Does anyone with a Phatnoise Phatbox installed in a coupe have pictures of their install? I received my kit in the mail this past week, the cable being the SAT prewire cable which is only about a foot long at most. I've mailed Phatnoise to see if there is an extension cable available for the unit so that I would be able to mount the device inside the cabin... maybe under the passenger seat for easy access. I'm very interested though to see what anyone else has done to mount the thing whether it be inside the cabin or in the trunk.

Thanks for any replies.



-spill
<font color=blue>'04.5 G35 6MT Coupe, Diamond Graphite/Graphite Leather, Premium/All Options except NAV.
Pics</font color=blue>

 

redwillow here in Jax has one mounted in his trunk. He mounted it directly over the sat harness on the left side. I believe he made a little hole in his carpet to run the wires under th box so you can't see them. It takes up very little room and is way more accessible than if you had it under your seat. Also I wouldn't want any chance of an unaware passenger kicking my $800 mod.

Russ

Black 6MT Coupe
Jax, FL
G35Driver.com Business Cards

 

Pretty much every PB I've ever seen a picture of is mounted flat on the trunk floor in the upper left hand corner, because that's about the only place you can put it due to the short wire. I have never seen an N-bus extension cable, and beleive me, I've looked at a lot of N-bus cables. Phatnoise certainly doesn't carry them, and the "N-bus extenders" have a different harness connector on one end. About your only choice is to connect a new wire to the back of the head unit. If you buy the Nissan harness, it's extremely long.

Now that I've got my SAT + Phatbox hack contraption going I have a major excess of cable. I guess the SAT to CD cable runs back to the dash on some vehicles, so it's *huge*. Now I can put it anywhere I want, although it's still sitting in pretty much the same place.

 

this is mine. drilled through the mat into the plastic piece underneath. I would like to make a fitted panel and mount it in the same area vertically, but the coutours of that trunk area make it look difficult.

03 6MT coupe, red/willow, premium, aero, splash guards, alum pedals, clear corners, limo tint, Phatbox 40g mp3 player

381676-358993-278257-P6150007.jpeg

 

My thought was to see if the SAT harness wire can be separated from the wire bundle to get some slack. Maybe enough to mouth the PB on the rear seat. I was going to investigate this; however, I still don't have my PB working. As I presumed, spill, you will be enjoying yours before me and I bought mine in September!!! I had to send mine back and still haven't gotten a replacement.

 

I want one of those so bad. Now that I have the PAC audio sat interface I can't do it. I'm looking at going with an ipod. It won't compare with the phatbox but it's the best that I can do.

Russ

Black 6MT Coupe
Jax, FL
G35Driver.com Business Cards

 

Did you find a way to use the PB and SAT radio at the same time?

 

If I have to mount it in the trunk, then I may take it to Custom Sounds here in Austin so that they can at least mount it on the side of the trunk and keep it off the mat (granted, I'll call Infiniti if I have tire problems, so I shouldn't need the spare/jack, but still... having to unmount the PB to get underneath the trunk mat just doesn't sit well with me). I'll pay the $50-$75 to let them take apart the trunk liner and do the drilling... I know the SAT antenna's running up the side of the trunk right there where it would be mounted, so I definitely wouldn't want to do it myself "blind".

djrobx: I know you've mentioned your hack in order to use both the SAT and PB before to me... which would certainly be cool at least to keep the functionality available. Do you have any pics of your "kludge"? Are you running the 2 devices both hooked up to the SAT prewire in the trunk? or did you take the dash off to get at the back of the head for your fix?

So the cable is called an "N-bus", eh? I searched high and low around town here looking for something similar this past weekend, but obviously struck out. I've also emailed Phatnoise to see if they would have anything along the lines of an extension available. Taking the "custom" SAT hookup cable/box that they sent me to a couple of places that make their own data cables here in town even baffled the guys on staff there... they've never seen anything like that.

-spill
<font color=blue>'04.5 G35 6MT Coupe, Diamond Graphite/Graphite Leather, Premium/All Options except NAV.
Pics</font color=blue>

 

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr>

Did you find a way to use the PB and SAT radio at the same time?

<hr></blockquote>Yes, with an a/b switch mounted in the ashtray. Works great.

I am using the original SAT prewire, with some extra pins inserted to control the relays in the SAT tuner. I actually did a write-up with a wiring diagram. I wanted to take more pictures, but I should just go ahead and post what I've got...

<a href="http://www.tvrules.net/misc/satpb/satpb.htm">My partially done how-to....</a>

-- Rob

 

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr>

You can also follow this procedure with the PAC audio adapter, although you will need to splice the SAT to CD cable together with the PAC cable, and make the appropriate mappings

<hr></blockquote> wow, so it sounds like this technique will also allow people with the pac audio the ability to put in phatbox and switch between the two.....i'm sure alot of people will find your info very helpful, great job!


03 6MT coupe, red/willow, premium, aero, splash guards, alum pedals, clear corners, limo tint, Phatbox 40g mp3 player

 

The issue with the PAC kit is that it's designed to be plugged into the back of the radio, so they won't be able to just plug in the Nissan SAT->CD cable. If someone does some soldering, they can apply the same techniques, though.

More interestingly, however, if you wanted an AUX in with the SAT tuner, you don't really need the PAC kit anyway. You just need to convert the audio signals to differential and trigger the audio relays on the sat tuner to do the switch. The radio would display the sat tuner's info but you'd hear the second audio source.

I don't know why PAC forces people to run a wire to the radio. It could work with the prewiring too, just as the phatbox does.

<P ID="edit"><FONT class="small"><EM>Edited by djrobx on 11/12/04 12:47 PM.</EM></FONT></P>