Like many other diesel, electric and hybrid vehicles, the two litre diesel engine in this 2016 Volkswagen Amarok doesn’t really inspire that performance feeling. To do that, it at least needs to sound like a performance vehicle. This is why the Kufatec Sound Booster has been gaining so much popularity recently. Without a doubt it is the most versatile exhaust upgrade currently on the market and today we are going to guide you to our step by step process to install the complete system. Welcome to the Integrated solutions video series brought to you by Autofidelity and hosted by Terence Toh. Hi I’m Terence Toh and welcome to this episode of Integrated Solutions. The Kufatec Sound Booster Pro product is becoming more and more popular with our customers here at Autofidelity and, for good reason. The sound booster system is the most versatile exhaust upgrade that we know of, giving up to six different exhaust sound profiles or allowing you to just switch it off completely at the push of a button. If you’re not familiar with the sound booster product yet, we have many other videos including demonstration videos, how to customize profiles with sound booster software and installations into other vehicles. You can find our previous videos at autofidelity.com.au Today we will be installing the Kufatec Sound Booster into this 2016 Volkswagen Amarok. Although we’ll be guiding you through a complete installation for the Amarok, we will be sharing many tips which will help you no matter which car you are working with. To find a complete list of vehicles which are currently compatible with the sound booster visit kufatec.com.au We will be following a basic seven step process which consists of: Layout system components and positioning Vehicle Disassembly Installation Initial testing Vehicle Reassembly Final testing and system setup Final check The process that we use in our workshop is slightly more involved than this and includes things like a vehicle pre-inspection and post-inspection as well as vehicle diagnostic checks. The first step is to layout the system components for installation. This will give us an overview of all the components in the system and we can then see exactly where each component will be positioned, and which parts of the car will need to be disassembled. Okay so, firstly we have, we would call this maybe a sound actuator or sound generator. This will actually mount to the exhaust in the car, this is what makes the great sound that we hear, it makes it sound like a performance car. Then next, just over here, we’ve got this is the Kufatec Sound Booster Pro module, so this will mount underneath the dash on the drivers side. We want it to stay accessible, so we can this make it so it accessible through the side panel in the car, and the reason we want to do that is because, hopefully you can see that, it’s got a little USB port on the side of it, and we want to be able to access that later on. We have already done a video which will actually show you how to adjust the sound profiles in the sound booster system, so you will be able to do all that as long as you can access that USB port.
We’ve also got the active sound module, that basically runs the sound actuator or the sound generator. Over here we’ve got a wiring harness; wiring harness is mostly plug and play, there are a few connections mainly power, earth, CAN high and CAN low connections which we have to actually find the connections in the car for, but other than that fairly plug and play. We’ve got a connector here that goes to the active sound module, we have a connection here which goes to the sound booster module, this connector over here runs the sound actuator, and we have put one of our little switches on it, these are a nice neat little switch, a little bit different to what actually comes in the package with the actual Kufatec kit, but it’s much easier this little button to mount.
Okay so, here we have all the tools which are necessary to install your sound booster system. Let’s start over here, we have a little work light which is very handy to be able to get in and see underneath the dash and underneath the car. We have a 17mm spanner here, you’ll need that to be able to remove the anchor point for the seat belt. Now just a note on that, when you’re putting back the seat belt, you should really be using a torque wrench, which is one of these things. Now depending on exactly what kind of car you are working on, you’ll need to check the factory settings or the manufacturers settings, the torque settings for the seat belt anchor points. Okay so just moving on, we’ve got these here which are a pair of crimpers, this is for a little connector which you will see is part of the installation, that is what we put into the fuse box, you’ll need that little crimp tool to be able to crimp that to the wire. Side cutters handy for obviously cutting wire, cutting the ends off cable ties, and things like that, some fabric tape, always necessary. Cable ties, for things like mounting modules and when you’re running wiring harnesses and things like that. Then we go to 13mm socket and you will need one of these as well. That will help you to remove and refit the exhaust system, so the exhaust uses, the brackets on the exhaust use 13mm and also the bracket that mounts the actual sound booster itself uses 13mm bolts. Some sikaflex, now when you run the wiring through underneath the car you will need to seal up the hole with some sikaflex even though we use a little grommet so the little grommet that comes out of the hole we will dispose of, but we can put a new rubber grommet in and then we can sikaflex over the top of that. Last couple of bits and pieces, we’ve got a couple of, i like to call them ‘trim tools’ just makes it much easier to remove trims without damaging them, and also a couple of pieces of velcro which will help us when we’re mounting the module. It just basically helps us to keep the module stable, and make sure the module doesn’t rattle against anything because the velcro provides a little bit of a buffer for rattles and that should be all you need!
Now we know where everything needs to be positioned, we can start to disassemble the car. We start with a couple of panel poppers (trim tools). We are going to remove this panel, and this panel which are fairly simple and just pop the fuse box down. Let’s just pop the fuse box down first, there are a couple of although it’s difficult to see from there, a couple of little things here and that fuse box will just pop down there. We want to be able to use that to tap into power. Then place one of these poppers into here, that panel just comes straight off, and then this panel here, on both sides, just unclips. You may need to move the steering adjustment down just a bit out of the way, and then we can pop this panel out all the way.
Okay to run some wiring we’re actually going to have to pull some base panels up, we’re going to run the wiring underneath, so first thing we need to do is unbolt the seatbelt bolt here, and then we will pull off this trim, and that will allow us to pull this base trim off. So 17mm spanner, loosen this off, and the seatbelt bolt should come out relatively easily, i’ve just kept tension on that, i tend to prefer not to allow it to go all the way back in, and just attach it somewhere. Then this little switch here will need to get pulled out as well, fairly simple to do it just pops straight out, then you can unplug it from the back here, just by pushing down on the little tab, and sliding it out. Now to pull this trim out here, it is going to be easier if you just kind of make a little bit of space in here behind and remove the rubber slightly to make a little bit of room, and then it pops out at the top, might have to go around the other side quickly. It’s a little bit stubborn but then it should unclip the rest of the way down. Now that’s got just a couple of locking tabs at the bottom, so if you try to pull the bottom out first there is a fair chance you are going to break something. There are two separate panels here, the back panel will need to be popped out first, then this panel here will be pretty easy and this goes all the way through to the front there, we will show you that from the other side but basically, there you go, don’t even really need the panel popper for that one, that panel popped straight up. Then we can start popping this panel up, might just move this out of the way, that is the back section and then we will get the rest from the other side. So last thing now this panel here, should be able to pop straight up, and then hopefully you can see that, slide the panel popper just in underneath it, gently pry it upwards, and it will pull straight up. Very carefully, pull it out without damaging anything. Okay so we will also have to pull this kick trim out, just to make life easier we will run the wiring down it. So just pop the rubber out a little bit first and then the kick trim is basically clipped in. So that is the kick trim out as well. Now we have removed all the panels we can get started on the installation! Now we have started doing the installation, the next steps were really difficult to show you on video but i will give you a bit of an explanation exactly what we’ve gone through. To begin with, we have taped these modules together and we have started running the wiring harness, this wiring harness runs in behind here, these modules eventually will be mounted just in this little cavity here, and the wiring runs down underneath the carpet here, alongside the factory harness and you can see this little wiring harness here and we have cable tied it alongside the factory harness and it’s all covered in fabric tape for us there, and then the next thing we have done is , there is an earth bolt just behind the kick trim here, it’s just a 10mm bolt so you can basically just unbolt that, put the earth into it and bolt it back up again which is nice and simple, then there is the, we have got power from the actual fuse box, you will need ignition power from the fuse box so just test the fuse bank and if you get a little terminal like this, this is a special little terminal that we use which can actually go directly into the fuse box and that will allow you to tap off fuse power, so you can put your own fuse in and you can be on the fuse side of the power. For those terminals you will also need a crimp tool which looks something like that, and that will allow you to crimp it properly. I think we did show how to do the crimp connection on a previous video we did which was for the blackvue drive recorder system, so if you want to learn how to do that kind of stuff, all those basic things just check out that video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8jMXMHeSoE. The last two connections are up here above the fuse box, and we have actually taken a couple of photos so maybe somehow we will post those up with the video but they go to CAN-High and CAN-Low connections and they go into connector B on the central electronics module which is mounted up above the fuse box here, and CAN-High will go to Orange/Black and CAN-Low will go to Orange/Brown. Hopefully that gives you a good description, but basically the wiring you want to run it nice and neatly, aside from those connections the last thing will go back , the main cable will go back to the actual sound generator or sound actuator and then we’ve just run the switch wiring just across the top here, difficult to see again but just across the top here, it’s quite easy to route the wiring with other wiring already there, so just look for the factory wiring so it just goes across the top and into here, and the switch in our case we have mounted it just in front of the actual gear shift and we can show you that as well. Now to mount the modules, we’re going to put a bit of velcro underneath it, this will help to stick things down initially and to prevent any rattles and things like that. Then the module will come up into this cavity. It’s a little bit tight. Hopefully you can see there is a little bracket here, so we are just going to mount to this bracket and then we will still be able to get to the little USB connection here, and we will go around with some cable ties just to keep everything in place properly.
Now that we have this cable tied in nice and solid, we can get in here and cut the ends of the cable ties off, and then that’s the interior of the car finished. Now we need to mount the actual sound generators to the vehicle.
So now what we have done so far, we have run wiring into the factory grommet here, i know it’s really difficult to see, but you can run the wiring through, you’ll need to replace the actual grommet, so the factory grommet that comes out it’s a little bit difficult to get it back in again so we just replace that with a new rubber grommet and put a bit of silicone or sikaflex over the connection to stop water going back through. So that connections needs to come to approximately here, we have put the car up on a hoist, just so we can show you exactly how this is done, but you won’t normally need to put the car up on a hoist to install this, this is really just so we can demonstrate for you, there is enough room so that you can crawl underneath the car and then mount the sound booster straight up, well in the Amaroks anyway. To begin with we need a 13mm socket and we are going to undo this clamp right here, there is just two 13mm nuts right here, and that will separate the rear muffler from the exhaust. You should just be able to slide this around now, which you can, and then quite simply the sound booster, if we move this exhaust out of the way, the sound booster can just slide straight on, a nice simple procedure, and it will sit up like that so the sound is coming down towards the ground, and it will probably make things a bit easier if you just connect this in first, that way you just won’t have to try to access the connection later on. Now bolt it up around about there, it is the same size nuts on this bracket here. Nice and tight, make sure it’s not going to move anywhere, and then this just slides back on kind of like a sleeve, and bolt these back up again. The whole exhaust now should be nice and solid again, the sound booster that should not move or sound actuator shouldn’t move anywhere, the exhaust will move around a little bit because it is mounted on rubber mounts but anyway no big deal there. That is essentially completed what we have to do underneath the car is fairly simple to do, and what we can do now is just some initial testing to make sure everything works, before we put the car back together.
Now just before we put everything back together in this car, we just want to make sure everything works properly. So we will get someone else up there so start the car for us quickly, and now we will just try a couple of different tones to make sure the system actually works. It definitely sounds good. Alright, done, it’s all working now we can put it all back together!
Now that we know the system is working, we can reassemble the car and do the final test on the system. Okay so now that we’ve got everything installed, we have done our initial testing, we can start reassembling the car, lets get started.
Okay so looking at positions for mounting the switch and what we are going to do in this car is we are going to mount the switch just towards the front of this little panel here, so we can just put our finger down and hit the switch there. Now you can actually get factory replacements for these, and we have done this before, so you can actually push a button and trigger the sound booster from there and change the different sound profiles from the factory style switch. You would have to order that in, normally it takes a few weeks to get them, so in this case we are going to put this switch in and if we want to put a factory switch in we can put that in later on. So all we have to do is basically remove this panel, we have already got the wiring under here, so if we just pull up on this panel here, fairly solid little clips so pop the front section out and then you can just use something here to pop the back out as well. That panel will come up far enough and then you can just attach the switch to the front of the panel and run the wiring up from underneath.
Okay, we now have everything back together again and we’ve also completed basic testing, but now it’s time to do some thorough testing on the system to make sure all the features are working correctly. So now we can do some final testing, we will start the car up, so this is just our standard mode and this is what the 2L diesel Amarok sounds like. Then let’s try, we have a few tones set up here already, hopefully you can still hear me okay. This is how much of a difference it makes. Lets try a different tone, this one is a little bit quieter to start off with, and back off again. So now you can get out there and have a bit of fun with your newly installed Kufatec Sound Booster.
05:07 checked
Layout system components and positioning – 02:22 Now we know where everything should be positioned we can start to disassemble the car. Vehicle Disassembly – 06:50 Now that we have removed all the panels we get started on the installation. Installation – 11:58 Now, just before we put in everything back together in this car we just want to make sure everything works properly. Initial testing – 20:52 Now that we know the system is working, we can reassemble the car and do the final test on the system. Vehicle Reassembly – 21:25 Okay, we now have everything back together again and we’ve also completed basic testing. But now it’s time to do some thorough testing on the system to make sure all the features are working correctly. Final Testing and System Check Up – 24:03
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