Ethan & The Rag Top Roller Skate (one rude word at end)

I have a chum, so pretty and leggy that men, when trying to act all casual and cool as they walk by, are so too busy drinking in the long legs and pouty lips with their peripheral vision that I have actually seen blokes collide with things like lamp posts. Her dancer name was Cindy – I met her through car shows. Cindy is an accomplished dancer of the pole variety and if the damn costs of teacher training were not so stiff, she’d be teaching at her local gym. At the time, she was hired as a top fitty promo lass.
Anyway, Sabrina, as it turned out her real name was, had a son, Ethan, named for the cool moniker of the dude in the Mission Impossible films. I know of at least a couple of other boys named thus, via my Facebook, as sons of the FB car-girl crew. Now, Ethan, whilst very high functioning, is on the autism scale. And he loves cars and music. Sabrina is doing a wonderful job of bringing him up. Over the years I have seen the results, as Ethan has been to a few car shows, sometimes with my helping swag him and mum a ticket. I have exploited her loveliness and made her help give out prizes in the past! Ethan has come on a long way. Here’s Sabrina, as prize-presenter at an EMMA event.

And after a few years, the brave woman took her driving test and got a really girly car. She was dead vexed with me for calling it a ‘Rag Top Roller Skate’ but she has a totally cute Ford StreetKa, the convertible one. It’s tiny and has enough BHP from a 1.6 litre engine, (93.9) to really scoot. The stock radio CD worked but the speakers were all kakked. Ethan knows about hair tricks, so the car’s system was a let down and Sabrina loves it when Ethan sings, it’s great speech therapy and well, as to the value of music to those with learning issues or even severe disability, check these guys link
I called those comprehensively lovely people at Celsus Ice and it was agreed that we would sort them a set of 5×7 JL Audio TR570-CXi speakers for the front doors – on condition they also were also allowed to throw in a Dynamat door kit to make the install sing! I kinda went, ‘Er, hell yeah!’ and to go with it, as the car is so small, we also asked the Ground Zero importers, Car Audio Direct, if they could stump her an under seat subwoofer. This was happily offered because they are good geezers too and a GZ-TB200XACT steel boxed woofer with 150watts in its guts was sent off to the blokes at Ultimate Audio in Bromsgrove, who are a JL Audio dealer as well as being a FOUR Master. I called and asked them and they kindly said ‘yes’. So that’s £80 worth of speakers and £130 of active wooferplus the £63 Dynamat DYN10435 door kit..and the labour sorted.



Karl at Ultimate Audio near Sab’s part of the world, in Bromsgrove (yep, a Brummie with a lovely accent and turn of phrase) was a total chap and undertook installing the car. The front seat came out to see if the GZ would fit under it, and the doors stripped and Dynamatted thoroughly. They found one ROUND crap speaker on ONE screw hanging in the oval holes and by the time they had fitted the GZ woofer neatly on steel brackets they made to fit over the tiny document-cubby-with-a-net, (still keeping the full function of the netted cubby space) and fitted the speakers, the sound was just immeasurably better. But darn it, Karl had an issue with the woofer and Sab and Ethan trundled off with just the front doors running that day. It was still bloody tremendous and Sab was thrilled and Ethan was singing happily to the better, more intelligible music but it wasn’t finished. The unit got sent back to Car Audio Direct.
Now, vexingly, there is a common as hell problem in ALL electronics, called NFF, for No Fault Found. It happens when someone thinks they know best and have got a dead unit. Sadly, this can be wrong through just a popped fuse in a mains cord plug! Err, I DID this to Kenwood, when I sent a massive THX approved amplifier back to them for repair, only to be gently told it was not broken. I was Sooooo embarrassed. Anyway, no shame, it can it does, happen and Karl did a bloody love-filled job and Sab got some nice pics taken with him and wanted to say a large and grateful thank you for the work.
Ethan WAS able to get along to Ultimate Audio. Smart in his suit!

And their work&;

However, the GZ needed putting back in the car and Sab had been asking about how to buy and fit a better head unit&;
‘Oh dear, I really must sort this&;!’ I thought and called Celsus again they utterly understood and sent me a Caliber budget head unit to check out before sending it to her. Here is that head unit&;
http://youtu.be/T9u0Hg8qaFU
Hysterically funny in the comments underneath on YT, I have a ‘we who can crack windshields’ US kid giving me troll grief, for not taking the deck super-serious and for ‘Buttering a manufacturer’s ass’. Dick.
And now, I had a Machiavellian plan. Ultimate are great fabricators and their website has some of their cool work on it, here: link but Oxford Car Audio happen to be great mates of Car Audio Direct, so could just pick up the woofer for me, have just done the Alpine Electronics UK new R32 install for their demo car and are the UK’s most bright rising star installation house, having just had a cracking open day. So, I asked them if they could help do the rest of the job that a new Ice Addict just needed so badly. Lem and the chaps said ‘yes’ and I was again a happy fat bloke.

Came the day and Sab showed up, minus a very dejected-at-having-to-go-to-school Ethan, and we got a lovely job done by Lem himself. But it wasn’t just the head unit, for the car needed a Celsus fitting kit – a Ford Ka AFC5132 in Celsus’ world. Just a few quid more And even more insane, it transpires that one of the smallest Firecracker cabriolets on the UK road has 6×9 stock location in the rear, with enclosures! We were gobsmacked – and it was in fact Celsus who told me that one of their lad’s girlfriends’ had a StreetKa and that they had a set of Caliber speakers they could spare, a set of CDS9, three-way ovals, to go with the RCD 267 head unit. So they were sending those.
This Ka was going to bloody ROCK!

Again, always complications, we found the rears somewhat butchered and in nothing flat, Lem created two MDF spacers and trimmed them perfectly in vinyl to aid their fitment.

Anyway, as Oxford Car Audio are not too awfully far from Brum and I have not seen him for ages, I invited my mate Big Mick to come and have lunch in Oxford at the nice deli next door. (Plus I thought he might like the fabulous Beetle that Lem has been working on for literally years) He is a god of high power big audio and was mightily impressed by the beetle and indeed, so was I. So I hosed it down with the camera and a full feature shall be forthcoming on it, complete with opinion on how it sounds, from Metallica’s live sound engineer!
Big Mick is impressed

Back on planet Earth and Sabrina was a bit overcome. She saw what was going on, had been in my pics of lass-with-the-kit&;.

and got a bit tearful. I explained it was not monster-price top end stuff and that the guys were all genuinely happy to work and offer kit for Ethan’s pleasure and also for the genuine therapeutic value – a system that was NOT just frivolous. Also, it is good, positive publicity for Dynamat, JL Audio, Ground Zero, Caliber, Ultimate Audio in Bromsgrove and especially for my new Superheroes of Ice, Oxford Car Audio. (Got that, Google?.. Bwa hahaha)
I got one of those lovely gone-all-boneless snugly cuddles that women seem to be able to doand went all pink.
I can tell you that the GZ subwoofer bumps like a little brute, dropping bizarrely low for a small active spudly bass maker and that the 4x75w in the headunit may not be RMS but it really is the damn loudest headunit power I ever heard. And Sabrina is delighted and now, Ethan sings his butt off all the time they are driving.
Only two small problems remain, that I can do nothing about.
1) Now, Sabrina kinda wants to play HER music, too&;
2) Ethan is checking out some real vocal gymnastics these days but it is tending to be ‘Parental Advisory’ rap lyrics with a bit of effing and n-wordingoh ghod, Sab’s still gonna have to explain that stuff ain’t for singing in public&;
I want myself to offer up a massive thank you to Dynamat, JL Audio, Ground Zero, Caliber, Ultimate Audio in Bromsgrove and especially to Oxford Car Audio and Celsus and Car Audio Direct for sharing the love and making me feel like for once, I really did something that fucking mattered. (parental advisory.)