onebadmonte

The last of the major components is finally going in, the battery rack. I've been kind of nervous about this one. Eight batteries at 60lbs a pop are going up all at once. This is how I pulled it off in my driveway. A big thanks to my buddy Rick, who gave up quality family time, to give me his opinion on how it all should have been done and reminded me how my dad could have done this whole install with a crescent wrench and a rubber hose. Thanks. To get the battery rack up in place I came up with this contraption. It's a pair of scissor style transmission jacks from harbor freight with a board bolted a top of them. The board came from an old entertainment center I trashed. Recycling FTW! Here is the fully assembled battery rack on my custom one-off lift. I lucked out that the Suburban was tall enough to allow me to roll the rack in place. Against all odds and reason the lift worked. I used some extra scissor jacks to level out the rack as I got it closer in place since the driveway slanted down at a funny angle. A couple of shots of the final connections. Here are some shots of the rack in place. I took these the following morning since my camera batteries decided to take the night off the previous evening. That's it. It's all wired up and ready for the smoke test. Stay tuned for the follow up.

Thanks. Keeping all the seats was one of my goals. Applying for a bus permit in the state of Maryland was just spur of the moment. :OP Bwahahahah! Funny guy right here ^^^^ He'll be performing through out this thread. :OP Thanks bro. I appreciate you hanging in here till the end. I can't believe I'm almost done. With the install portion that is. I've still got to test, tune and fix anything that got effed up during installation.

Moar progress! I got some coil spacers to level the Suburban out with the added weight in the rear. Big thanks to Sir Lancelot for turning me on the these. Now if only he was around to help me put these in. Boy, were these a bish to get in. Made me feel like an amateur installing these spacers. I lifted one side of the axle and used a coil compressor to get the coil out. I wasn't able to compress the coil enough to get the spacer in. I guess I should have eaten my Wheaties before tackling this job. I resorted to using my uber cheesy orange HF press to compress the coil just enough to the coil and the spacer in place. Here is a shot of the spacers in place. Before getting the spacers in place the rear of the Suburban measured 37" to the top center of the rear wheel opening. The front measured 36" With the spacers in place and the Suburban weighted down the rear now measures 38" and the front measured 37". Weird, but it is what it is I guess. Any ways, check these next pics. Yep, that's three rows of seats. With the front bench, this bad boy seats 9. In Maryland this could be considered a bus. Still need to make all the connections to the amp. Last step get the battery rack in place and fire it all up. Cant wait.

Thanks, finally getting there. Thanks. I took a little bit of searching to find the connectors at a price I felt comfortable paying. Lots of places were willing to sell them to me but at a price that I thought was ridiculous. I'm happy with the way it turned out. Bwahaha! I know. I've been eyeing some wheels in the 4wheel parts catalog, just don't tell momma I'm looking. :|

No, you said pics at the end of the week or ban. Congrats on the new forgings and for forging through in this new direction. I can imagine is been a tough journey. Pun intended.

Meh. :\ Just kidding. Impressive score. A force to be reckoned with.

We're on a roll tonight. This is it fellas, I'm buttoning things up. Staring at the front, working towards the rear. Up first, everything under the hood. Lets start off with some shots of the alts. Hey everybody, it's the creampuff making a cameo appearance. Here is a shot of the power cables to the firewall if you were 9ft tall. Close up of the fuse holder, holder. A straight shot following the cables into the firewall. Side shot of the fuses. I also got the inner wheel well in place. Here is how the grounds look. Stealthy, as intended. Here is looking up from the ground at the grounds. :\ That's it for tonight.

Moar updates. I got a chance to work all weekend on this bish, and I'm still not done. Any ways, on today's installment of the never ending build I worked on an alternator wiring harness. The quad alt bracket kit came with these plain ol' pigtails. Not bad, but I'm wanting something that will plug right into the factory harness without any cutting and splicing. After a bit of searching I found and outfit online that sold individual connectors terminals and little thing-a-ma-gigs. I ordered a few and this is what came in. If we're going to do this we're going to do it with the right tools. Check the crimp it leaves Well I though I had the right connector, turns out I didn't. The orientation tang is on the wrong side. It's okay I can use these to plug into the factory harness. I'll salvage to connectors off the pigtails to connect to the alternators. Here is a shot of the factory alternator plug. Here is the new plug on the factory harness. Interchanging between this new plug and the original alternator plug is a breeze. All it takes is a toothpick to bend down the terminal retaining tang. Then just pull out the terminal, bend up the retaining tang, then install in the original plug. Easy peazy. Here is the mating plug to the new plug. With plug-gate sorted out I opted to make the harness on the bench. Here is how everything got routed. The finished product ready for install.

Thread bump. I've got some more work done, no I'm not done yet, thanks for asking. I updated my quad alt bracket setup a bit. If you'd like to read about it I posted my updated in my quad alt bracket review thread. Here is a link in case you're interested. Quad Alt Bracket Review Now onto my build. Nothing spectacular here, just got the power cables cut and installed. I started off by taking some measurement and making notes. Got to love notes. You start off thinking proactively and taking notes. Then when it comes to going back to them, you read them and that make no sense what so ever. Well here is a shot of my chicken scratches. With measurements in hand it's time to cut some cable. Just got to find me a little room. I think I found the spot. These are going to be some long cables. Wouldn't you know it, I ran out of cable. I ended up buying some more cable at the local welding supply store. Paid a premium for cable I wasn't impressed with. Oh well, what do you do? I got a little more than what I needed, so I'm going to bundle it up on the side till I get the cable I like. That way I can use this cable for something else. Here are some shots of the cable runs. More on the way. Stay tuned.

Last I left off with was with concerns of belt fitment. Lets recap a bit. This is a shot of the belt tensioner with the factory accessory setup and belt. Here is a shot of the tensioner with quad alt bracket setup and the supplied belt. My concern is the tensioner is fully compressed. On top of that I really had to fight the belt on. With a belt this tight it's only a matter of time before the the bearings of one of the accessories goes. I am going to explore two options to remedy this situation. First, and obvious, is get a longer belt. The second option is replace the idler pulleys with smaller ones. Lets take a look at what option one yields. Option 1 Longer belt: The kit comes with a very nice Gates Belt. It has an effective diameter of 136-1/2". That's a long belt, but we need a longer one. Unfortunately this is the longest 6 rib belt Gates makes. In comes Dayco. The longest belt Dayco offered is a 137" belt, P/N 5061370 (metric p/n 6PK3480) I tried this belt on with the quad alt setup, this is what I got. Not bad. Now there is a little slack in the tensioner, not as much as stock, but better than with the original belt the quad alt setup came with. I was able to get the belt on with no drama with this longer Dayco belt. Now lets explore option 2, smaller pulleys: The quad alt bracket comes with 77mm idler pulleys. I did a little searching and found some 70mm pulleys from Dayco that would interchange with the ones the quad alt bracket came with. The Dayco P/N for the new pulley is 89144. Dayco does offer a steel version. For those interested it is P/N 89052. I opted for the plastic one because it was in stock at the time I ordered. Here is a side by side of the original pulley (steel) with the new pulley (plastic). Here is a quick measurement of the backside of the original pulley to the mounting spacer's mounting side. Here is the same measurement with the new pulley. Looks like a difference of half a millimeter, could be attributed to operator error. Here is a shot of the bracket assembly with the new idler pulleys. Here is the bracket assembly with the longer Dayco belt and the new idler pulleys. The moment of truth, where the idler lands with regards to stock. Looks like a winner? Not quite, this is what it looked like when I fired up the ol' power plant. Well hell, I slapped on the original Gates belt the kit came with and this is what I ended up with at idle So it looks as if you can go with either a longer belt or smaller pulleys but not both. Either option is better than leaving the kit as is. Stay tuned for an update after I put some miles on this kit.

The visible exterior is still stock. Once it's all done most of this will not be visible so I've got to give the small details their moment in the spotlight. Thanks.

Thanks fellas. I've been putting some work in the ol' burb, but my camera's battery decided to take a permanent vacation. I finally got a chance to pic up one of those multi-memory card reader thingies. Now I'm back in action using the wife's fancy Nikon. This time around I made a fuse holder holder for the power cables off the alternators. Nothing fancy, just a steel plate to keep everything together under the hood. Here is my steel plate drilled and ready for tapping. Three holes and twenty minutes later, FHACK!!!! Broken tap. I borrowed one of these bad mahmajamas from work. We use these in our CNC machines. 8-32 thread, spiral 3 flute design, bottoming tap for blind holes. It tapped like a dream. Using this tap really brought back the fun in doing this work. It was like a hot knife cutting through butter. It took less than five minutes to tap the rest of the holes. I love the chips this tap makes. Bummer it's $18 a tap. o_o Here is a shot of the fuse holder holder assembly. Here is where I'm thinking of placing it. Before I do I'm going to have to do something about this whachamacallit. To keep it simple I'm going to move it up and over a bit to clear the upper power cables. Here you can see the reference mark I put on the upper right mount. I traced the mounting profile onto a sheet of paper then moved the whachamacallit over to the new location lining the reference mark up with the upper right mount. With the mounting locations drawn, I marked the centers of the mounting holes. I followed up by doing my folding paper trick. This saves me time by not having to measure and remember numbers to make the part I need to make. Essentially what I do is just lay my plate on the sheet and transfer all the reference marks onto the plate. Then I just use a ruler to connect the reference marks, locating the hole centers. With the hole centers located I use a center punch to create location dimples for my hand punch. Here it is, what ever it is, relocated up and over just a smidgen. Here is a preview of what's to come. Yes it's in black and white.

Looks schwanky. I'm gonna ask a really dumb question now. Can you see the gauges behind the tinted plexi-glass during the day? It looks cool and I'm thinking about trying it in my Monte Carlo, I just want to make sure I'll be able to see the gauges during the day as well. Do you leave the lights on or something?

Sorry there are no clear cut solutions. Horns are a good idea, but it's a big price jump from the $30 tweeters Jon originally posted. Here are two alternatives that are reasonably priced. I hate to adding to the confusion but I think these might be worth a look. Vifa XT25 buyout Super Tweeter o_o Good luck with what ever you go with Jon. Keep us posted.

In b-4 lock Hint hint this thread is useless.

I relate plasma TVs to projector style televisions, they are not exactly intended for everyday viewing. Especially true when most TV station like broadcasting their respective logo and call letters all day long in the lower right section of the screen. If the intention of this TV is for late night movie watching in bed and an hours worth of local broadcast viewing every once and a while then I say go for it. I've got a plasma in my bedroom for that soul purpose. Honestly, plasma set the standard for picture quality. But if you're going to be watching more than a few hours of broadcast TV everyday I'd stick with the LCD. My LCD in the living room stays on from 5 in the evening till the late new is over all week. On the weekends it's on nearly the whole time we're home. It's never missed a beat going like this for 2 years now.

If you're going to do some custom work I would go with some of these. Faital Pro These are probably as efficient as your 8s and will play lower than any tweeter out there. The power rating is conservative but will go up as you crossover higher. I'd shoot for crossing over at 750-1k Hz. Just a little something if you want to go outside of the box.

Got a little work done today. I worked on the cabling from the battery bank to the amp. Lets start off from the battery bank to the fuse holders on the positive side. Here is a shot looking forward through the real license plate opening in the rear bumper. Looking up from the ground. Here is a shot from the amp side of the fuse holder going up and through the floor. Now lets take a look at the negative side. Here we're looking through the rear license plate opening . A shot from the ground looking up. Here is a shot of how the cables work around the body and in between the frame cross-member to get to the opening in the body floor to get to the amp. Lastly the cables through the floor and into the rear cargo area. For those wondering, the white stuff is baby powder. I cant emphasize enough how dusting the cables and grommets with it will make fishing the cables through the grommets so much easier.

Thanks. After carefully studying my Luopan, a Feng Shui compass, it's guidance revealed that this would be the best location for optimum performance. Not to mention the Kicker manual recommended having fuses with in 18" of the battery bank. On a serious note I wanted the cables to flow and have good access to the fuses if necessary.

Thanks, I just hope the battery rack doesn't end up in some parking lot after I go over a speed bump. You and me both.

I got some more work done today. I started painting some of the brackets and reinstalling them. One of the first ones to get done was the fuse holder bracket. One thing I did was put a dab of silicone on the fuse holder mounting screws. Just a little added security to prevent arcing since the bracket is mounted directly to ground. Here is a shot of the fat silicone bead I put down to seal the wiring chingadera. I also put a bead of silicone one the backside of the wiring chingadera for good measure. Here it is the wiring chingadera installed for good along with the cable grommets. I also got the grommet plate installed. This is where the wiring to the amps will pass through. With the grommet plate installed. I could now look at where the wiring from the battery rack is going to run to the amp. I got the rear row of the amp rack in with the batteries and buss-bars. Here is a shot of the positive side. The three bolt heads are where the cables are going to connect to. Right above them on the body I marked where the fuse holders will bolt to. The negative side is done in similar fashion. Instead of fuse holders I use some modified cable hold down brackets. Here is a shot of the evolution of the 4 cable hold down morphing into a 3 cable hold down bracket. Here is a shot of me making do with what I got. The heads of the screws I'm using to mount the fuse holders are too big to fit in the fuse holder counterbores. Since I don't have a lathe at home I used the next best thing, a cheap drill press and a file. If you dare try this yourself careful not the hit the drill chuck with the file. The last thing you want is to kick back the file into the palm of your hand. Here are a couple of shots of the installed fuse holders and ground cable hold-downs. Here is a close up of the positive side with the batteries in place. And the negative side.

Pssssh! Doing it once is all fine and dandy, the real test will come when I park my Yukon in his driveway and see if he can do it again. o_o I guess it time to nut up or shut up. Thanks.

I'd say the port. The thread I linked describes the vehicle as a semi-bandpass enclosure with the ported box firing into a quarterwave resonator. Since the output of a ported enclosure at tuning is the port, I'd say measure from the port.

Sweet a&& ride. Should be a real head turner once your done. Congrats.