911 audio build....

[bell]

been working on the audio in my 911 recently.....
so far i have my 4" mb quart components in the kicks (these are very nice on-axis) and some old school pro-tech 6.5's in the doors, the magnet on them is as big as the cone....they were the cat's meow many years ago.

there will be a single 10" firing into the cabin from the bottom of the smugglers box....being a targa it won't fit so i'm building a panel for the woofer to mount where the magnet will stick inside the smugglers box, it will be in the same spot as the passenger foot board is....there'll be a heavy grill/panel to hide it, and it'll be airtight to the smugglers box.

my only source unit is my sirius stiletto, right now the car mount for it is in front of the shifter, it'll be flushed into my center console when i get around to it.
where the radio would normally mount is a panel which holds a simple volume knob and a switch to turn everything on......for kicks i may label them boost and nos
from there signal goes to an audio control line driver to bump up the output voltage, then through a 2 channel trunk mount eq (an older hifonics piece). then through a coustic xm-3 crossover and to the 2 4 channel amps.
i'm using some autotech 100.4 because they're pretty bulletproof and i get them super cheap.

right now christian (a quiet boom) and i have been building the amp rack.....we (he really LOL) are cnc machining the rack and fixtures, we started out with a piece of 1/2" aluminum, cut out large rectangles beneath each amp, cut a slot in the center for wiring (the right amp will be flipped around so all wiring is in the center).
then drilled holes for mounting the amps which we will thread.

there will be 3 points where the rack will mount, there is a pin which will secure it just below the hood latch, another custom plate which will affix to the spare tire bolt, and a third above the battery, we are making this easily removable should i have to pop it out.

here are some camera phone vids of the cnc'ing.....it was much louder than the videos show









a pic....



this piece will be polished up.......more pics to come

[ramonesfreak]

wow! i put an alpine 9885 and 4 JL speakers in last weekend and thought my system was pretty sweet. dang! post some quality pics of the installation when its done if you can. your content with just sirius? i have sirius too, and love it, but, its got nothing on my ipod loaded with 14,000 songs. the Alpine 9883, by the way, sounds absolutely stunning with the ipod high speed direct cable...and is the nicest looking Alpine ive ever had (five total)

[bell]

my stiletto has about 30-50 hours of stored broadcasts, along with about 20 hours of my favorite cd's.....plus live broadcasts....all i need
i'll take some pics tomorrow of the speaker mounts and such.....

[ramonesfreak]

oh cool. didnt know the stiletto has that feature.. ive got a 2 year old sirius unit and havent checked out the newer radios

[bell]

the stilettos are portable, i get about 10 hours of play time, but it'll charge via wall plug, car kit, or usb cable....i haven't drained it yet .
there is a ton of storage.....100 hours of programming (if you listen to a channel longer than 15 minutes it'll store the broadcast automatically), plus if you hear a song you like, press a button and it stores it to memory off the broadcast. 1/2 of the total memory can be used to upload mp3's. i love this thing, the price has come down $100 so it's $250 now....who needs an ipod.......this is more versitle and serves me well
http://shop.sirius.com/edealinv/servlet/ExecMacro?nurl=control/StoreItem.vm&ctl_nbr=2640&siId=1745656&catParentID=7874&scId=7874&oldParentID=

[ramonesfreak]

ill check it out. if i had to say why one needs an ipod, it would be for the 'playlists". i love making playlists as much as listening to them

btw, i once lived near cuyahoga falls. there are some nice roads around there, from what i remember....11 years ago

[bell]

speaker placement......

door 6.5


4" quarts in kicks

[RWebb]

more pics of the 4" quarts in the kick panels!

[bell]

the older quart grills can be flush mounted, the right kick was no big deal, unfotunately i did that side first and forgot to check clearance on the driverside (the speaker had to be mounted lower).....so the right one is a little high, i'll be fixing that in the coming weeks so they're at the same height.
the driverside also didn't fit right in, i had to extend the kick a little (dynamat is your friend) to make it flat.....

right kick


right kick


left kick


left kick

[RWebb]

thx - good to know re the assemetry

[bell]

big big big thanks to christian (a quiet boom) he thinks like me when building stuff but with metal instead

he came up with a good way to mount the rack, by hanging it from the sides and having it hover about 1/4" above the battery....dead even and easily removable, if i need to access the battery or the spare all i have to do is remove the top 4 bolts on the side plates, i'll be replacing the current allen bolts with butterfly type "finger" bolts, wala....mission accomplished.
i'll be brushing the aluminum rackto have the same texture as the center of the amps.

our cost estimate is a over a $1000 for the machine time and metal......he said he's NOT making another one

my targa top still fits under the hood too.....

now i can finish up my wiring, rack harness, sub chamber, and make everything black except for the rack........more to come, here are some camera phone pics

we started with a 20lb chunk of aluminum, and ended up with 6lb's of functional art

[bell]

i forgot to mention that the amp rack harness will be on 2 quick disconnect plugs

[A Quiet Boom]

Ya need better pix than that bell!

Actually it was fun making this rack but a lot of work figuring out the angles etc. to get a rectangle to hang neatly above the tire and battery. Not many good reference points as both side of the car are a little different.

As for the CNC videos, I was going really slow on the feed and cutting through the whole panel in one shot, my mill doesn't have the HP to run the feedrate where it should be on a 1/2 x 1/2" cut through aluminum. Cut it out slow then came back with a 0.050" cleanup pass at full speed. All told we have 20 tapped holes, 16 holes, one large slot and two rectangular cutouts. Everything is 1/2" 6061 except the drop brackets which are 1/8" 5052 stock I had lying around.

Actually none of those camera phone pix really do the car justice, for example the kick panels look like they where there from the factory.

[bell]

i'm doing some rewiring of my headlights/cibies and such right now.....i'll be taking more pics with the good camera later today

[bell]

better pics.......once i get the new black trunkliner in....yea this is suave

tonite i rewired my 100/130 narva h4's and wired up a set of cibie fogs.
i re-used my relay pack and added a 5th for the cibies, i'll take picks of that tomorrow....

[RWebb]

Amp holder as strut brace!

[kcpaz]

why CNC'd instead of fabricated. Would have been a lot cheaper.

[bell]

Originally posted by kcpaz
why CNC'd instead of fabricated. Would have been a lot cheaper.

because we could

[Dutchie]

very clean install Bell love the cnc bits ! you should try a auto x with the amps in place and drive a few laps without the amps. The weight is in the place where you could use it. i would like to see the diffrence in time

[A Quiet Boom]

Originally posted by kcpaz
why CNC'd instead of fabricated. Would have been a lot cheaper.

Not necessarily, I've got bot manual and CNC. When doing bolt hole patterns, or other repeat cuts it's quicker for me to type a few lines of code. For the main rack I ran it twice, once for each side as it's overall length is longer than my mill travel. I programmed the bolt holes and large cutout and hit start, flip it around and run the other side. No lay out die etc, goes pretty quick. Besides I saved all the code in case I ever want one.

Believe it or not 90% of the time was designing and fitting the bracketry. It's attached to the inner fenders where the fender bolts attach and the surfaces aren't at the same angle on both sides so some tweaking was needed.

Besides I didn't "charge" anything, bell helped me work on a daily driver while I worked on the rack. It just took so much time to fabricate, etc. that the hours really added up. He and I trade labor all the time, or labor for parts. Which is why my truck has remote start and his car has a clutch LOL!