Found at: http://www.nh-scooters.com/article/articleprint/61/-1/2/

The Scooter Stereo System: Step-By-Step Guide
Top level Maintenance / Tuning

Author: Brian Ducharme

Publishing date: 04.14.2003 12:07

How to install a great sounding stereo system on your scooter for less than $100.

On my way to work one morning I thought to myself, wouldn't it be great to have a stereo? I missed being able to listen to music while whizzing down the road.


I spent a few nights looking around stores, browsing online and even stopped in to a few hi-fi stereo stores that do custom installations in cars. Besides thinking I was nuts for even thinking about putting a stereo sysem that would be loud enough to hear on a scooter, they basically told me it wasn't possible. That's when I came up with a perfect, low-cost solution. By using a set of Cambridge Soundworks PCWorks speakers and a portable mp3 player, I had my stereo. Since the PCWorks speakers ran off of 12Volts it was just a matter of cutting off the transformer and connecting it directly to the battery on my scooter. Mounting it in a fashion so that it could be easily removed and secured was the tricky part.

The Materials

Tools needed


Step One - Start by taking the speakers out and finding the power supply cord. You can do one of two things; either cut off the plug end or you can go down to radio shack and find an adapter end that matches the one that comes on your power supply. This way you can save the power supply in case you ever decide to remove the stereo and use it indoors. Attach the terminal ends to the wires from the cord that you just cut by stripping back the wire and then crimping the terminal ends on.
Locate your battery and connect the wire with the white stripe to the (+) side of the battery and the other to the (-) side, then run this wire from your battery compartment to the storage area under your seat. By removing a few body panels you should be able to run the wire so that it's not visible.

Once the wire is run, you will need to cut the wire in order to splice in the noise reduction and fuse. Allow enough wire so that you can move the box that will house the noise reduction and fuse to any area within the under-seat compartment, then make your cut. Strip the ends. Now you should have a piece of wire with the adapter end left over; put it aside for now.


Step Two - Time to put the wiring together. Get your utility box and it should have at least one wire openning with a bracket to lock the wires down. Run the ends that you just cut into this hole. If your box has two wire holes take the other piece of wire (the one with the adapter end) and run it into that hole, if not you will need to run the wire through the same hole as the other one.

Get out your noise reduction coil and fuse along with a few wire caps. Start by connecting the (+) lead coming from the battery to the fuse (the one with the white stripe); next connect the other fuse end to the noise reduction coil; then connect the coil to the (+) end of the adapter wire; finally connect the two black wires back together. Close up the box and it's time to mount the speakers.



Step Three - Find the two speaker brackets that came with the system. Drill two holes in each one as shown in the photo. Next, depending on your scooter, find a place up front that you can mount them upside down. I have mine mounted just below the ignition (see photo). Using the wood screws mount the speaker brackets. As an alternative you could mount them on top of the handlebars, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you have a windshield to put them behind. Having the speakers mounted below the ignition worked out good for me, and shields them from the elements a little bit.

To mount the speakers, you simply slide them on to the brackets then run the wiring down into the battery compartment, them up along the same route as you ran the power, eventually ending up back under the seat. Leave enough slack up front so that in case you get caught in the rain you can take the speakers off the mounts and tuck them under the seat.




Step Four - And last but not least we mount the sub-woofer under the seat and connect it all up. On the Derbi Atlantis there is a access panel on the bottom of the under-seat storage compartment that allows access to the carb, what I did was to remove this panel and then place the sub-woofer face-down over the openning. If your scooter does'nt have a openning, you will need to drill or cut out an openning to allow the sound to port out of the compartment. Without this openning it will sound terrible.

Connect the power adapter, speaker wires, and volume control (I hung my volume control out of the left side of the seat near the front to allow access to control the volume). Then the only thing you need is a music source. I use a RIO VOLT cd/mp3 player and keep it in my pocket. The only drawback to using a cd-player is making sure you find one with a good anti-skip feature. My next player will be a hard-drive or flash memory based MP3 player.


Good luck and feel free to contact me or post a message for more information.

Receivers email:

*

Your email:

*



| Back to normal page view | Send this article to a friend |