Pics are forthcoming in an hour or so, battery on the digicam is dead

Well, it took around 22 hours but I'm finally done.

Heres the setup:

Elemental Designs 6000s v.2 front components
Elemental Designs 11Ov.2 Subwoofer in rear sub box (made by super crew sound from ebay)
2x Elemental Designs Nine.2 Amplifiers
Pioneer DEH-P7800MP HU

My fingers are torn to pieces, my back, ***, arms, and legs hurt, and I feel like I haven't slept in 2 days, but I'm extremely happy that it is finally done. I had my doubts that the first time I tried to turn it on anything would work, but sure enough the Radio came on and both amps fired up. The ED components have a very clean sound, and the 10" sub thumps way harder than I thought it would be able to. You can definitely feel the air in the cabin

Car is all back together (took a lot longer than pulling it apart, figures), all thats left is cleaning the garage so I can actually back the car out without popping a tire on a screw or something!

So, I only have 1 problem. The seat clearance from the amp on the passenger side of the vehicle is plenty - you can move the seat all the way back and it just barely touches the amp. On the drivers side however, the seat clearance is significantly less. I can't put the seat back to it's original location which means my legs are fairly cramped. I found a relatively comfortable position but the seat is pressed fairly firmly up against the amp. Will this damage the amp or seat in any way? I only ran the system for 10 minutes or so but the part of the amp that touches the seat didn't heat up at all, even at a very high volume with lots of bass (the sub is connected to the driver's side amp).

It actually looks like if I mount the amp 3-4" higher I will have more seat clearance on the drivers side, so I might do that some other time when I have the energy, assuming I left myself enough room with cables which I believe I did.

All in all I have to give a huge thumbs up to the quality of the system and it will be interesting to find out how it sounds while I'm driving to work tomorrow.

 

hot damn you got it all in, im shocked u lost seat clearnace on the driver side, what confuses me is how moving it up will get u more clearnance... awaiting pics :-)

 

Alright here are the pics. Its hard to get what I'm talking about from the pics but if you look at the drivers side amp, the seat curves towards the front of the car as it goes upwards, so moving the amp up should put it in that "inward curve" area of the seat giving more room. right now when I put the seat where I want it the motor is "fighting" to push against the amp and the seat moves upwards slightly as it pushes into the amp. I imagine its not that great for the seat motor.

 

install look awesome, im glad you were able to get it all accomplished.

I guess either dropping the amp further down which prly isnt doable or mount it a little higher would work for you. You are right that is one thick amp I forgot how beefy they are. I take it you stashed the crossovers up under the dash

Any pictures of the speaker install, do you mind if I post your pictures on the Elemental designs website.

So I take it, you got it sounding pretty good.

 

nice clean looking install.

 

I don't mind at all, I can get some better pics during the day as well, these were just impromptu ones while the baby was playing.

I don't have any pics of the speaker install unfortunately. I might take a door panel back off someday soon and take one though, since that doesn't take long.

The system was set up how you told me on the phone the first time i turned it on. The bass is a bit high but I'll tweak it more later. The amps are both still at minimum gain and I can't even turn the system up to max without hurting my ears, thats probably due to the preamp voltage being 5, I hear that the higher the preamp voltage the less gain you need on the amp. I'll probably set the gain on the fronts higher and then use a lower vol on the HU to make the bass lower.

I can't really move the amp lower because the cables go straight into the carpet on the floor already and theres barely enough room to get my hands under the amp to connect them, so higher will have to do. I'll drive the car for a couple days and if it doesn't feel comfortable I'll fiddle with moving the amp up.

 

I figured I'd add a few things that caused me problems during the install while its still fresh in my head.

Getting the middle section of carpet out (the part going over the back area of the seats and part way into the back) - you have to pull HARD, its wedged way up underneath where the rear speakers are almost up into the roof, at least on the Z06/FRC. Getting it back in wasn't too easy either, pushing and stuffing until it finally slipped all the way up.

Getting the power cable through the firewall. Removing the electrical tape on the wires going through was bad enough, but breaking through the gromet on the inside of the car was a nightmare. I ended up using a utility knife VERY carefully to cut away some of it, but I was terrified I would accidentally cut through some wiring.

On the 04 models there is no Fuse 22 nor is there an auxilary plug you can tap into for accessory/switched power. I had to tap into the brown wire coming down from the ignition. It wasn't easy as there was no flex to the wire and I couldn't figure out how to remove the harness, but it is doable.

Getting an aftermarket HU in is a true PITA! It took about 15 minutes just to wedge all the wiring from the back of the pioneer deck into the area and then stuffing it down far enough to where I could actually get the HU in and bolt it down. For a minute I really thought I was going to have to find a way to break/bend the tab behind it to fit (is that even possible? It felt like steel!)

Cutting MDF...dear lord this was the worst part of the entire ordeal. I don't own any power cutting tools so I used an ordinary hand saw to cut 2 pieces of 3/4" thick MDF out. My arm felt like it was going to fall off when I was done. Don't be stubborn, if you're going to use thick MDF, find a friend that has a circular saw or a table saw and use that.

I'm sure there were others because I distinctly remember points where I was thinking "ugh can this get any worse" but I don't remember when now All in all taking the car apart was the easiest part, I think I managed to get everything out including the carpet in under 2 hours, and thats with no prior experience doing it.

 

i played around with my amp height as well. How tall are you? I can't have my seat all the way back and still be able to shift the car. Nice looking install. The amps will usually run cooler with lower gainsettings. When I first set up the amp, I had the gain set just above min adn the amp would barely get warm. Playing around with it adn adjusting it, its now set to just about half, maybe tad less. It did get slightly warmer with that. I dont have any issues with the back of the seat touching the amp. The backs of the seat arent real leather anyway. Did you add any deadner?

 

the metal tab does get bent back for alot of radio or cut out sometimes. if you remove the climate controls its much easier to get radio in and route your wires. for getting power cable in i always cut a slit in the grommet above where all the factory wire runs and slide my wire right on through

 

I did add a tiny bit of deadener. I put some behind each front speaker, and I put some underneath where the sub box is. I only had 10 sq ft so I didn't have enough to do much more on in the back. I might remove the carpet again later and deaden the entire back. I will also deaden the license plate, though the FRC handles the bass very well. You can hardly hear it from outside the car even when the entire car is vibrating, and it doesn't rattle the license plate even without deadening.

 

So when im in Florida I get a listen right

 

i'll go if you drive. and no you cant drive my car there. i know thats what you were gonna say

 

Well, I'm moving to Greenville SC on March 3rd - wanted to get the system in ASAP so it was ready to listen to on the drive up Just got a new job working for BMW. If you're ever in Greenville...

 

Nice install! This is pretty close to what I went with (kept stock HU and got 6500's instead) and I am very happy. One of these day I will get around to posting a writeup with pics.

When you get to Greenville, look up fastgm.com. The guys are from all over SC and there is a large portion of them around that area.