so i have a really big project ahead of me. im going to be redoing my WHOLE system in the car and i have all the components for it. its pretty straight forward and im hoping i dont fuck anything up (wiring is not something a dude with fat fingers is good at haha). but as im looking on customization and different options ive run into a bunch of questions. usually my questions are stupid as some of you might know from my many PMs but here goes anyway.

glove box. anyone do anything crazy or thought of doing something crazy as far as custom install with it? was thikning of trying to fit an xbox 360 in there. ive seen it in other cars but it requires a lot of customizing. and our gloves dont open up so far not to mention it has very little space. just wondering.

spare tire well. i dont have a spare tire. but it opens up a lot of space for customizing. any ideas?..

ive spent the last two days looking through the photo gallery and the "what did you do to your cl today" thread. ive looked in honda tech, google images and havent really seen anything in the roads that im lookin at.

thanks ahead of time

mark

 

I know from recent experience that wiring the door speakers is a bitch.

 

yeah i know. do you have them wired to an amp? how did you approach that?

 

I have to be honest and say I gave up and ran the wire from the speakers in the door, out through the big white connector in the door (there's a top slot you can run the wires through) and out the side of the boot across the door jam and into the underneath of the plastic kick panel lol. Then back to the amp. I have smaller skinny hands and I just didn't see me making it all the way through the boot and into the car. Good luck!

 

hmmm. did you have to take the whole panel off?

 

I'm assuming you mean the door panel and yes it definately has to come off. I think it would be easier to remove the doors if you had help and then run the wires. There's just not enough room!

 

Running to the doors sucks but it can be done. As far as the xbox, did you consider the ski pass in the back seat as a mounting place?

And since you have no spare, I would make a false floor and stealth mount the amps under there.

 

yeah i made a false floor just so that the carpet doesnt get more effed up that it already is. actually i was considering putting my amps in the in the wheel well but im so used to having them on the box for easy access fine tuning. im thinking of building mounts for sides of the trunk or maybe building a custom box to have more trunk space. still doing some research.

ski pass was my first option. actually im gonna keep looking into that reason i wanted to try out the glove was so that it could be hidden but i just took a look at the xbox and its HUGE haha. ive seen some setups where they take the air bag out and mount it there but im pretty sure id like to keep the air bag

 

What all equipment are you trying to fit in the car? Depending on your sub enclosure requirements (depends on what you're trying to get out of the woofers, and the woofers themselves), you may be able to do some fun stuff. I'd start with the enclosure for the subs, and allocate space from there, but that's just me.

As for wiring the doors, definitely get a second set of hands and pull the doors. That's what I did, and it made life much easier. I still didn't go through the white connector, but I don't really care about that. I've got 4 runs of 12 gauge wire going into each door (2 positive, 2 negative), so that is quite a lot of wire (more than most people need) and it allows me to run a fully active setup, and do all of my processing and amplification before I send signal to the speakers (which I'm a fan of).

 

well i had all these crazy ideas and now that the build is actually about half way done im looking at these from a more realistic stand point haha. i got me a pair of pioneer tsw3002d4 (highly under rated if you ask me) and im using a ported box to house them. the box is huge so it leaves for almost no space what so ever. so for right now i have a mock floor board underneath the carpet to hold this heavy thing up. thing is about a hundred pounds if not more with two amps on top (hifonics zeus 2000w for the subs and a rockford 500.1 for the insides). what ill probably do is take a picture of the trunk and then maybe you guys can give me some suggestions?

originally i was thinking of mounting my xbox 360. but the idea of a carputer is a lot better. where to mount it would be my issue. i think thats where my glove box comes into play. im playing around with some light fabrication with plexi glass. im planning on taking out the cup holder and im fashioning a charging dock for my iphone 5. ill probably fail horribly since i have no actual plan but we'll see haha.

today im working on interior lighting. thanks to chris's terminal box i bought offa him i went ahead and bought a whole bunch of cold cathode tubes for the footwells, for the back foot areas (even though no one sits in the back EVER. if i did have people sit in the back id bottom out. haha), for the trunk, and for the wheel wells.

i just bought a new alternator rated at about 150 amp as well as some battery terminals to accommodate all the wires already connected to my shitty one. just waiting on the zero gauge wire to come in. SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME THE ALTERNATOR INSTALL ISNT HARD. i have the diy on hand but the thing im afraid of is taking the belt of and putting it back on.

i got a lil over a month before the blox open house meet and i wanted to get all this shit done hahaha. prolly wont happen but whatevs. didnt get to enter wek'fest like i had originally planned but ill prolly chill in the parking lot like everyone else who wasnt able to enter hahahaha





edit. oh by the way. i NEVER wanna wire door speakers again. hahahah. took me 2 days to do the doors. not full days cause after some frustration i had to quit for a bit

 

Hmm, those woofers are begging for a 4th order, and I can think of a pretty bad ass way to do one, if you're interested. It would be more of a showy build than a legit SPL build, but it'd probably kick some serious ass, especially compared to your current ported box. You'd have to do some fiberglass work in the spare tire well, and would probably want some polycarbonate for the back/top of the enclosure, but it would be baller. This is assuming that you can fit both woofers on the face of the top of the spare tire well (I think Mitch had 2 12's in his spare tire well area, so this should work).

Anyway, if you get dimensions of the box you currently have, I can make a pretty decent suggestion about how to face the thing (pictures of the box will also help) and what you're going to want to do to the trunk. Do you have any idea on the specs of the box? Volume, tuning, etc? That will also play a big factor in what you can and can't do with it.

I would say hold off on the carputer until the rest of the system is up and running, but that's just me. With a month to go, you could probably have a pretty legit setup that works without a carputer or one that may or may not work with it.

 

ah so youve HAD these beasts. i swear i didnt think pioneer was capable. but im intrigued...any examples?

to be honest with you i dont. and im going to be even more honest with you i just started really understanding the importance of ohms and voice coils etc etc. haha. so as far as the specs of the box i couldnt tell you. but ive had this box for about 7-8 years now and its seen atleast 4 setups in it. i do have a sealed box but its going in my ol'lady's car because of the size of the box. she needs the trunk space.

i figured as much with the carputer thing. to be honest ive spent atleaset 10 grand on the car since march. way more than what its worth hahahah. figure i should wait to spend another grand for the carputer (unless i can cheaply piece it together) and finish all my projects that i have now

 

No, I haven't used them. I looked on Pioneer's website, found the T/S specs for the woofers, and know how to interpret them to determine the enclosure that the woofer is best suited for. With a qts of .65, an FS of 31hz and a qes of .68, that woofer is quite ideal for a 4th order bandpass.

As for Pioneer's capabilities, they have had vehicles over 180db in SPL competitions (they may have been the first over 180db, I can't remember) with a truck built by Scott Owens awhile back (he was on Car Warriors for a few episodes) with the very woofers that I think you have (it wouldn't surprise me if the woofers Scott used were custom, given the SPL levels he had inside his truck). With enough money and company support, there's not a lot you can't do.

Can you measure the box and take a couple pictures of it? Ideally, the outside length, width, height and material thickness , port width and the length of the port. From there, I can figure out the volume and tuning, and let you know if that box or another one would be better.

The enclosure I would suggest is called a 4th order bandpass, which has a sealed chamber firing into a ported chamber (basically, a sealed box inside of a ported box). They work really really well with the right subs, but tend to take up a lot of space, especially when done right. I was able to fit a 4th order that did very well for 2 10's that took up almost all of my trunk space in the CL, but I didn't use my spare tire well (still had a spare in there) and I had a silly high volume ratio, which gave the enclosure stupid amounts of output, but sacrificed the low end output (it sounded terrible on rap, but super baller on double bass rock stuff). So, depending on what kind of music you want to listen to, you can adjust the enclosure to suit that.

You're probably going to want to change out that 500.1 for a 4 channel (or at least 2 channel) amp to power your interior speakers. Otherwise, you're not going to have any ability to fade the sound left or right, or front vs back. That's something I just remembered after typing up the previous response.

 

Those subs are definitely underrated, and are beasts. I helped my buddy put 2 in his durango and we were afraid we were going to blow out his back window. Definitely interested to see how you fit them in the trunk. I have comparable size visoniks in my trunk and my box barely fits between the rear strut towers

 

so heres a pic of my trunk and the setup now. the box is pushed as far as it can go. its pretty fuckin heavy. i wanted to be able to do a custom panel but like i said before im a TOTAL noob when it comes to that hahaha. like i would have the ported panel with the subs kinda laying in the front or maybe mounted to panels on the side. idk.

yo seriously it hurts to bump the system too much hahaha its hard to breathe. it hits so hard that it makes my brain and my throat rattle HAHAHAHA..ive had people tell me that the low frequencies are so low that it rattles their cars. i was thinking of doing a custom setup and having four of these in my car and changing the amps to the brutus line (times two obviously for four subs). i would take out the back seats and mount them there. not a walled setup like some of the folks on the steve meade (if youre familiar with that site) website but something a less crazy. but i drive students and parents home for work so id need the back seat. OR. have it customed so the back part of the back seat are the subs (so it would be two facing towards the front of the car and two facing the back. more or less back to back if you can imagine it). but again. i have prior projects to complete.

anyway. ive pretty much doubled the amperage of the alt with the new alternator i bought (but havent installed yet) and im waiting for my zero gauge wire to come in so i can do the big 3. just in case youre wondering how im going to power all this shit.


thanks ahead of time for all the knowledge and advice





edit. excuse the messy trunk. i literally have only had those in for a few days and since my overhaul isnt quite done im not really worried about the mess

 

That enclosure looks pretty big for the port area (my rough guess is around 9-10 square inches of port area per cubic foot) which explains why it plays super low.

As for the enclosure I was suggesting, here's a screenshot of my first draft of the thing (specifics to follow, based on the subs being used):



The opening at the front of the box is for the port, the 2 circles for the subs. You would have to fiberglass the spare tire well to house the sealed section of the enclosure, and come up with a way to seal the two together (more fiberglass or something similar would be a pretty good option). Based on the quick calculations I did, this thing would be downright nasty, assuming you can get approximately 2 cubic feet out of the spare tire well, which should be possible without much trouble.

I can do the design work for the enclosure, all you'd have to do is build, which is fairly easy, if you're talking about doing custom stuff in your glovebox or with a carputer. If you have access to a welder, that would make this whole project easier, as you could make the enclosure with the ability to disassemble it to get the woofers out, which would be a big plus. It's a pretty simple build (save for the fiberglass work, and the removal of the plexi/polycarb panel if you wanted to have the subs visible), and you could probably pull it off before your meet with time to finish up some of your other stuff. I'd estimate around $150 or so for the enclosure, assuming you buy MDF, or around $225 if you used Birch (half the weight, which is always nice), less if you don't use the polycarb.

 

jesus can i couldnt imagine the subs pushing right up against the body. hahahahha...so much rattle. so let me put try to put this into terms to show you if i understand the diagram and explanation..

the subs would sit at the very front part of the spare tire well (closer to the bumper). i would have to fiber an enclosure for the two subs and then fashion an enclosure for THAT enclosure all in the well? the subs would obviously not be covered right? like youd be able to see the subs? i apologize but what is the 16.5 measurement? is that the width of the actual well? ...would the well be deep enough to be able to accommodate the depth of my subs? or will the subs basically sit on the floor of the well?...here is a link to the specs of the subs. i didnt get them from here, got them cheaper at amazon haha..

http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_...S-W3002D4.html

as far as my carputer. im looking at measurements (already planning ahead cause my current project isnt too hard.) to be able to rebuild the glove into an actual case. i was thinking plexiglass. thicker and super ventilated. the mini itx motherboard would not sit up against the plexi but instead would be mounted with small rubber risers (if they are even called that) so that the heat doesnt melt the plastic. id mount external 120mm fans (2 in the back of the glove for exhaust and 2 in the front for intake) to the back and front. currently looking for another glove box (saw one cheap on ebay for like 25 bucks a few days ago. hope its still around that price haha) so i can cut that one up and then still have one intact. i plan to mount the 120 mm fans (with grill obviously) to the front of the glove for intake). this dude on craigs is selling his mini itx system for like 100 bucks. all i need is the power supply. a legit carputer power supply i suppose so i dont have to go offa my inverter thats already hardwired in the car (i use it mainly for things like jump starters or pumps if i need air and im not at a gas station etc etc)....if im looking at the dimensions of the glove box and im correct then id be able to work and the carputer will be able to get enough air so as to not over heat...


MY OTHER OPTION was to use my old hp laptop. i used to use it for my bedroom turntable set but i sold those tables (i practice in the garage now cause my girl hated listening to me practice haha) but not the laptop. been lurkin on mp3car and apparently it could be done. but i think my laptop draws too much power and heats up too quickly.

ive also been youtubing a lot of fiber glass tuts. to be honest it looks scarier than all this wiring shit. haha

 

No, basically, you have a sealed enclosure that is the spare tire well. On top of that (your woofers have a mounting depth of 7.5", so they should be good for this), you have a baffle where your subs are mounted, firing upward. You would have a top on the enclosure that I drew up (I didn't model it because it's easier to see what is happening with the top off (Solid Works is kind of a pain in the ass to get a single side of a box to go transparent, so I just leave it off until the very end). The 16.5" dimension is purely there to center the box on the coordinate system. It's something that my brain has to have so that the enclosure in constrained in 3-d space in the computer, but doesn't mean anything in terms of actually building the box. When the enclosure is completely together, you would not be able to see the woofers (as was the case in my 4th order pics below). But, you can have a removable panel (highly suggested) and that panel could be your back panel (closest to your trunk lid/license plate) and that panel could be plexi or polycarb (I would suggest polycarb even though it's more expensive and heavier, it's much stronger) at which point you would be able to see the subs firing upwards. Again, the top of the enclosure would be wood (or you could do more polycarb, but 2 surfaces out of that stuff would be a royal pain in the ass), and you may be able to mount your amps there, or you could mount them on the sides of the enclosure.

To hopefully give you a better idea of what a 4th order looks like, here are some pictures of my last one in the CL. Notice the area behind the woofers is sealed, while the area in front is ported. This is what gives the 4th orders their response curves, but also takes up more total volume. The sealed volume would be what is in your spare tire well, and the ported enclosure above the woofers, with the port firing through your ski pass in your back seat. Anyway, pics:

Mock-up:


Full Mock up, as it will be seen from the cabin of the car:


Subs in:


Enclosure in the car, being slid back, subs mounted, loading wall off. The angle iron mounted to the top and bottom of the enclosure is the same method I would suggest you use to secure the back panel of your enclosure on. It works quite well (better if you have a welder and can tack a couple bolts through the angle iron), holds tight, and doesn't leak air:


Box in position from the back:

 

okay, so, the tire well IS the sealed enclosure (sorry bro bare with me...never even thought outside of the regular subs in a box type deal haha) and then ported part would go on top of that with the ported part facing out towards the bumper. the open area would be towards the back seat?.

if i did something like this would i be able to build this in plexiglass (i have access to a lot of it .lol and in different sizes) and still be as functional as what youre imagining?

edit. sorry you said id mount the amps on top. was more focused on the actual build.

 

sorry for the double post.

but id have to built part of this enclosure with wood huh. for it to withstand the vibration and what not?

 

Yes, the spare tire well is the sealed chamber. The ported chamber basically sits on top of the spare tire well (as long as you seal the 2 pieces together). The port itself (the only opening out of the enclosure) sticks through your ski pass (rear seat arm rest). The back of the enclosure could be removable so that you can access the subs once the enclosure is built (this makes loading and unloading the enclosure easier) as well as the potential to tune the port once the thing is up and playing. That back wall also needs to be sealed up when it's in the car, otherwise you'll have a leaking enclosure, which is no good. When you get a good seal between the port and ski-pass, you should have nearly no trunk flex, and all of the sound being projected into the cabin of the car, which is a good thing on multiple fronts.

You could use plexi for the entire enclosure (except for the sealed chamber) if you wanted. If you can get access to some round plexi, that would be good. The ported chamber is big enough that you're going to want to brace it, and plexi on it's own will flex, unless it's extremely thick. I would personally use wood because it's cheaper than polycarb for me, and easier to get/cut. I would probably use wood for the baffle as well, that way it hides any inperfections in the fiberglass work for your sealed chamber.

 

matta. so i was gonna start gathering parts for the trunk build but i wanted to see how you felt about a vanity wall instead. with the subs that i have. good idea or no? i like the fact that id have more room to work with as far as trunk space. is a ported vanity wall possible? originally what i wanted to do was try to find a smaller ported box for 12's and then just fabricate a vanity wall in front of that box.

 

What's a vanity wall?

 

you know im not even sure if thats what its called..lol..thats what me and the homies call it cause it makes your trunk look all "nice neat and pretty"...but its this thing



but ported

 

Could you do it? Yes. Do you want to? No. Those setups look good, but they're blocking a significant portion of sound from transferring into the cabin, and therefore you don't get near the system performance that you otherwise could.

You'd be better off doing something like this:

with a plexi back on the box to show off the subs. That gives you the better system performance and you can still throw shit in your trunk without hurting the woofers (think about tossing stuff in the trunk of the setup you posted, anything that moved around would tear up the woofers, also the fact that they move, and your subs move a lot. The only thing with forward firing the subs and port is that you'll want to seal off the trunk (you don't have to, if the enclosure is the right size, but it helps a lot). Behind all the duct tape in that picture is Great Stuff. It's not fun or easy to get out once it's in, so keep that in mind. Any of the setups that I've suggested should be sealed off to get the best performance.

 

so you suggest a sealed setup for the subs?...

 

OH god, not the ducttape trunk again

 

i see why though. its a lot better than what ive seen personally on other peoples cars. ive seen people use egg carton as dynamat (they swore on their mama's that it work. it hella didnt...lol)..smh...

people keep tellin me i should do a walled setup. im like hell no...how does the car support all that weight in the first place. and i would HATE to have my subs RIGHT BEHIND my head. lol

 

Based on the specs of those subs, either sealed or a bandpass. Personally, I'd use a bandpass, but that's just me.

Don't hate. It worked well for a long while.

The foam egg carton stuff can work decently well as part of a sound deadening strategy, but you have to know how to use it (IE high end SQ builds).

I'm planning on walling my car once I get a new DD and my school loans mostly paid off. How does the car support the weight? You have to support it. My plan is a steel cage in the backseat area that is welded to the entire car, similar to a roll cage in a full out racecar. I just need to find the right woofers that will work in my 4th order design and handle 2500w rms each. I've found one sub that is looking promising, but we'll see how the specs look once it's here (they're in shipping now, although they should be in the US soon). If your subs handled more power, I would use them, but 1000w is not enough. You could use a similar design with a couple more subs on a couple thousand watts and have some really nice results. You wouldn't need to weld in steel to the car, you can easily bolt it to the floor (that's what my buddy did in his Saturn and that's not a light enclosure).

 

wtf...2500w rms each?????????....holy. what brand are they?...

i was on stevemeadedesigns the other just lurking and some people got some crazy setups. a lot of walled setups as well. im already thinking of getting another set of subs. but maybe after all the projects.

 

Sundown Z V4 are the ones that may work that are still in transit. I found last night that the Soundstream X3 may work (4" coil, so lots of mass which is a pain, but thermally it should be good to go, which is a plus) and then today the newer RE XXX's look somewhat decent as well, although they're only 2000w per woofer so I would be pushing them a bit more than I'd like. We'll see how it goes, and who knows what will be on the market when I'm doing the build anyway.

 

Bandpass

 

^Yes yes i did.
This is what the box looked like, full fiberglass bottom with the rectangle top part starting at the existing floor, so it sat a couple inches above

and here's the bottom of the enclosure, the little hump that comes up is for the bracket at the bottom of your spare tire well...This enclosure was custom done for a CL owned by a stereo shop manager and i bought it off of him


Here's what the finished product looked like


I never completely finished it off, but it served its purpose while i had it.
But if i was to do a system again i'd do one just like this, in the spare tire well so you don't lose a whole lot of space. I bought the grilles for my JL W3's so i could even put stuff on top of the subs no problem.
Too bad you are so far away from me, i still have the box and am getting rid of my cl, i'd just give you the box for free.
It's kind of heavy and awkward shaped so i'm not sure it would do so well with shipping.

 

dammit...aww man...!!!!!!!?!?!?!.....how much do you think shipping would be?..hahaha..


see id want my setup something like that...only thing is i like the sound of a ported and yours seems to be sealed right?...i think ported would be better for the subs i have. but you trunk looks so much more open...

 

I have no idea how much. I can ask UPS and see. Its just a very weirdly shaped box so I'm not sure how well it would do.
And yes it's sealed, I don't think you could really turn this into a ported box since the bottom is so uneven due to it following the shape of the trunk, but matt would know for sure, he's the one who knows about this stuff.
Yeah I basically just lost the few inches of height from my trunk and I had a big 5 channel amp, cap and 2 decent sealed 12's

 

Mitch, do you remember the volume of that enclosure?

Germ, you say you like the sound of ported, but your woofers want to be sealed (or in a 4th order bandpass). You could take the sealed enclosure, drop it in your trunk, put the woofers in it, then build a ported enclosure on top of it. Depending on the size of the sealed enclosure, it may actually work somewhat well, which would be pretty bad ass. Also, this is the same idea that I suggested in post 21 above.

 

That box is sweet

 

No idea. I think it was the same volume as recommended for 2 12" w3s because the previous owner had similar subs, and I never added any of that foam stuff or anything to make it "bigger".
Bit if j was to use it again i'd recommend replacing the wood on the top of it as I think I just ended up putting sealant in all the joints because it was leaking a bit. And its been sitting not being used for a few years now.