Leaderboard

So I should formally introduce myself, the name’s Sami O., I am a citizen of the mighty (or mightily small) country Finland. I live with my fiance, and my dog. Im big into fishing, as well as car audio and electronics of all sorts. That’s my dog out on the boat, hes a cool dude, and loves to be in anybodys lap. I started doing car audio work professionally at the end of high school, and went to college at Rensselaer Polytechnic, before going overseas to begin my military service. I am 26 now, I work as an organic chemist at Connecticut College, and still maintain my car audio career as well. I served in the Finnish military and am an active U.N. reserve as a mobile light-mortar infantry soldier. When I began my military career I was told I should stick with military police, but as many of you could relate I fell in love with the mortar bass When I say I’ve heard some of the loudest/most ridiculously earth shaking bass in the world, it wasn’t in a car. Now what would a 120mm grenade register on the term lab? Now that you know a bit about me, I will start my build log; the special thing about this build is that it lacks anything that special. I planned originally to put my gen 2 BtL in this build, but decided to wait on the N2 when I discovered it was being released. I had a MB Quart DSC2000.1 and 450.4 laying around, already had Infinity Kappa 6x9's rear with Infinity Gold 2.5" pillar and Rockford Power 6.5" Coaxials in the front doors. I decided it was time to drop something into this car, make me have some incentive not to trade it in for another Jeep or something. Knew I could get a few batteries in the trunk on a battery isolator to feed my power demands, the rest was just an issue of space. The equipment list checked out, now I knew I was in for some akward, tedious work, just because this car is particularly difficult to work on (who designed that battery compartment? i want to talk to that guy at chrysler seriously) and I had an ambition plan to make a big box and still have easy access to my full spare tire, and still be able to enjoy the way it looks and sounds. Its easy to do anything if your budget/resources are endless, but its hard if you have a tight budget and minimal fabricating equipment. All the work was done in my house (garage/driveway), no work while in the shop or even one bit of helps from a friend (arsehos, they just drink beer and watch ). As you will see, I built the box inside the trunk (mostly), using minimal tools besides a pair of cordless drills, a pair of jigsaws, and some squeeze clamps (and gorilla glue). Without counting the cost of equipment, total cost in wood, fiberglass resin/cloth, screws and glue was only around $250, most of which is some fancy thinned resin I bought down at industrial supply since it was around 45 degrees during most of my fiberglassing. The point I’m making is that you can create very stream-lined, potent sound systems with little cost and few tools, just a general confidence with your hands. Lets begin shall we? It’s a deep trunk, almost 50 inches deep with 38” width at its narrowest. This part is the problem; I only have just under 13” clearance… that’s not gonna do for what I have planned. A quick shot of the 1/0 going to the trunk… I bought 50ft ground and wrapped the pos with blue tape since im cheeeeap. Also spot the 8 ga running to the center console. Ran the 1/0 under the car and up under the rear seats. Caulked it like crazy later on (I get paranoid about water… a rusted ground caused by a little moisture cost me about $2500 in amps on another build). Alt wire, some leftover dB link 1/0 cable I had… stiff as hell but nice and thick, did the trick. This car has the most absurd battery location, with almost no space for my Orbital exide negative terminals to clear, let alone a battery clamp, so I found a slim profile terminal… looks naked in this picture tho For anybody out there lookin for an easy tip, many will tell you that you can run big wire anywhere and even if it gets hot its no big deal, and though it would be hard to melt the wire without it resting directly against the engine block, the further you can get it from heat the better it will conduct. You wouldn’t believe the difference a couple degrees makes for voltage drop. Im not running crazy big power tho, but its still good practice. This picture illustrates an important design aspect of this particular setup, in that the power wire split in the above distribution block enables me to run one amplifier off the primary (starting) battery and the battery compartment in the trunk is then isolated to run the monoblock off a separate charge, though obviously both the primary and auxiliary batteries are charged from the same alternator. More pics of that later. Stinger gold ftw Test fitting the power inverter, which is going to be mounted above a dual relay housing, which is what all those wires underneath the inverter run to. Another tip for you battery-loaded systems out there run both an accessory powered relay and an ignition powered relay for controlling certain system aspects via both triggers… makes things a lot easier. Im a big fan of having an inverter in your car. You go two years not buying new cell phone chargers for your car and it pays for itself not to mention running music and a term lab off my laptops Its really easy to just start cutting up pieces of wood, but I like to have a battle plan. Cut certain pieces in certain ways and you can end up with perfectly even cuts and exact symmetry. See? Perfect. Then theres the ‘clamp two pieces together and cut them at once’ trick It’s the baffle mount, curved to add little fiberglass shunts since theres so few screws going into the wood in this build. Test fit Another angle Bolted in some angle iron to run a straight line… it was later tacked into place right before I bolted the box to it from below. Warning. Don’t try this at home Last look at the box before it goes into the trunk for the rest of the build Another fit test… Now its time for some gorilla glue and big clamps Got a couple screws in there; gotta keep the ports nice and square. Lots of gorilla glue and liquid nails… the screws I did put in (where I could fit a screwdriver or drill) end up negated by the fiberglass bracing, but extra never hurt. And how is that a woofer box again? Just had to push her in all the way, see how she lines up. Its always good to keep planning and making to do lists; it really helps the build progress. Heres what I have left to do at this point: SolidWorks modeling all the way… really helps especially with the tuning process, and the wood cuts Now for a couple weeks worth of fiberglassing since its so cold out it literally takes 48 hrs to cure sometimes. I buy more hardener than resin Its satisfying laying down a couple layers tho… really makes the box solid as a rock. Tip from a chemist: heat isnt the only thing to cure fiberglass. The catalyst is a peroxide like benzoyl peroxide can catalyze teflon to arrange itself into one long, hard molecule chain, but in this case just the catalytic energy is necessary. A good source? UV light... shine a UV light on that fiberglass and it takes off fast. Fiberglass bracing 101: Double double layers on the corners with fewer screws, and plenty more glass to be added inside. The fan doesn’t help the smell inside the car at all… just keeps me from passing out totally A shot of the bracing on the back of the box. Its also where the amp rack will secure to, so it’s a vital piece. Some more glass why not… Not the perfect acoustic shape, but it thumps so hard who cares. After the angle iron is tacked in, I needed to raise the box a half inch to flush it with the piece it was being bolted to. I didn’t get a picture, but theres four half inch mdf strips that the box sits on, keeps the moisture from collecting too. After its bolted in the box is officially mated to the car. View from the drivers seat Used the ‘angle the box so the resin pools’ trick and got four layers of glass in there to brace the baffle.

Merry Christmas fuckers!

Poast 270,000???

I was pretty damn excited to wire it up… A big hell yes goes out to Fi Car Audio for making great woofers including this new BtL, I know it was a pain to make this sub for me, but I appreciate it. Then five minutes later: The most anxious part in the build… I had measured the side-to-side distance to be just capable of clearing the woofer. Lets just say a piece of paper can slide in on one side but not the other Been waiting to predrill the woofer mounting holes so I can carpet the visible portions of this side. The fact that the baffle was so closely measured side-to-side meant the woofer was automatically lined up in that regard. I cut the mounting hole exactly so that the outer edge of the woofer would be a half inch off the floor of the trunk, so once I shimmed the woofer up with a piece of .5” MDF it was just about lifting the magnet into place with some lumber I had laying around, which in turn brought the woofer flush. I did a poor job leveling the magnet, I guess its hard while looking upside down and backwards at it but its fine. The hole was cut 14 and 3/16 inches, and the woofer sits in there perfectly inverted. With that magnet, how can I not invert it?? You may have seen this picture already, but that’s the only one I snapped before I put the back seat in. I have a few things to tweak in there in the coming weeks, so I will probably wire that up in a prettier fashion. Honestly the woofer has itty bitty clamp terminals, real tough to get full copper contact with one 8ga input let alone two. Its in, its tight, im not touching it for now Putting my back seat in was a real pain… Its so closely fitted again that the back of the seat actually flexes a bit against the box when I bolt it down, but I wanted that so the seat sits in place tightly and doesn’t get pummeled around by the BtL. I used some adhesive rubber strips, big chunks of closed cell foam, and some carpeted pieces of MDF to keep an airtight seal between the woofer’s “chamber” and the seat. I doubt the seat is rigid enough to allow for a 6th order effect from the seat blow through, but who knows. I don’t live in the most crime filled area, but around here if somebody peeked in and saw a monster 15” BtL they would probably steal my car. The woofer was bolted in with Torx screws and my father-in-laws 50lb torque drill, into a half inch of fiberglass. Nobody could budge those screws with any cordless drill, let alone a screw driver And that’s how it has to stay for now, at least until after xmas. I left enough room for mounting a second monoblock, I hope to upgrade to a pair of Rockford bdCPs. The box sounds good so far as it should, very much a similar overall design scheme compared to my previous BtL enclosure (visible next to my name over there <<<<), time will tell if it really bangs like the gen 2. Door panels are also soon to come, though my highs are well suited to the current configuration, I just want a little more flare than the stealth look this car has now. Thanks for reading, feel free to post comments. Enjoy your holidays, relax like my dog here, just toasting in front of the wood stove

And more glass It just occurred to me I suck at taking pictures Now theres some serious glass on the other side of the baffle as well. See the spots where I left the baffle mount curved how the resin can be built up and cloth sunken in to make little solid fiberglass shunts for braces… basically along with the screws theres fiberglass wedging it in from all sides. Its solid for a single layer baffle. Time to fiberglass the box out of the trunk and build the amp rack. Test fitting the amp housing size. Of course I fiberglassed the whole rack without test fitting it, only to find out it didn’t fit no matter how I tried, so I cut in half and decided to build onto the right half by building the other half separately and joining them later on. I like a heavy-duty felt like material for making certain molds that require strength. The felt really absorbs the resin well, two coats of resin with some scraps of fiberglass and sawdust in it and the felt becomes stiff as a board. A couple layers of cloth and resin over that and its good to go. Amp rack progress The deer had to come check out my rack drying out in the backyard. There were deer everywhere for a few days, including one bigass buck that sent me running inside like a little girl. Usually deer are scared as hell, this guy stared right at me and headed my way. I was outta there! With the amp rack attached, I could begin making the skirt to flush the rack to the trunk. Again I used the felt and a few secret tricks to get the shape just right, and laid the resin down heavy. More resin… amp rack makes a good beverage holder while its not housing the wattage. Fiberglassing some cloth in there Some more cloth… thing is hard as nails I love dynaglass… its really a step where you can correct so many minor imperfections with one well performed sweep of the mud knife. You can build up areas and fill gaps way bigger than bondo, but it’s a real pain to sand down if you lay it on too thick. Sand it down, fill it back up… x3 Same stuff Some grey primer shows all the little lumps and divets you can fix with sanding/body filler, if you did a good job with the dynaglass this should all take about an hour tops. Then its on to carpet. This is about the time I realized my spare tire needed about a quarter inch more clearance to get in and out easily, so I had to halt progress on the trunk until I feel I can shave down the bottom of the rack and put down some more dynaglass and finish the bottom portion of the carpeting. The false floor will be easy enough to build. So earlier I mentioned the battery isolator. By mounting it in the trunk, inside the battery chamber, and wiring the 4ch to the T-Distro ’above’ it, the isolator keeps the auxiliary and primary batteries separately but adequately charged and the amps are fed by two different charge sources. Time to close up the battery compartment Lots of wires ran, the amps are going into their pre-bolted positions on half inch MDF mounts. This allows me to run some RCAs and other wires beneath the amps, while also giving the amps some more breathing room. So flush and so clean. Some aluminum battery terminals I cut out in a jiffy. Triangles hot and round for ground. You can get more conductivity from copper or brass, but these will do. Long as theyre smooth. Building out the battery door. Now that’s the shape Close Gets a little repetitive… but its worth it to get a flush fit After a quick check on the collective battery/alternator performance, I wired up the relay and powered up the amps. Wires did a vanishing act. ----THEN I WAITED… sat around for a long time with nothing personal to work on, but built up some car audio business in the meantime. In the back of my mind Im just thinking BtL, BtL, BtL... I really wish I held onto my gen 2, or one of my spare Fi Q's, but its ok I still had my other vehicles to bump around in. Then on Monday the UPS guy gave me a nice surprise

We just found out the VCMs are a little behind schedule, but should be ready to go very shortly. We will update with tracking as soon as we have it.

You sound like you know from experience bro ... had you head up any guy's rear end lately ?? Only one I've been close to is my wife for 15 years ... The op was just asking for suggestions, You are being very rude in your statements. You sound like you are a smart guy, but your moderation skills suck ... You are the only moderator that uses profanity on just about every post ... That prorfanity and the female on you signature just looks bad for SSA ... I don't see how you get away with it ...