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lithium

Buick Century - active 3way + sub w/ nexus 7

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ya i have it setup sub/midbass and tweeter/midrange. the tweeter/midrange might be the issue. actually its only the midrange channels and i've already ruled out the amp. So that leaves signal from the dsp or the speakers themselves. 

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or i have too much stuffing in my kick panel pods

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I've got 5 of them running for a while now that have been Bombproof. I'd do a quick channel swap and see.

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Didn't get to the minidsp troubleshooting yet but I did figure out another problem I was having. I have air leaking through the right front door channel seal which causing whistling at speeds over 60mph. Spent some time taping off different portions of the window and door seal till i figured out where the failure was. 

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Didn't get to the minidsp troubleshooting yet but I did figure out another problem I was having. I have air leaking through the right front door channel seal which causing whistling at speeds over 60mph. Spent some time taping off different portions of the window and door seal till i figured out where the failure was. 

complete halt on the project? I want to know whats up with the ride... I might be doing something similar or.... finding some place to hide my 80PRS in my Mazda 3... 

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Well I think its time to start updating this thread again. I took a bit of a break from car audio stuff over the last year or so. In Dec 2016 I was laid off from my job in Illinois and moved to Michigan. Two months later I was offered my position back at my previous job and decided to take it. I'm not a big fan of central IL but the work is considerably more interesting.

In 2016-2017 I made a few undocumented upgrades to the car, I swapped out the two minidsp 2x4 units for a minidsp 6x8. Shame I didn't see that dayton audio DSP (perhaps it wasn't out then) but seems like a better deal. I also swapped out the two 2-channel amps that powered the tweeters and midrange drivers w/ a ppi900.4. A few months later I was jumping the car and blew the amp. Not exactly sure why it blew, it was purchased used but I suspect that I it blew because I keyed the car on, connected the battery jumper, and then started the car. Perhaps the voltage drop during the engine crank zapped it. Anyways, I replaced it with a nvx800.4 since you can not find the ppi amps anywhere (and I think I grabbed it from the ssa store, iirc). 

In 2017 I had to address  some significant rust issues with the rocker panels that almost pushed me towards buying a new vehicle. I decided that "repairing" would be a better option as the cost to own a low mileage (2001 w/ 75k mi.) GM sedan is pretty cheap. I cut the rocker panels off below the door seam, separated the pinch weld, and attached a new rocker panel with 3m panel bonding adhesive and self taping screws. Obviously not the correct way to do it but I only drive 15 miles round trip to work and put a whoppping 5k miles on the car last year. 

I also pulled the fiberglass panels out with the intention to re-upholstery them. But, I haven't gotten to it yet. My original upholstery job looked decent, I managed to get a decent color match with a spray dye/color coat product. But the summer heat caused the glue to fail. I got some tonneau cover adhesive that I hope will work better. 

Anyways, future plans for the car are to move the midrange drivers up to the A pillar to address some issues with the frequency response from the driver side kick panel. I plan to try out some Markaudio drivers or use my Tangband w4s. I will probably not use a tweeter but I have several lying around if needed. The sls 8s might be swapped out if I cant get the 4" midrange to play low enough. 

updated pic of the amp rack, https://imgur.com/Gdu11nn

 

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I tell you what, the adhesive repair is actually stronger than spot welding.  It creates a molecular bond along the entire seam versus just spot welding and seam sealing.  MUCH better.  Ask any quality body man.  Those W-body rockers are a MFer!

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2 hours ago, Tirefryr said:

I tell you what, the adhesive repair is actually stronger than spot welding.  It creates a molecular bond along the entire seam versus just spot welding and seam sealing.  MUCH better.  Ask any quality body man.  Those W-body rockers are a MFer!

Unfortunately, both the inner and outer rocker panel rusted through so its good that I was able to add some of the structural integrity back. I made sure to cover any exposed metal with por15 and bed liner so it should hold up longer then I intend to keep the car.  

Edited by lithium

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I run the w4's as FR's in my office.  Beastly little guys....but the sweet spot is REALLY small.  In a car I would add a tweeter, but you could probably do it passively and simply without too much concern and make it work.  Would need an Lpad and a couple components.

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A dash pod should give you enough air space to work with. May get some impressive stage width and depth out of it. Are you planning to add a tweeter with this ??

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I can definitely add a tweeter. I got some little dayton nd20's lying around somewhere or the slightly larger Tang Band 25-1166SJ 1".

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The ND20 will fill in the TB just fine.  Without it the sweet spot will maybe be impossible to hit in a car.

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Quick update. Started building the speaker/tweeter pods. Current internal volume available is about 56 in^3, with polyfill it would add a little bit more to that effectively. I could go larger if needed. You lose quite a bit of volume to wall thickness with the pvc pipe. 

The tweeter pods were designed in fusion 360 and printed on my CR-10. 

BdrnI8Z.jpg

4xbP1cG.jpg

GfrID49.png

Edited by lithium

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One of my dayton ND20's has a damaged cone so I'll probably use these guys for now. The tweeter dome kind of dried up.... not sure if you can fix that. 

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Cool...and you made me look at printers.  $350?  I want!

Not sure what you mean by dried up.  

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I think I paid less than 300 on the cr-10 but I had to spend more to put in new fans and isolating/dampening mounts on the x and y motors. It was too loud to operate in my 1 bed room apt otherwise. I plan to print some of the parts for these pods in abs later this year. But I will likely have to make some modifications to the printer to print in abs. Most ppl build an enclosure around the printer to keep temps higher I believe. I went back and forth between the cr-10 and the prusa i3 mk2 when I was shopping for printers. 

 

Not quite sure what happened to the nd20. The dome is hard/brittle to the touch. Perhaps it was exposed to some chemical or light.. it slightly discolored as well

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Quick update. I made a holder for a cheap laser pointer. The laser isn't pointed straight so in practice you have to rotate the laser pointer in the holder, this makes a circle on the object your aiming it at so you can estimate the center point. Not ideal but it works. 

Qkhxfrp.jpg

Ecq6lTD.png

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Attaching these suckers to the A pillar will be tough. I think I'll try to use some metal washers epoxy to reinforce the A pillar trim. I may end up attaching it the pillar itself.. not sure yet. 

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5 hours ago, lithium said:

Quick update. I made a holder for a cheap laser pointer. The laser isn't pointed straight so in practice you have to rotate the laser pointer in the holder, this makes a circle on the object your aiming it at so you can estimate the center point. Not ideal but it works. 

Qkhxfrp.jpg

Ecq6lTD.png

Sweet idea bro 

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Love seeing builds come together!!

 

Hope you don't mind me posting pics in your build.

I did the PVC cups also. These are the adjustable Ram mounts I used. Excellent for fine tuning the aim! They are available in a ton of different sizes and lengths. Possibly worth checking out.

raam.jpg ram.jpgraaam.jpgrammm.jpg

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Those mounts look sweet. thanks for the suggestion! 

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9 minutes ago, lithium said:

Those mounts look sweet. thanks for the suggestion! 

I trolled eBay and got them on the cheap. Very stout and don’t move.

Keep up the awesome work!!

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