Bradley Farmer

I'm currently a college student majoring in Electrical Engineering. A few years back, I competed in roughly about two MECA competitions as a hobby. The experience was great, but short lived. With my new schedule, I'm able to juggle classes and a job. With that said, I've decided to go back into competing so that I can have something "fun" to do outside of studying hard during the week. I'm specifically looking to compete for SPL in MECA. What I buy from Fi will strictly be based off of the new point system for MECA. There are several classes, and I'd either like to compete in either Street 1 or Street 2. Street 3 is simply above my budget as a current college student. The base formula for points is this in MECA SPL Comp: {(Total Amperage of In-line Fusing X 10) + Woofer Cone Surface Area} = Pressure Class # Woofer Cone Surface Area (for formula above): 12" Surface Area = 113 Square Inches 15" Surface Area = 177 Square Inches 18" Surface Area = 254 Square Inches Outlines for Street 1 and Street 2: Street 1 (0 - 550) -- 1 Fuse Maximum. Amp limit: 1500 Watts Maximum RMS @ 14.4 volts Street 2 (551 - 1000) -- 2 Fuses Maximum. Amp limit: 3000 Watts Maximum RMS @ 14.4 volts Suggested Speaker? The vehicle that I own is a 4runner. It is very similar, if not the same size as the interior of one of your stickies posted on this link here: http://www.soundsolu...7337-2-btl-18s/. My setup will consist of one driver, whether that be a 12", 15", or an 18". From going to previous competitions, I'm leaning a little bit more on the 18" side of things, mainly because a lot of people who compete own a lot smaller cars than I do, therefore they are able to get louder because of much smaller vehicle interior aerodynamics. With an 18, I can somewhat make-up for that lost ground. With that said, my question is this: what speaker should I go with, if I'm desiring to hit around the 147-148 dB range? Suggested Amplifier? Additionally, I'm also curious as to which amp you would recommend? So far, one amp that really sticks out to me is the MMATs M3000.1D. The amp fuse rating on those are rated at 100 Amps and the amp pushes 3000 Watts RMS at 1 Ohm. From doing math from the formula above, I will need to push around 70 Amps to still remain in Street 2 (assuming that I use an 18 inch driver). Is there any way to one, lower the Amp rating while sacraficing a little bit of power output, or two get a better amplifier to go with for SPL competition? Wiring. Wiring isn't really something that I have a question about. It's already understood that I will need to go with 1/0 gauge because I'd be pushing so much power Batteries? I'm thinking probably around 3 batteries for 3000 watts would be suitable. Is there a particular company that you would recommend and what particular specifications should I push for? Alternator? This will be the last step of the install. I'm thinking about something that produces around 200 Amps. Is there a particular company that you would recommend for both reliability and performance? I've spent a few hours looking around and there are so many different alternator companies out there, it was kind of hard to tell who's reliable and who isn't. Conclusion. This is a long post. A very long post. For anyone who takes the time to read this or to reply, I would like to say thank you. You took your own time out of your day to help me out and for this I'm extremely appreciative. I look forward to posting how things turned out with my Fi experience here in a few months. Thanks!

Sounds great on the price, but you're not quite as efficient at 0.5 ohms. P = I2R. Therefore, dipping your resistance value from a 1 ohm value to a 0.5 ohm value will mean that it takes more current to get louder, instead of using the larger resistor value. Actually for that very reason, I've decided to go with two of the Rockford Fosgate Power T1500-1bdCP. The values of the 2 ohm and 1 ohm are pretty much the same. I'll probably end up running those amps at 2 ohm so it'll be more efficient. Thanks man. Yeah, there's always going to be some curveballs and things that I won't expect. I just have to go with the flow and keep working at it. If it was easy, then everybody would be running the score that they want for their SPL runs. I was actually thinking today, and one thing that I failed to mention was soundproofing the 4runner. Not sure when it's going to get done but it does need to get done. The 4runner is no luxury car, and I'm pretty sure the factory soundproofing is poor. Great post. I was actually reading today about the N3 and it basically said the curve response from 45-75 Hz was saddle shaped. A few other things that I read also said you wouldn't want to run the N3 everyday, because they heat up easily and they'll tear up quicker. I will most likely end up going with an N3 because of the frequency response curve and the fact that it is roughly about 2 decibels louder at the 1 watt margin than the N2. Turning off the subwoofer amps shouldn't be a problem. Listening to this everyday even at low volumes would be a sure way to go def quick.

Yeah, I'm hearing that a lot about people not liking the new 2012 rulebook for MECA. If you're seriously wanting to change, IASCA might be the way to go. Although, I honestly don't know if they will be stricter or more lenient. I know for ""SQL"", IASCA requires the judge to sit in both the passenger's and driver's side to rate imaging and MECA does not. This takes a lot more time to image when you have a judge critique both sides. Your first competition is tomorrow. Figure out, if you have not already, the aerodynamics of the car. In my first competition, I had two Mach 5 Audio 18's in a Crown Victoria LX running off of 200 Watts each.. My first run, I scored a 135.8 dB. On my second run, I simply opened up the passenger's door and scored 138.6 dB and ended up coming in first place in Amateur Street. Since you drive an Explorer, opening up the sunroof or window on the backhatch might help. I know doing this in the 4runner definitely helps me get a noticeable gain on the lower frequencies. By the way, I'm from Huntsville. I might end up running into you sometime. I'll let you know whenever I get this setup and start competing. Great recommendation. I'll have to look around a bit more, but as of this moment I really don't see anything negative about these batteries at all. It seems a lot more potent than what I had for my first competition (by far). Well, I'm planning on taking a few months to install this. I'm probably looking around 3000 dollars to get this thing up and going. I ran the cheap route during my first few competitions and only managed to get 138.6 dB off of two 18s (granted I was running a total of 400W RMS). A little bit more time, and a little bit more money will help me get further than I was last time. But here's a few things I have outlined on pricing thus far: Speaker - Fi 18" BTL N3: $850ish. Amplifier - M3000.1D: $1000 dollars. Would like to cut this value in half, but I'm really not up-to-date on amps like I used to be. So much has changed in 3 years. Battery - SX D32100: $370 Wiring - 1/0 Cables. $200. Might be this value, might be cheaper. My father's really good about finding wire on sale and he does ""SQL"". Box - Self built. $100. Should be this or around $120. This is about how much it cost me for my last build and I had two 18's taking up the whole trunk of a Crown Victoria. Alternator - I'll have to check to see how things go. If I need one, then I'll spend the money. Around $500. Total without alternator: $2520. This is assuming I can't find an amp for around $500 that will get about the same performance as the M3000.1D.

Great recommendation on the String Red Cased batteries. They seem like something that I could work with in means of performance and pricing. However, the XS batteries were a little over 1,000 dollars each (unless I was looking at the wrong thing) and out of my paycheck range. Thanks for the battery help armykyle1.