Please accept my appoligies people! I haven't posted a single thing about what I have been doing for over a month. I don't sit still.. I am doing something to some car whether I post about it or not!... In the past month I have turbocharged a civic (money is money,) built the top end of a 2g DSM and done a BOAT LOAD of work to my new Dubya.
But first...... The Sinbird:
I pulled the tags off of her, I took of the insurance.. I bought another car, but I refuse to sell this thing. I park it behind my house with tarps on it.. I take the slicks off the front and keep them in them in the garage so they don't dry rot or get stolen, those are just the stock wheels holding the tarp on the top.
It may look like a sad picture but don't let the rain fool you. The sinbird is not dead, just sleeping right now. Since I got a new daily driver I have decided to GUT the sinbird of everything that doesn't make it move quickly and throw in a roll cage. Look forward to custom fiberglass doors, fenders and a trunk. I am getting rid of the whole folding top and making a detatchable top and detatchable plexi side windows, a plexiglass front windshield and more weight reduction (chop chop hack!) than should be possible!
I want to break the 10 second bracket even if it means blowing the motor in the process.
So what else is new?
Veeeeee Dub en pimp zee auto!
I have doon some performance work. FMIC set-up, boost spike regulator (It's a VGT thing, you wouldn't understand
,) exhaust.. some other small odds and ends... My big thing with this car being it the daily driver is a KICKASS audio set-up. AND MUDDA FUGGA do I have some shiz for thiz!
This is a rundown of the system I have purchased:
Kenwood 911 Motorized 7" LCD headunit
Icon TV 6.5" headrest monitors
Vizualogic 7" monitor (in the hatch enclosure)
Three sets of Alpine 6.5" Type-R components speakers/tweaters/cross-overs
Two Kicker solobaric L7 12" subwoofers
One Kicker solobaric L7 8" subwoofer
Kicker 350watt two-channel amp to drive the third set of speakers on the hatch door
Kicker 1000watt mono amp to drive the 8" subwoofer
Kicker 2500watt mono amp to drive the 12" subwoofers
Two sets of the alpine speakers are already installed, I have to do fiberglass work to get the last set in the hatch door. The 8" L7 is being fitted in the front right now, which brings me to the best part of this thread, the HOW TO!!!!!!!!!!!
HOW TO FIT A SUBWOOFER INTO THE FRONT OF YOUR CAR
The day I got the car the stock sound system went bye-bye. It was the Monsoon system, I put it on E-bay.
Since I was converting to a single-din headunit, I made a plate to hold a boost gauge I had laying around. This one read vacuum so it isn't staying. I will change that later with one that better matches the stock gauges.
Installed allong with the first two sets of Alpine component speakers in the factory locations. I made brackets to mount the tweeters in the stock spots as well and cut larger holes for the tweeters in the rear.
Well that was fun for three weeks, time for the real stuff:
After a nice amount of chopping away at factory stuff I finally made enough room to get the kind of air volume I needed out of such a small area. I masked off everything around and foiled the work area, then cast the mold for the bottom of the box.
The weapon of choice up front, an 8" Kicker Solobaric L7, 1000 watts max. I started off the wood work by cutting out a ring with the router using the supplied template.
Next came sizing the walls. I held the subwoofer in place where I wanted in on top of the ring and measured top to bottom in the front and back of the sub, then cut two piece of wood with those measurements. I dirlled pilot holes into the ring, then into the walls and screwed them together. A test fit showed it worked perfectly with only one try! I fiberglassed those walls to the box, then cut a front piece and attatched it as well. This picture shows those three walls finished with the ring temporarilly off the box as it needs Gorilla glue which takes longer to dry than fiberglass so that is taking place over-night.
The ring goes back on for a test fit, it all works out great!
his is the completed box with the subwoofer sitting in it. You can look at the shape and see that it is a VERY tight fit! I know, it looks ugly from the outside.... But....
It's what's on the inside that counts! Inside the box is five layers thick of fiberglass mat and compeltely sealed air-tight. Since fiberglass boxes tend to resonate (in the trunk of a regular car it doesn't matter because you wont hear it through the seats) I sound-deadened the inside walls with a spray-on rubber. I will also be dynomatting the outside walls before final assembly. The outside walls will not be visable at all once the cosmetic trim pieces are finished.
To make the job easier I am using a lot of the factory plastic pieces and just chopping them to pieces so that I can use the mounting brackets. You can see here that I chopped apart the radio bezel I used thin plexi-glass to convert the double-din slot to a single din originally. I am using the same concept here but this time I place it on its side as I don't need to fill a hole below it, just something to mount the bottom of the din receiver to.
This part was a little complicated and I didn't want to get into it without pictures. I had a ledge to work with for the plexiglass but it was two sheets thick. I also wanted the headunit to be recessed into the dash and two sheets of plexiglass would leave a gap bellow the headunit ring. I superglued two sheets in and when it dried, I cut the bottom sheet back out. To clarify that a little, I did it this way just to keep the sheet I was keeping tight. Notice I also glued the cup holder door shut, the headunit stick out too far making the cupholder useless. With a little sanding and paint you'll never know it was there.
The back of the subwoofer is recessed into the dash pretty far so I had to make a transision back there. To start this I cut a sheet of 1/2" MDF to length and superglued it in place on its side like the plexiglass. The MDF is flush with the outside walls so the headunit it recessed like I had wanted.
All the glue cured but MDF is not a paintable surface. I soaked it with resin so that I have a surface that I can sand, apply body filler to and paint. I also applied a plastic epoxy behind the wood and in all of the joints. Normally I would just use the light-weight ody filler here but since there are going to be a lot of vibrations in this area I want to keep body filler to an absolute minimum to avoid cracking.
While the the resin on the radio bezel dries I figured I would start making the lower portion of the cosmetic trim. I started it off by cutting the stock pieces where they hit the sub box. After roughing up the plastic where I needed to apply fiberglass I was able to hold the two piece in place with the factory screws and random other things long enough to apply fiberglass. This is an area where a lot of people mess up. Plastic flexes. ALl of the work you do on this piece HAS TO BE ON THE CAR. If I took this off after it cured and then fiberglassed the rest of it, the piece would no longer fit once I tried to put it back in.
And that's where I am right now after pulling an all-nighter... I will finish this "how to" as I finish the install myself.
Hope you guys enjoy!
Cardomain|
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