vapor in the air has quite literally filtered out the light energy that makes colors pop.

The software scales the measurement window to make it easy to see energy levels at different wavelengths. This is similar to the way our eyes or the iris and shutter on a camera work together to deliver a similar level of perceived brightness for a given lighting condition. The chart below shows both measurements overlaid, one on top of the other. You can see that the overall brightness level on a cloudy day is significantly lower.

The measured light level was 106,252 lux on a sunny day, whereas the cloudy day was only 9,069 lux. Converted to candlepower, the numbers are 9,874 and 843.

Headlight Bulb Color

When it comes to the headlights on your car or truck, bulbs come in various colors for a variety of reasons. At the incandescent end of the spectrum, most have a yellowish look. With that said, halogen bulbs (which use iodine and bromine gas) have less yellow and produce more light output than old bulbs that use argon. Here’s the spectrographic analysis of a relatively simple halogen light bulb.

As you can see, there is a lot of energy in the red portion of the light spectrum produced by this bulb. To be clear, it’s not an amber bulb, though; we should find one of those and test it as well.

OK, we’re back from the hardware store with a pair of Sylvania 3057AK amber turn signal bulbs. The graph below shows their spectral energy.

How we perceive the color of a light source is dependent on the frequency content of the energy coming from the bulb. Warm light will have more red energy, where a cool bulb will be bluer.

Color Temperature and Color Space

If you’ve ever shopped for HID headlight bulbs, you know their color is often described by a specific Kelvin value. For example, a yellow fog light bulb might be rated at 3,000 K, where a factory-installed HID or LED bulb might be a very pure white rated at 6,000 K. Those bulbs with a very blue tint are often up in the 8,000-10,000 K range.

Most people think these values are somewhat arbitrary, but the reality is, the light color can be measured with impressive accuracy using the right equipment. Our spectrometer can do this quickly and easily. The software will also plot the measurement on what’s called a color space chart. The chart outlines the level of red, green and blue in the light source and uses X and Y coordinates to describe the location on a chart. For our testing, we’ll use the CIE 1931 color space chart. The image below shows us where our measurement of the Wagner bulb falls.

The software tells us the Wagner light source has a correlated color temperature of 3,174 kelvins. As mentioned, that’s considered a warm yellowish light. The amber Sylvania bulb has a color temperature of 1,857 and falls into the orange and red portion of the light spectrum.

White Light Isn’t Always Made Up Of All Frequencies

The last item we’ll touch on in this article is a bit of a tease toward some future content we are working on. If you’re reading this, then you’re likely looking at a computer or smartphone screen. The light created by that screen is made up of tiny red, green and blue pixels. The colors you see depend on the intensity of each of those pixels. If the screen is to be blue, then only the blue pixels will be illuminated. For violet, the red and blue will be turned on. Yellow is produced by red and green. You can easily see this pattern by looking at the CIE 1931 color space images above.

What might be surprising to some is that the perception of white can be made up of specific amounts of red, green and blue light. The chart below shows a measurement of the light produced by the laptop screen on which this article was created.

Behold! Our Dell XPS 13 laptop screen is perceived as white, yet it’s primarily red, very light green and mostly blue light. Here’s how the white light it produces measures on the CIE 1931 chart.

Our screen has a correlated color temperature of 6,662 K. If we were scoring it on even whiteness, that’d be an excellent result. But does this score mean it’s a perfect source of white light? Absolutely not! We’ll leave you to ponder that thought as we prepare the next few articles.

Lead-in Image: Thanks to Josh Matthews for sharing this photo of an Acura RSX equipped with decidedly blue headlights.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

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Backup Camera Upgrades

Forward-Facing Camera Upgrades

Parking Sensor Systems

Camera- and Sensor-Based Blind Spot Monitoring Systems

Remote Car Starters

Heated Seat Upgrades

Floor Mats and Seat Covers

Window Tint and Paint Protection Film

Upgrade Your New Vehicle Today!

Design Elements of the Rockford Fosgate P1-1X12

P1-1X12 Subwoofer Enclosure Specifications

Punch Loaded Subwoofer Enclosure Family

Upgrade Your Car Audio System with Rockford Fosgate Today!

Light Sources and the Human Body

How Our Eyes Perceive Objects

What if Color Is Missing from a Light Source?

Rockford Fosgate R165X3 Design

Mounting Options

Driver Specifications

Prime Series Speaker Family

Upgrade Your Speakers Today!

How Light Works

Light and Color

Headlight Bulb Color

Color Temperature and Color Space

White Light Isn’t Always Made Up Of All Frequencies

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