So somewhere in my dillusion called life I thought that i would be able to strip the entire interior out of the car, rewire everything and put it all back together. well not realizing how big of a task was ahead of me, and being sick is now forcing me to ride my bike to work for the next two weeks, at least (bach party in vegas next week ) anyways, the sound deadening is done, the door plates are built and speakers mounted, the tweeters are in the a-pillar, amp rack 1 and 2 are fabbed up roughly, the right side of the car has been wired with speaker wire and the main 1/0 gauge wire and ground are finished.

now the great part...the entire interior is sitting in one room of the house, my room is being consumed by boxes of speakers, speaker plates, the two tube amps, the pg amp, my eclipse amp, the old xtant amp, alpine pxa-h701, my old sub box with id sub, the old cdt 6.5" mid bass drivers in the old spekaer plates, and misc computer parts...My room feels like a car audio wharehouse.

this better be the best sounding system i've ever built or i'm selling the car!

 

Welcome to the back half of my garge year round

 

First in line to buy the car!

I bet that system will rock! I wish I had a stash of speakers, amps, and more laying around. I mostly have wiring stuff and a spare MTX amp and sub.

Scott, mind posting pics of the car as you go? If not, at least plan on pics after finishing.

 

Extra parts...I have at least a 1/2 dozen head-units, four CD changers, several amps, about thirty subwoofers (including four JL 18W6s ), and more mids/tweeters than I care to count. I don't even want to guess on the amounts of wiring I have laying around
I get flack about it all at least weekly from the girlfriend. I'm sure you do too, they just don't understand

 

pictures as i go are kinda tough, i only have a cell phone camera When i'm done i'll get my roommates slr digital camera and take some nice pictures though

 

Scott... that's understandable. I don't have a digital camera yet either (other than the cell phone). Just post some up as you finish.

 

Nice progress bro Be careful when tuning that 4" at 115hz though, a lot of the punchiness of midbass comes around that hz and asking a 4" to move air at high volumes might be asking it to work too hard. 150hz or even 200hz would be safer IMO. Most vocals are above 150hz or so from my experience unless you get some Barry White rocking or something, and if you are playing Barry White, you should be playing it on your home stereo so you can do something about it!

G'luck bro sounds sweet

Fej

 

ah..thanks for the input. i'll start low but bring it up to your recommendations (i was actually waiting for your reply). after purchasing the active x-over with balanced in/outs i checked on the price of the external power supply....$170!!! so i said screw that! the x-over doesnt need an external power supply if you use it with one of there reference amps so i just purchased a used 500.1 zapco amp and will use that instead of the pg amp. this thing is really great because it's considerably smaller then the pg amp yet i think it's going to ultimately put out more power. it is rated at 500x1 @ 2 ohms but tested wattage is more along the lines of 750 wrms. oh those poor eu-700's dont know what they are in for. :-)

 

the zapco slx-4 x-over came in today..WOW it's tiny! I'm off to vegas tonight for a bach. party so I doubt i'll get anything done till next week but hopefully sunday i will have some time to finish running the speaker wire. I also have to make my own cables as well since the zapco unit uses unique din plugs on the back of thier equipment.

 

Let us know how that Zapco unit works Scott. It is one that I have been looking at for my install.

 

sure thing. I cant wait to get it powerd up!

The guy that sits near me at work who has been my 'technical advisor' through out this project just hooked me up with some mogami cabling for my blanaced interconnects. This cable is what professional studio's with $100,000 equipment uses (he used to work in that field and has a bunch of cable laying around). now i just have to make sure i dont muck it up with crappy soldering

 

Yeah...otherwise you might deserve that "kick in the pants" from the thread title I'm sure you'll do a good job and those balanced lines sure will keep the sound clean.

 

update...still no pics yet :-)

well after having to work all day yesterday then going to a going away party, i finally got back to working on my car. I bet this install would go a lot faster if i wasn't constantly hung over while working on it.

anyways, got all the speaker wires run for the front stage as well as the primary power and ground wire.

I put most of the carpet and body panels back on and took the car for a drive. I was a bit disapointed with the sound deadening on the highway. It didn't dampen the 'drone' out as much as i was hoping but it was a bit quieter. (it should get even quieter when i put the insulations and carpet on the rear cubby holes...those were the only things i really left out of the car) I was; however, impressed with city driving. the car seemed like a more solidly built car and it was quieter on the streets.

Earlier this week i modeled a 3d version of the primary amp rack. I think it's going to come out really nice considering the odd shape of the tube amps. I also made the second amp rack's facade. this is going to go in the very bottom of the center storage compartment. The sub amp and active x-over will be flush mounted in the bottom of the bin while still allowing me to use 85% of the compartment if needed.

I'm still contemplating going with 2 or 4 of the subs. I know two of the subs will go behind the rear wheel wells but I'm not sure where the other two would go. I could put them in the side bins or maybe make up some custom boxes that would rest on each side of the water fall.


one thing i'd like to ask suggestions for is the center console. I'm still up in the air if i should use the old hacked up pioneer faceplate for the tactile interface or if i should create my own 'simpler' looking oem buttons? any suggestions?

 

Scott I gotta say you are gonna have one hell of a nice setup when its done... let me know how the EU-700s sound for ya. Its like the only ED piece I havent really gotten to play with to date

 

soooo frustrating! I tried to order some of the proprietary zapco cable and the company i ordered it from didn't have them in stock and never told me. I needed to hack these cables to make my own and i was forking over $50 for them. Well that is the huge hold up on the install. Anyways I found out that the connectors that they use are just regular mini din6 jacks. I went to digi-key and was able to order 4 of them with 2 day fed ex shipping for $25. I should be able to make the cables this friday night...wooo party!!!!

I also need to find a metal bender for the new amp rack idea. i'm not sure i'f i'm going to bite the bullet on automation but it would be pretty cool.


I have come to really enjoy the sound deadening while driving around town though i have found two major areas of vibration. the first one is in the waterfall itself. this one show up from time to time and i think some sound deadener on the aluminum will take care of that. The other area is HORRIBLE. I noticed; with the sub box out, that the slanted surface of the center storage compartment rattles like a 'mother $#%@ when i accelerate. I think this has something to do with the way my exhaust is connected to the frame.