August 11, 2005:

More HKenablers

It’s a little surprising to me that I am not the only crazy MINI owner in the world Long ago (on GBMINI#2) I decided to fit an aftermarket head unit to the HK (Harman Kardon) upgraded stereo; the HK amp “talks” to the original head unit so I had to leave it laying in the trunk!
After a while I replaced the complete original head unit with a stripped down one (from ScooterBoy) which was easier to hide - but the functionality of the “kludge” was still not right, especially regarding volume control … So I next developed a software “mimic” of the head unit which gave me a “clean” system.

Then MikeyTheMINI contacted me; he sells & installs stereo stuff in England (and via NewMINIstuff.com) and had someone who wanted to do the same - run an aftermarket head unit through the HK amp/speakers. I sent him another “EZcal mimic” which worked fine, so I then decided if someone else wanted it, I needed to make a better product - more rugged and eliminating the un-necessary / expensive display & keypad; hence the HKenabler.

So I built and shipped about 10 HKenablers to Mikey last year - he has the harness adaptors to package them into a “plug and play” aftermarket solution, which he sells on his website.
Then I shipped nearly 20 more.
And now I just shipped another 15 more!

(click here for close-up of one)

So somewhere in the world there are a surprising number of MINIs with aftermarket head unit driving the HK upgrade …