Well here is the next phase of what is most likely or at least for the foreseeable future going to be a never ending project. I have upgraded almost everything possible and I am starting to get sick of the factory stereo so I figured it was time to address that. With replacing the entire factory stereo besides the headunit I also wanted to redo my trunk setup. Nothing extremely fancy and it hasn't even been started but I will try to explain it. The one thing I wanted to be able to put in the trunk was the Carbing Trunk Brace so the stereo will be designed around allowing that fit in the trunk. To install the Carbing Trunk Brace you have to install some bolts from the underside of the car. For me this is a problem cause it means I have to remove the rear diffuser which is a pain. So I also decided to finally install a rear sway bar. Yeah I know, with everything I have done to my car and I am still using the factory sway bar, how pathetic. I chose to go with the progress rear sway cause the only other one I would have went with was a Swift rear sway bar but it is not as thick. Since I wanted to start planning the stereo as soon as possible I had the Carbing Trunk Brace EMS shipped direct from Carbing and since the cost wasn't much more to add another item I ordered the Carbing Rear Floor Brace as well.

Now onto the audio equipment. I am using all Memphis Audio gear for the car and was able to get a great deal cause my buddies shop sells Memphis Audio. Since I am using the factory radio still I am using Memphis's OEM called the 6ix interface device that give you a clean signal from the factory headunit. I am using their 6.5" Msync Components up front and their 6.5" M Class Coaxial Components in the rear. The amp I am using is the Memphis Big Belle which is a 5 channel amp putting out 4 x 75 watts @ 4 ohms and 1 x 1100 watts @ 1 ohm. The 1100 watts from the sub channel will be split to two Memphis M3 subwoofers. I was originally going to run 75 watts to the front components and 75 watts to the rear components but I believe the subs will be a little over powering with that little power. Although I am currently already running a 500 watt sub with the stock stereo. So what I am thinking of doing is doing away with the crossovers for bother sets of components and running all 4 75 watts channels on the Big Belle to the front speakers. One 75 watt channel to each tweeter and one 75 watt channel to each woofer of the components and use the crossovers in the amp to tune them instead. I would then purchase a Memphis 4 x 50 watt @ 4 ohm amp and run one 50 watt channel to each rear tweeter and one 50 watt channel to each rear woofer. That way I would be running 500 watts to the interior speakers instead of 300. I will probably try it out without he second amp first but if it is even at all underpowered sounding I will upgrade to the dual amp setup. The Memphis Big Belle is a massive amp as well and 30in wide. I am going to try to figure out some way to mount it raised about 3 -5 in above the Carbing Trunk Brace along the back of the rear seat at an angle. Obviously though I will not even consider mounting it to the Carbing brace. There will be one sub in each corner of the trunk in fiberglass enclosures facing the opening of the trunk. This is all going to take a long time to install so hopefully in a month or so I will have some pics of the beginning of the install. Until then the pictures of all the gear are below.


The entire conglomerate



Carbing Trunk Brace



Carbing Rear Floor Brace



















Progress Rear Sway Bar









Memphis Audio 6ix Interface







Memphis Audio 6.5" Coaxial Components





Memphis Audio 6.5" MSync Components (cast baskets are hot I almost want to reverse mount them so they show)











Memphis Audio M3 Subs










Memphis Audio Big Belle (It evens tests to put out more output than it claims, also uses an external fuse rather than an internal fuse 200amps)





















Memphis OAWG Amp Kit (Crazy how much stuff comes with it)











One four channel and One two channel RCA set



One Battery Terminal, One fuse holder with 250amp fuse, Two distribution blocks (Most likely wont use the terminal and keep using my stinger ones with displays)

 

nothing fancy ?.. dude thats gonna be one crazy set up.

 

 

Dude!

I agree about the back of those subs, they're pretty sweet looking. Your car would make my ears bleed though. I don't need to my internal organs to be able to hear NPR.

Yeah, I'm old.

 

ugh, I hate you......

 

jason, why no cap? can't wait to see how the custom enclosure turns out

 

Damn J, good stuff...more show points for you .

You do a great job of documenting your project's progress, so I can't wait to see the build pics seeing as I'm also still running the OEM stereo setup......



Interesting that we might be on very similar "phase" schedules...

 

wow you never stop huh. good stuff man, will you bring your car to HIN in Boston?

 

Can't wait to see it done !

 

no unfortunately I will not be at HIN boston. They scheduled it the same weekend as the Carlisle Performance and Style show which is a huge local show.

 

nice new toys!

 

Nice parts, looking forward to seeing the (never) finished product. I bet it'll sound insane. And you are going to flip when you experience the new RSB; it was probably the third mod to my car (after Injen and shortshifter) and it makes such a huge difference - although, probably not as much of a difference for you since you're already on Tein Flex.

 

^oh, it still makes a huge difference.
I was down on Tein SS when I installed my RSB and it was very noticable.
the stock sway bar back there is a complete joke in comparison.

nice to see you get those Carbing braces in, now I don't feel so lonely!
you'll love those as well, you car is going to feel much different.

 

WOW. this is going to be loud, can't wait to see installed pics !!

 

Very nice gear J

Keep up the good work...That's some awesome audiophile caliber gear!

Looking forward to pics of the setup during and after the install. Any idea how you are going to setup the trunk? Have you sketched some of it out?

 

Here is what my plan for the sub installation is. The amp installation I am not sure of yet since it is 30in wide. I was gonna recess it in the floor under plexi but havent measured but pretty sure its to wide. so Now gonna try to float it over the back of the carbing brace way back by the back seats but once again have to try this all out when I am home next time.

 

Damn man...nice choices in equip.

Are those Uncald4's sub boxes?

 

All of this work and race parts, and the car is still an automatic... 6 speed swap time

 

so ur gonna install all that to the stock head unit?

 

that rear sway bar sure makes more difference than I thought it would...

 

those are Uncald4's sub boxes but I am just showing that as an example. I am doing the entire install myself. First time I am doing fiberglass but I am very hands on and do basically all my own work on the car so its just a progression down the line. The boxes probably won't turn out perfect the first time but its a learning experience. My current sub install is the second try of doing a false floor and rear cover wall and it came out great so now 3 years later its definitely time for something different now.

I also wanted to make an install that was easy to remove in case I wanted to take the car to the track considering all the other mods I have done to the car it would be a shame not to track it at least a couple times.

 

Yes I am going to install this all on the stock head unit.

 

Still haven't decided whether I want to do RHD or not yet and thus I don't want to do a manual swap twice as that would be basically a waste of like $3500.

 

CCColtsicehockey,
great stuff and will keep you busy for quite a while. The rear boot bar, I have been thinking about this for quite a while. Problem is it sits on the boot space and hinders the boot board. I changed the stock carboard into plywood 1cm thick, to give it better strength. I have a kickerbox and mount my amp to this plywood on the floor as I did not want to disrupt the back seats as they can be folded down.

My advice is to think how u can fit all these needs together. I gave up and kept my simple. I do like some of the ideas here, but I don't have that much time to work on longer projects.

Great stuff.

 

ouch

 

Well due to the harness bar my rear seats do not even completely fold down anymore. I also I don't use the trunk really anymore since the car is not a daily driver. I mean I like to have a little bit of trunk space but from the farthest point back of the trunk brace to the back edge of the trunk is sufficient for me.

 

Harness bar at you rear seat and this does not allow the rear seats to fold down? Do u mean the side inside brace bar from rear left to right doors? I was thinking of this option but there is no place to "hide" away in the rear and it is just in the way for the legs. I was even thinking if I could actually reverse mount under the car!!

If u refer to the carbing harness bar, let me know as I did not know this. I saw another make DTM and similar piece and mounts over the rear. I bought the undercarraige bars and the rear accident bar piece. I think Team Kunimitsu was the 1st to develop these bars and now Carbing has them.

An idea for you : Stick in the carbing bar over the rear carpet (need to punch a few holes for the mountings though. I don't know is the TSX has a plywood piece over the spare tyre, but u can design a 3/8 inch plywood piece to replce this. However, design it such that you can open the spare tyre access only, thus not hindering the Carbing bar.

Design the interior raised platform about 4 inches, so that the platform hides the Carbing bar and then put in the amplifiers inside this 4inches. If you can make a perspective plastic about 3/8 inche think to sit on top, you have a wonderful display of your carbing bar and amplifiers. With so much other space between, even could do a tool box layout. Thus, u loose some depth, but keeping the original width of the boot.

Have fun and let us know what u did later.

 

Is this the series amp you have?

http://www.memphiscaraudio.com/produ...ass-amplifier/

If so, you have balanced line inputs and you don't need that line out converter!

 

yeah thats the amp I have. yeah I know I don't need it but got a package deal on everything and it was worth not getting it. That way if I have a problem with the balanced inputs then I will a backup solution. I also came up with a good way to make an adapter harness to get the signal from the amp that is different from mercman's harness. I am not sure it will work yet but I have ordered the parts in question and will find out once then arrive later this week. If it is successful I will post some pictures and a DIY or maybe make the harnesses myself. However if mercman starts selling his harness before I get around to installing my system I will just buy one of those as it would save me a lot of time.

 

I decided to make my own mercman harness so that I could pull the balance audio signal the the tsx factory headunit uses cause my amp is able to utilize this and thus helps prevent noise. I made the harness plug and play in the sense that I unplug the factory harness and plug this harness into the headunit and then plug the original harness into the other end of my PnP harness. By doing this I only pull the audio signals and allow other things in the harness to pass through to where they belong. I also taped into the factory amp turn on wire and split out a lead for my new amp turn on wire. The rcas are made with high end twisted pair shielded 22 gauge microphone cable. The harness is wrapped in techflex then. The speaker harness is from a 2006 civic si and gives me connection to all the factory speaker wiring. I know I should replace the factory wiring which I will probably do at a later date but currently getting it installed as soon as possible is the current goal.







































































My tools for the job

 

I would shoot myself with all those wires.

Props Jason.

 

if that new sound system doesn't get judges' attention, i don't know what will

 

Awww...too many wires to look at while I am drunk!!!

 

haha. whats funny is other than the rca end for about 1 ft that harness will never be seen.

 

ur insane.... and I like it.

 

holy cow @ making your own mercman harness.

impressive stuff, as always!

 

 

Ok so this past week over spring break I began my system install. One of the main reasons I am redoing my system is I obviously want to replace the rest of the speakers for better sound but the main reason of redesigning my trunk setup is to make room for the Carbing trunk brace. Here the brace laid in place and also the remains after the removal of the old system.






It was cold out so I used my parents porch heater to heat the garage up. Worked very well and kept the garage nice and warm during the days it was around 20 degrees out.




I removed a portion of the interior panels and the front and rear seats along with my old setup in the trunk as well. I then taped off the entire rear of the car as to not scratch anything while working on it. I began the mold for the second sub enclosure first so that it would have time to dry while I wired the car. I did three coats of mat and resin for the new mold and still need to add a coat or two of just resin to add some thickness to the box and strengthen it.


























I then ran the custom plug and play harnesses down the middle of the car and left them at the rear seat.














I also had to drop the rear diffuser so that I could install the Progress and got the Progress rear sway bar installed with the help of my friend Brent (MemphisTSX).














I dynamatted each door lightly before installing each speaker then. The specs for the size speakers that could be used in the tsx were far from right from metra. The specs were clearly measured with the windows up. Also the tsx speakers are so small the holes need to be severely enlarged to accommodate the new speakers. I enlarged the holes using tin snips as I did not want to use a dremel and end up with lots of metal filings in the doors. I also needed to use spacers to prevent contact with the window. This was accomplished using generic speaker spacers by metra that I had to custom modify to fit the speakers that were even to large for the 6.5” speaker spacers. I used metra Honda connector adapters so I did not have to cut any of the factory wiring. I installed the front woofers in the doors, the rear woofer and tweeter combo component along with the rear crossovers in each rear door. The front tweeters I had glued into the factory grills. My local shop suggested that if I didn’t plan to ever put the factory tweeters back in to cut the connectors off them so that I could make a plug and play harness for the new tweeters as well since one is not available. This also helps cause there is like no slack in the OEM tweeter wires. Since I had the speaker harness adapter from a civic run to the trunk, the front crossovers were then mounted in the trunk instead of the front door.

Dynamat









Speaker Comparison






















Custom Speaker Spacers




Custom MDF Spacer Cause I miss placed the other plastic 1in spacer and didn’t want to keep looking for it. I have since found the other plastic spacer though.




Installing Door Speakers










Had to cut a little bit of the plastic around the speaker grill away to allow for the door panel to fit back on since using the speaker spacer.















Custom Tweeter Install and Harnesses































For the amp rack design I decided to do something simple so not to take away from the Carbing brace. I decided to mount it in front of where the Carbing trunk brace will be mounted. I didn’t want to just mount it flat so I decided to mount it at a 15 degree angle instead. I am using the OEM trunk carpet for the false floor so that it has perfect fitment with the floor. I designed a base inside the spare tire compartment and then created vertical supports to support the weight of the amp. I then reinforced the OEM insert with a 1/2in thick piece of MDF. I made 4 sloped 2 inch risers to support the amp that lined up with the reinforcement board. I then cut 3 ovals to run the wires up bellow the amp between each of the four slopped supports. I mounted the front crossovers and the amp external fuse on the hidden floor under the false floor. The amp is currently mounted on a 1/2 in piece of MDF which will be replaced with a 1/2 in piece of frosted plexi that will be lighted up in either blue or whilte LEDs. The ground wire in the picture was not long enough for the install so it is currently routed incorrectly in the pictures for test purposes. The power wire is correctly run under the false floor but the wire to the battery was run outside the car for test purposes as well. I unfortunately forgot to take pictures while making the amp mount but will take pictures of it when I install the plexi piece instead.

Panel Under False Floor


False Floor


Wiring Below




On the top of this picture you can see the holes for the wires that were cut in the false floor below the amp rack.


















Lights on the Amp



The plug and play harness did not work correctly and I believe there are issues in the RCA connectors so I will be ordering new one to try again cause I believe they are touching as they tripped my amp into safety mode. I tested the system using my iPod directly connected to the amp and putting the amp in 2ch input mode. All speakers play perfectly and the sound quality is amazing without even having tuned the system yet. Hopefully in the next month I will get some more of the system completed.

 

Ok so this past week over spring break I began my system install. One of the main reasons I am redoing my system is I obviously want to replace the rest of the speakers for better sound but the main reason of redesigning my trunk setup is to make room for the Carbing trunk brace. Here the brace laid in place and also the remains after the removal of the old system.






It was cold out so I used my parents porch heater to heat the garage up. Worked very well and kept the garage nice and warm during the days it was around 20 degrees out.




I removed a portion of the interior panels and the front and rear seats along with my old setup in the trunk as well. I then taped off the entire rear of the car as to not scratch anything while working on it. I began the mold for the second sub enclosure first so that it would have time to dry while I wired the car. I did three coats of mat and resin for the new mold and still need to add a coat or two of just resin to add some thickness to the box and strengthen it.


























I then ran the custom plug and play harnesses down the middle of the car and left them at the rear seat.














I also had to drop the rear diffuser so that I could install the Progress and got the Progress rear sway bar installed with the help of my friend Brent (MemphisTSX).












I dynamatted each door lightly before installing each speaker then. The specs for the size speakers that could be used in the tsx were far from right from metra. The specs were clearly measured with the windows up. Also the tsx speakers are so small the holes need to be severely enlarged to accommodate the new speakers. I enlarged the holes using tin snips as I did not want to use a dremel and end up with lots of metal filings in the doors. I also needed to use spacers to prevent contact with the window. This was accomplished using generic speaker spacers by metra that I had to custom modify to fit the speakers that were even to large for the 6.5” speaker spacers. I used metra Honda connector adapters so I did not have to cut any of the factory wiring. I installed the front woofers in the doors, the rear woofer and tweeter combo component along with the rear crossovers in each rear door. The front tweeters I had glued into the factory grills. My local shop suggested that if I didn’t plan to ever put the factory tweeters back in to cut the connectors off them so that I could make a plug and play harness for the new tweeters as well since one is not available. This also helps cause there is like no slack in the OEM tweeter wires. Since I had the speaker harness adapter from a civic run to the trunk, the front crossovers were then mounted in the trunk instead of the front door.

Dynamat









Speaker Comparison






















Custom Speaker Spacers




Custom MDF Spacer Cause I miss placed the other plastic 1in spacer and didn’t want to keep looking for it. I have since found the other plastic spacer though.




Installing Door Speakers










Had to cut a little bit of the plastic around the speaker grill away to allow for the door panel to fit back on since using the speaker spacer.














Custom Tweeter Install and Harnesses

































For the amp rack design I decided to do something simple so not to take away from the Carbing brace. I decided to mount it in front of where the Carbing trunk brace will be mounted. I didn’t want to just mount it flat so I decided to mount it at a 15 degree angle instead. I am using the OEM trunk carpet for the false floor so that it has perfect fitment with the floor. I designed a base inside the spare tire compartment and then created vertical supports to support the weight of the amp. I then reinforced the OEM insert with a 1/2in thick piece of MDF. I made 4 sloped 2 inch risers to support the amp that lined up with the reinforcement board. I then cut 3 ovals to run the wires up bellow the amp between each of the four slopped supports. I mounted the front crossovers and the amp external fuse on the hidden floor under the false floor. The amp is currently mounted on a 1/2 in piece of MDF which will be replaced with a 1/2 in piece of frosted plexi that will be lighted up in either blue or whilte LEDs. The ground wire in the picture was not long enough for the install so it is currently routed incorrectly in the pictures for test purposes. The power wire is correctly run under the false floor but the wire to the battery was run outside the car for test purposes as well. I unfortunately forgot to take pictures while making the amp mount but will take pictures of it when I install the plexi piece instead.

Panel Under False Floor


False Floor


Wiring Below




On the top of this picture you can see the holes for the wires that were cut in the false floor below the amp rack.


















Lights on the Amp



The plug and play harness did not work correctly and I believe there are issues in the RCA connectors so I will be ordering new one to try again cause I believe they are touching as they tripped my amp into safety mode. I tested the system using my iPod directly connected to the amp and putting the amp in 2ch input mode. All speakers play perfectly and the sound quality is amazing without even having tuned the system yet. Hopefully in the next month I will get some more of the system completed.

 

wow, now thats a system. good luck getting it working.