i was wondering if there was a way to get more power to my radio. i have a jvc head unit and it turns off when i max out the volume. i have my ipod hooked up to it, using a griffin charger that sends out an fm signal, by doing this it dumps the sound so that i have to have the radio up to have even a little sound, should i get a more powerful battery, better speakers, or a new unit, i have a budget of maby $200 for head unit/speakers/battery, thanks for your help

 

Okay what you're saying is that the fm transmitter has poor sound quality and you have to crank up your volume. You can solve this by getting a $50 head unit from walmart that has an auxiliary (headphone input) jack on it. That would greatly improve the sound quality. If you wanted to spend more, you could get a head unit that has a usb port on it and that would increase the quality even more. As for the headunit turning off, that is more than likely being caused by it overheating from the extreme power usage from cranking the volume all the way up. If it only does it when you crank the volume up, it is either due to a poor quality head unit or the wiring behind it may be shoddy.

Hope this helps. If you aren't looking for much, I would suggest just getting the cheap head unit that has the auxiliary plug on it.

 

Crutchfield.com they always have good deals.

 

You should check the ground wire on the JVC deck you have now. If it is connected to the factory ground wire behind the radio or if it is grounded to sheet metal under the dash, cut it at the radio and extend it down to one of the kick panels with a new ground wire, about 14 gauge will be fine. Use a ring terminal and ground the deck to clean bare metal under an existing bolt or nut in the kick panel.

The deck does need a good supply of at least 12 to 12.5 volts at about 10 to 12 amps to play at a high volume level, but at higher volume levels the deck can shut down or motorboat (turn off and on at a really fast rate) if the ground is not sufficient. The factory ground wire (or the braided ground cable if yours is a 2000 or earlier model Dakota) often becomes contaminated over time and is not a very good ground for today's higher-powered decks. The thin sheet metal you can find under the dash is not a very good ground for a high power deck either. The kick panels and the seat belt bolts are the very best grounding points inside the truck. At high volume, the integrity of the ground connection can be more important than the 12 volt power input, especially if all you are using is the internal amplifier of the JVC deck.

You can also chcek the output level on your Ipod and be sure it is set loud enough but the FM transmitter interface thing is primitive at best. Your stereo system is only going to sound as good as its worst component. Just like Rantz and the Dodgeramguy posted here, you can buy a decent unit with either a USB or an auxilliary input right on the deck and use your Ipod and the improvement in the sound will be like night and day.

Crutchfield has good prices, so does Best Buy. Best Buy will often run a deal with a discount on speakers if you buy a deck and speaker package. Or they will offer free installation or some other incentive. You can get a good Ipod-ready deck nowadays for anywhere from $100 on up, depending on what you want to spend for the features you need.

I just bought this Sony DSX-S100 deck for my truck:

http://www.crutchfield.com/p_158DSXS...0.html?tp=5684

It has no CD player, but it has a tray inside that holds an Ipod or a flash drive, you connect them to the deck internally, and it also has a round Motorola type auxilliary input jack on the front for other MP3 devices. I like it a lot, it sounds great and only cost me $135.00 at Best Buy. I bought it at the regular price of $150.00, then they had it on sale the following week and they refunded me the $15.00 difference.

There are a lot of other decks out there to choose from but just about every one has some sort of MP3 or Ipod provision nowadays. You could also shop around at any good car audio store and probably find a good deal on a new deck. You will get a lot better sound when you use a direct input on the deck, rather than the FM transmitter.

Jimmy