so I left my car out from teh trailer after drag racing saturday the 14th, and the car got hit with teh horrific rains sunday we got in NY. Get into the car and the carpet is wet behind the seats. So that turned into me ripping as much of the interior as I could out (can't pull the panels held on with the seat belt bolts nor the carpet towards the front of the rear deck due to my rollbar not allowing clearance for the bolts and the rear tubes being pushed through holes in teh carpet vs. huge slits to fit around. So after I fixed the leak which seems to be common to C5Z's and since I already had a ton of deadening on the way and almost all of the stereo equipment sitting in the garage I said now is as good a time as any to get rolling.

So I covered the car with 84 sq ft of second skin audio da pro stuffs. Doubled up in the cubbys in the trunk, doubled the area behind the seat and went wild on the doors following kale's methodology. Then I threw 2 gallons of liquid dampner over everything because the dopes at second skin swore it wouldn't stick to fiberglass......well if our tunnels are glass and the inner doors are glass it stuck just fine.....just took me one wasted coat to get a rough surface onto the foil to let everything stick. Lets also say I hate the foil backing I messed myself up with some serious papercuts from running fingers along the edges of the foil, and even gave myself a nice burn with the heat gun (of course on my way home from my shop thought I got all the liquid off felt somethign on my arm and scraped the whole damn blister off thinking it was liquid dampner...)

So then I finally got around to running the 0 gauge from teh top posts of the battery back using some knuconcepts battery terminals......well the plastic covers on those suck....one was missing a tab out of the package, the other lost its shortly after. had fun getting a sheet of MDF to stick while holding the carpet up working around the rollbar etc. but I got it done. Used some old nitrous bottles and brake rotors for weight to hold the board down on teh liquid nails. Cut out my pillars and mounted the tweets in the crotches of the dash as refered to earlier in a post. made up some speaker plates to get 4 inch mids and 6.5 midbasses into the door. lined both surfaces of the doors, covered with foam, put a baffle behidn the midrange/midbass area, threw some foam over that for good measure, cut out a piece of 1/2 mdf the same shape as that rear opening in the door, and essentially sealed that hole, had to pull the white hard foam off the door as a result. ran the focal polykevlar 100kp's and teh 165kbe bass extension setup bridged off of my 300/4 jl audio amp, didn't bother with y harnesses just used both lefts (front rear) to 3/4 adn both rights to 1/2 I have the input sens all the way down (otherwise the amp was cooking) and they flat out scream. I'm running them with the midranges (4 inch ) band passed and I have it overall highpassed around 100 hz, a lil light on low bass but clear as hell up to 30 on the head unit with the mx stuff off (alpine 7897) Now for bass I have a JL stealthbox I bought off a member here adn got a lil surprised when it had a sony xplod 10 inch sub in it. well I was at pepboys buying the stupid GM antenna adapter and sure enough they were selling them for 60 bucks...... That has to go asap but its getting the job done for now.

overall.....I can't see much of a difference interiorwise with noise, i can still hear my fuel pump from ecs's all out fuel system loud an clear, still can hear the wonderful lack of quietness from only having small bullet mufflers and 2 rear mount sts turbos for exhaust, but I can say the car feels more solid when you shut the doors etc. I absolutely love the front stage. Blows my non-deadened tahoe away with a kicker zr360 running polykevlar 165k2p's off an alpine 1006 away. I didn't even realize how damn loud and clear it was playing till i tried to actually sing along to a song.......and couldn't hear a thing. and this is far from my first loud system (camaro is 75x4 with 900 in the hatch, truck is 90x2,60x2 and 800 in the back, vette is 150x2 and 500in the back)

Now my dilema on boxes. I could care less about stealth as I have a Z06 and don't have a desire to throw a cover over a sub a grill yes but no stealth cover. This stealthbox doesn't go down into the well at all even with 180 lbs of me standing on it. JL's instructions say to cut out the carpet blah blah blah........well i'm not even sure I'm sticking with this setup. Seems the biggest I can get into that box and drive off a 500.1 amp is a 10w3v2........the v2 won't fit, a W6v2 or 3 or what ever they're up to now won't fit......and I like 10's but I'd rather see a 12 back there. I picked up a box for 150 bucks recently that had two mint condition old kicker solobaric s12d's the old round ones that could actually play higher than 100 hz unlike the stupid square crap out. Of course it seems all the prefabbed flush boxes (ie. subthump) are way bigger in volume than I can remember a s12d wanting. (off the top of my head I think it wants .75) I'm not afraid to work out a box I have something to keep me occupied in the meantime, but what are my odds of fitting a box now that I have a layer of mat as well as a generous coating of liquid in the back....this 500.1 seems to be too much amp for the 10's that'd work with teh stealthbox and i'd probably be happier with a 12 that will get down lower and handle more of my usable power. Anyone happen to have plans for a .75ish box thats flushmount?

also, I did the big 3 while i had everything out, ran 4 gauge knuconcepts colosus? (their most expensive crap) from the alternator to the top post of the battery, from the passenger head, to the grount point up front and from the ground point to the neg top post. and well I'm getting flickering when I crank it, i can watch voltage go from 14 down to 12.0-12.5 when the bass hits. I do have a 6-8 month old yellow top in the car already.....I really don't feel like doing a capacitor but am I at that point? I haven't even gotten the 500.1 warm yet I'm barely working it.

Eventually I have to get energetic with the time delays an al that crap for the front stage but already I'm blown away, and even more in love with focals, my friends were all asking me how a stereo system could take 30-40 hours to install......especially when I went 'simple' on the vette as compared to the truck with tons of multimedia etc.

Right now the amps are just bolted through teh carpet down to the mdf plate, eventually when i feel more energetic I plan on working out some sort of rack, but for now I have to get more minor maitenence crap out of the way for some track days mon-tues.

all in all i'm much happier and laughed my **** off when i saw the 'quality' of the bose speakers. put a ton of time in, but I'm honestly glad I did, and very appreciative of the knowledge I was able to find in this section

ps. Kale I know what you mean about getting the doors back together.......I can't get the surround around the pulls to sit there just right and I'm trying to avoid using an adhesive at all costs, just can't push it in far enough to fully 'click'

and no I didn't take pictures.......because compared to most of the installs here it isn't 'show' worthy, but then again my car has become more race car than street car.

 

Can you get us pics of the finished product? .....we might be willing to forgive you for the lack of install pics.

nothing to be ashamed about if you're car isn't "show quality". Corvettes weren't built to be parked, they were built to be driven fast.

 

Nice install man glad you are happy with the component choices. That stealthbox is not going to fit with a couple layers of deadening back there as you already know. I have an Image Dynamics IDQ12 in mine in a "stealth" box and it barely fits depth wise (with a flat top no less) in about .78cu^3. With some polyfill I figure I am pretty close to optimal with that size for the sub. I had my box made by mrmarv. He has built hundreds of boxes of all shapes and sizes and is very knowledgeable, do a google for mrmarvsplace and his page will come up.

Subthump boxes are more like .86cu^3 for what it is worth and probably smaller for the sloped 12" model. They are also .5" MDF ... with 500w you could get some flex.

Enjoy the fruits of your labor bro

Fej

 

its all back in 1 piece and the wiring is a lil long for my tastes at the moment, but when I get energetic and pick up some vinyl I plan on fabbing up some sort of rack that I can drop over the amps and secure with some angled stock or something interesting...

today is maitenence on the trailer day and reinforcing the tire racks I made up they're getting a lil loose with about 10 tires and rims hanging from them, and I have something making noise in the rear of the car I hope its as simple as another cracked rotor but who knows. Goin to watkins glen for mon-tues next week and leavin sunday