Chuyler1's new audio install log.

[chuyler1]

Well the changer works now...after I pulled it apart and fixed the magazine which fell apart inside. Apparently you should not ship changers with the magazine inserted.

As far as the rest of the system goes...it's on hold because a) the weather sucks and b) I'm closing on a condo tomorrow and haven't had time to do much else.

The good news is that the condo has a basement where I can work on stuff. I won't have to travel to my parent's house. (fiberglassing and cutting wood just doesn't work when you live in an apartment). Of course I won't get back to this until we finish moving in and doing all the household stuff like painting walls, installing my network, and fixing things up around the place.

 

[chuyler1]

So winter sucks...but I'm getting some work done little by little. Last weekend, I mounted my amp, DLS Ir 6.3 crossovers, and Clarion DSP to the top of my subwoofer box (which is still unfinished).

I pulled out the Knu Konceptz interconnects. The ******* pieces of s*** were rock hard and would not bend at all as I was taking them out. The outer sheath had a consistency of PVC pipe in the 20-30 degree weather I was working in. I got so frustrated that I ended up ripping off one of the terminators when it got stuck. I think I already mentioned that one of the contacts keeps coming off inside due to a crappy design. From now on my interconnects will come from another source.

I also bundled two CeNet cables and two fiber-optic cables and ran them along the passenger side of the car. I put them in wire loom so everything would stick together and I wouldn't risk bending the fiber cables at too sharp of an angle. One pair stops half way for the disc changer which is going to be installed under the passenger seat (right now it is just wedged under there) and the other set goes to the dash for the head unit. Sound quality is noticable with the fiber-optic cables. There is less signal loss so it sounds a little louder if I switch back and forth between fiber and the balanced analog signal that is sent through the CeNet cable. This essentially takes out one DAC and one ADC from the signal path and the result is slightly crisper highs. I'm sure there are other benefits but I didn't go through an entire listening session (and one of my Eclipse tweeters is blown)

Since I destroyed my interconnects, I connected the DSP to the amp using plain run-of-the-mill RCA cables that you get when you by a home CD player. They were the right length (3' long) so I said "**** it I'll try them". I may upgrade to something better later on but they don't pick up any noise during the short trip from the DSP to the amp. In fact, I'm surprised at how low the noise level is of my system with it in such an odd state. I refuse to cut wires until I am certain everything is done so the amp ground cable is about 3' long and the DSP isn't even grounded yet.

This evening, I took the cheap route again. I grabbed some cheap radio shack brown 18ga speaker wire and bundled it into two sets of 3 wires, each 15' long for the mid/midrange/tweet of my Iridiums. I didn't have any more wire loom so I just used electrical tape every 6-8" to keep it all together. This prep work will make installing it in the car much quicker. With 20 degree temperatures the less time I spend outside the better.

This weekend I plan to remove the door panels and pull the new wire bundle through by taping it to the old speaker wire I ran for the Eclipse speakers. I originally only ran one wire because I mounted the crossovers inside the doors. Hopefully I can just pull the wires through without removing the rubber grommet (crosses fingers).

If there is time I will mount the Ir 6.5" driver and tweeter in the stock location and leave the mids floating around so I can experiment with mounting locations. People on CarSound recommend dash mounting the mids and keeping them close to the tweeters. However, Scott Buwalda, someone on this forum, and a few others have had good success with mounting them in the kicks with minimal angling. Honestly, I would like to mount them just above the woofers in the door. That will leave me with plenty of foot room and I can do a custom panel similar to BigWoofer to display both woofer and mid. The only problem with this is the path length.

Once I decide on a location I should be able to take some measurements, remove the panels and work on them indoors.

Once the front stage is complete I'll focus my attention in the hatch area. I'll have a better idea of how the Iridiums sound and will be able to make a decision on whether to go active. If I need more power I can add a DLS A8 (mini-four) to my setup and get 500w for the sub, 50-85w for the midbass woofers, 40-50w for the midrange domes, and 40-50w for the tweeters. Of course to do this I'll need one of a 3 or 4 way crossover or a head unit with a 3 or 4 way crossover. I have been thinking about carputers also but there isn't any crossover software out there that would suit my needs.

When I make a decision about amplifiers I am going to redo the hatch. I want to remove the spare tire and utilize as much of it's space as possible. With 8" subwoofers I have plenty of options. I just wish the tire well was centered in the car. That would make things much more appealing to the eye. The idea I'm tossing around now is to get a 3rd subwoofer and install them in a triangle fashion in the tire well. Mount the amp(s) in the space above the tire well (closest to the rear seat) and use the space to the right of the tire well for any processors, crossovers, or other electronic gadgets and do-dads that I may have. With this configuration, I can probably get by with only raising the floor 3" (4" max).

So that's the update. Maybe I'll post some pictures when I have more to show.

 

[altspace]

Holy back from last year. Nice work man!

 

[chuyler1]

Yeah, well my fiance and I bought a condo in late October, then the holidays came, then it was ass-friken cold out, and now I'm just getting back into it. My goal is to be finished with the front stage by the end of March. That's pretty agressive seeing as I have other commitments on every weekend in March including a trip to Daytona Beach. If I can reach that goal, it will give me enough time to work through the hatch area in April. I want everything finished by the summer before I go to any more car meets.

 

[khaosman]

Cool, can't wait to see some progress! I'd love to hear those speakers sometime... I contemplated picking some up as my Kodas are aging and disliking my abuse. However, I don't think top notch SQ components are for my car It is too loud and rattley thanks to its life as an autocross vehicle.

 

[chuyler1]

I'd have to agree with you there. Unless you're willing to put several layers of sound deadening materials in your doors, you won't benefit from paying the extra $$$ for a high end set of components.

 

[chuyler1]

I got a little more work done today. However, I hit a few obsticles which prevented me from actually listening to my Iridiums like I had planned.

The other night I bundled some wire together in groups of three since my crossovers would be mounted in the rear. First on my agenda was to remove the single speaker wire run and replace it with my 3-pair run. I went with cheap wire because I already had about 80ft of it and I'll be dammed if I can notice a difference.

In the picture you can see the bundled speaker wires along with the factory wiring and a thicker bundle which is my optical and CeNet cables coming from the head unit and going to the DSP also mounted in the rear.

I taped the new bundle to the old wire and was able to pull it through the door. This took 1/4 of the time that it took the first time around.

I removed the Eclipse drivers and came across my first obsticle. They are significantly larger than the Iridium midbass drivers. I am going to have to make a new baffle. I really hope these iridums sound good. If I were to make a blind (or should I say deaf) selection of the two, I'd prolly pick the eclipses because they just look so much beefier.

(Eclipse on the left, Iridium on the Right)

I'll try to build new baffles tomorrow. My second obsticle came as a surprise. I knew the Iridum tweeters were large but I didn't realize how large until I held them up to the Eclipse 3/4" tweeters. Needless to say, they will not be fitting in the stock locations without some serious modifications.

(Eclipse on the left, iridium on the right)

So tomorrow if I get time I am going to get the midbass drivers installed. I'm driving around without door panels so that's a priority. If I have time I am going to see what I can do about the tweeters. I'm thinking that I should just get a set of 2002 sail panels and install the tweeters in the a-pilars instead. We'll see.

Once those two mini projects are done, I can focus my attention on the kick-panel dome install. There is tons of space behind the kicks once I move the fuse box out of the way so I think I can install them without giving up any foot room.

 

[basementgeek]

I had a similar problem with my Focal TN-52 tweets. The stock location just did not work, even if I could fab something. And the path lengths are just too different.

Ended up with mine down on the kick panel...not in a pod but just on the panel like RyanJayG.

Imaging was still good. I played with the A-pillar and just could not get a good spot. The guage bump in the dash causes problems and higher in the pillar makes mounting a challenge. You have soft domes though so you might have better luck with reflection and wierd phasing issues.

Looking forward to you kick pods and the rest of the install!

 

[chuyler1]

I'm not worried too much about the path lenths. With the supplied xovers they are high-passed at about 7-8KHz (The domes can handle 450-7KHz no sweat). That means they'll only be playing cymbals and some really high overtones and most of the localization will come from the domes.

 

[chuyler1]

Today I whipped out the power tools and made new baffles for the 6.5" midbass drivers. I took lots of pictures so I could make a how-to. It will save me decribing the steps every time some asks about installing round components in the Protege.

Here's the final product. I'll install them tomorrow when I have some daylight.

EDIT:
Finished the full tutorial on installing 6.5" speakers in a 6x8" opening...
http://www.msprotege.com/forum/showthread.php?t=123629472

 

[chuyler1]

Little by little my system is starting to come together...and little by little my car keeps losing panels. I'm gonna have to take some time tomorrow to put things back together, even if it's temporary.

So I finished my baffles...but still haven't installed them yet.

I also started on the tweeter install. I decided they simply weren't going to fit in the sail panels so I broke down and hacked into my a-pillars. Surprisingly, there is quite a bit of space behind them on the lower quarter of the door. I could almost get by without any modifications other than the hole if the damn panel was flat.

I remember reading in a magazine somewhere that an installer heated up his a-pillars with a heat gun and then stretched them into the desired position. I'd love to know how to do this. It would save me from bondoing, sanding, bondoing again, sanding again, texturizing, and matching the paint. I'll have to buy a heat gun and give it a shot.

 

[Greg S]

Build a mold of the shape you want, in this case just a circle the same diameter of your tweeters outer lip, heat the panel from the backside just enough to get it soft and push the mold into the back side to strech the plastic into the desired shape and let cool. Just don't strech it too much or the texture on the front will look wierd.

 

[chuyler1]

Have you done this before? What did you use to heat it up and how hot did you let it get before messing with it? Did the plastic become discolored at all?

 

[Greg S]

Yep, I've used it many times to reform small sections of interior trims or do some quick molding of area that I didn't want to deal with bondoing. Generally I would use a standard heat gun and heat up the back side of the plastic just enough that it became pliable but not so much that it could move on it's own. If that happens you will have to get out the bondo and sand papaer to fix it. Just make something solid in the same diameter as the mounting surface you want for the tweeter, preferably metal and not plastic so it doesn't stick to the heated plastic, heat the are up and press. You should have to use a fair amount of force to do this, which will keep the grain on the front from distoring much at all. Once you have the shape needed just cut out the opening you need for the tweeter. Oh, damn I just realized that you already cut for the tweeter. This may be a little harder to do with the hole already cut, you'll need to find a way to clamp the lip of the cut hole so that you can basically pull it in to shape while heating.

 

[chuyler1]

Dammit! I knew I should have held off on cutting. Thanks for the tips...I'll post pictures when I'm done. I picked up a heat gun on my lunch break so I'll try to do this tonight.

 

[chuyler1]

More progress today. I installed the midbass drivers. My foam rings worked out very well. They are currently the only drivers connected in my car so I fired them up with some up-beat music. I MUST add sound deadening material to the door panel itself and find a way to prevent the door handle bar from making so much noise. The whole panel puts out an orchestra of buzzes and rattles when I lower the crossover. The speaker however, has no problem with the music so that's some pretty good news. I guess I'll order some dynamat or equivalent when I return from Daytona. Sorry no pics...I was working in the dark this evening.

The other item on my agenda I completed was the a-pillars. They aren't perfect but they will hold me over until I get ambitious enough to spend a few more hours with the heat gun or whip out the fiberglassing materials.

Before...

After...

It's a subtle change but it took a while to get it to pull out even that far. I ****** up the first one a little and warmed it too much one time and I almost pushed through. Basically I warmed one section at a time and then pushed from behind with a small wooden ring slightly larger than my desired diameter. The trick is to only warm the panel and use force to get it to move without disrupting the texture on the outside. I could think of a million ways to do it better but this worked...next time I'm not going to cut the hole first.

I'll have in-car photos when I get some daylight.

 

[Poseur]

That actually looks really good man. I now alot of times when you're working on things it's easy to get overcritical... This technique is new to me as well, I'll likely employ it as soon as I get around to doing my imaging tweeters. Whenever that comes around (i fit does) I'm sure I'll be bugging you and GregS a bit. Actually, come to think about it, I've still got some leftover material that i'd cutout of my kickpanels to play with...

 

[chuyler1]

That would be a great place to start...I basically warmed up the panel a little at a time by holding it about 1" from the heat gun and moving it around to heat it evenly. After a few seconds I would check it...if the back was slimy i waited a second before attempting to move it.

 

[Greg S]

Best thing to practice on is a 12 x 12 sheet of ABS plastic. Most every stereo shop has them and you can get it for $5-15 depending on your relation with them. I used to form tweeter pods and dash peices out of it all the time when there wasn't anything prefabed that would work for my application. Then fiberglass and bondo became all the rage and many people have forgoten about ABS molding. You can also create heat boxes to evenly heat up full sheets of plastic and really go to town making shapes.

 

[chuyler1]

Well it's a good skill to have...it saved me about 3 days of work. You can do some crazy stuff with FG but for a quick install, melting the factory panel into the correct shape is the way to go. It took me a minute to remove the panel, 2 minutes to remove one of the cable guides behind it to make room for the tweeter, 10-15 minutes to measure and cut the hole (which should have been done later), 30-45 minutes per side to reshape it (next time will be quicker), another 15 minutes to mount the tweeters, and another 5 minutes to put them back in the car.

All told, it took under 2 hours. Try fiberglassing, bondoing, sanding, texturizing, and painting in that amount of time.