Gonadman2 Member 140 Member For: 17y 6m Gender: Male Location: Perth - WA Posted 09/08/11 10:57 AM Share Posted 09/08/11 10:57 AM Ok, so I've been procrastinating for over a year now not putting this thread up here. But I thought a few of you guys might be interested in my car audio install. This is 100% done by myself only, so it isn't perfect, with some aspects having tried for the first time during construction. Its reaching the end of the road soon, so at least I have a bit to write about. Feel free to offer comments or criticism, or ask questions.I initially started out with a basic dynamat and after market speaker upgrade for the front doors.Then a small amount of dynamat for the rear wall, followed by a layer of foam and mass loaded vinyl.Painfully running new wire through to the doors.MDF rings were made, with Focal Utopia 6W2 midbass drivers mounted.Then I started on the A-Pillar builds for the Focal Utopia 3W2 midrange, and TBe tweeter.I bought a second pair of A-Pillar trims and carved out a rough shape.Wrapped them in hot pink lycra. Then hit them with fibreglass resin.Rough bogging.Fine BoggingMany hours later...Laid down a black epoxy coat.And then wrapped them in Carbon Fibre.At this point I got bored of the weeks that I was burning on the pillars and moved back to the front doors. My initial treatment was what you might expect from a 'reputable' car audio store, but I wanted more.I used some closed cell foam to seal the MDF to the door frame.I then sealed all of the service holes with MDF trims, and then dynamatted over them, to completely seal the front side of the woofer. This is very important as it reduces cancelling and resulted in more midbass. Also, I did not worry about fully sealing the doors, as the 6W2 woofer as a QTS of 0.75 - almost a perfect alignment for optimum power handling vs low end extension in a infinite baffle arrangement. Very few car audio speakers are built like this. I now have a 6db cut at 80hz due the extra bass that resulted from doing this. Basically, I can throw more juice at my system before it starts to break up.Moving back to the A-Pillars, I started laying the clear epoxy over them. This is a very messy process.A little shot testing the lighting.From here I stripped the interior as I had a lot of cable to run.Mass loaded vinyl under the carpets. It was nice of Ford to install the constrained layer (foam) for me!I finished sound deadening the interior and ran in some cable. I didn't get any shots, but I removed the roof lining also and SD'ed the roof as well. This was very worthwhile as there was a lot of ringing from vibrating metal up there! Much lower resonance now.Running wire and mounting the distro and DC-DC converter for the head unit (Clarion HX-D2). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gonadman2 Member 140 Member For: 17y 6m Gender: Male Location: Perth - WA Posted 09/08/11 10:59 AM Author Share Posted 09/08/11 10:59 AM Too many pics for the first post!Running wire and mounting the distro and DC-DC converter for the head unit (Clarion HX-D2).Due to the location of the head unit and its DC-DC converter, I had to lengthen the umbilical cable that runs between them.Mounting the amps.Lighting behind the amps.Temporary sub enclosures, I plan to build a fibreglass enclosure housing an Adire Audio Brahma, but until then Focal's 27V2's are serving duty. The enclosures are carpeted but I don't have any shots of them for some reason. The enclosures allow the seats to fully recline, and are around 25L each.I hope to get a couple of shots of the pillars installed in place, they still aren't finished but I wanted to move onto other parts of the install during winter. I've also got the head unit mounting coming up, and the sub enclosure, but that is a little while off yet. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dillz Three pedals are better then two.. Donating Members 15,637 Member For: 16y 10m 28d Gender: Male Location: Melbourne Posted 09/08/11 11:16 AM Share Posted 09/08/11 11:16 AM Mate these threads are always welcome, wish I had the guts to attempt something like that on a new car.Look forward to seeing the end result. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MiKa Donating Members 4,243 Member For: 17y 8m 2d Gender: Male Location: Melbourne, VIC Posted 09/08/11 11:28 AM Share Posted 09/08/11 11:28 AM Love it mate, keep it coming.. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V8SuperCars Member 29 Member For: 14y 9m 6d Posted 09/08/11 12:05 PM Share Posted 09/08/11 12:05 PM Awesome job so far, love looking at the detail that people do on there cars. Really looking forward to the end result, thanks for sharing you hard work. Looks like it's going to pay off in the end from what I seen so far. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wenier Donating Members 1,736 Member For: 14y 3m 5d Gender: Male Location: Christchurch, New Zealand Posted 10/08/11 12:34 AM Share Posted 10/08/11 12:34 AM Just is alot of work. Awesome job and looks very tidy and the amp/fuse block etc install is so neat as well. You don't do this for a living do ya. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bossmang FREAKY Donating Members 12,403 Member For: 14y 3m 29d Gender: Male Location: Melbourne Posted 10/08/11 08:26 AM Share Posted 10/08/11 08:26 AM my god... that's some awesome work there. so much attention to detail, and so much effort.well done.cant wait to see and hear the end result Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dre Resident idiot. Donating Members 2,068 Member For: 13y 7m 3d Gender: Male Location: Melbourne Posted 10/08/11 08:42 AM Share Posted 10/08/11 08:42 AM WOW! love the work around the amps, very neat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gonadman2 Member 140 Member For: 17y 6m Gender: Male Location: Perth - WA Posted 10/08/11 02:10 PM Author Share Posted 10/08/11 02:10 PM (edited) Cheer's for the kind words guys, I'll try and get an interior night time shot of the pillars up over the weekend (I'll be away for a couple of days and ran out of time tonight).@weiner - Nah mate its just a hobby. I just enjoy good car audio and can't afford to pay someone to do it for me. Still got plenty of work to do... Edited 10/08/11 02:14 PM by Gonadman2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bonjaz Donating Members 1,841 Member For: 15y 4m 15d Gender: Male Location: CQ Posted 10/08/11 08:56 PM Share Posted 10/08/11 08:56 PM that's unreal!!! good stuff mate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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