altoncustomtech

I personally love the SonicElectronix website for hu's. They have terrific prices and they include the installation accessories (except for specialty stuff) for free. My vote would be for Kenwood over Pioneer but that's just my opinion. A specific model is hard to mention but as long as you can find one with the options you want that fits in your budget I don't see how you can go wrong.

to the forum! Not a better place anywhere on the interwebz to learn and live car audio.

It's refreshing to see someone looking at a more modest setup. I think a good pair of 8's would do you very well and there's nothing really wrong with DD except maybe the prices. $225 for a custom built box sounds spot on to me. It's hard to get a quality built custom enclosure for much less without building it yourself. Do you know if the enclosure they're quoting is sealed or ported? Either way the enclosure requirements for 10's are hardly any larger in most cases and 10's would offer more output whilst sounding great and offer more GOOD options than you'll find in 8's. As far as an amp goes there's no such thing as under powering a sub. That said, and IMHO I'd rather have more than enough power on tap than needed and have the headroom rather than have too little. So sure the M1c might be a bit much but if it fits in your budget it's the direction I would go if I were in your shoes.

Yes you need a photobucket account, but it is free so that shouldn't be a big deal. Also, ALL that stuff isn't wrong all at once or it wouldn't be working in any respect. What we've asked about are all things that can attribute to or be the sole cause of your issue depending on which it is. At any rate it goes to prove that so many people, especially those that are new to the hobby, don't realize just how complex and complicated the relationship of all the different parts that go into a stereo system and how they work can really be. A lot of people just assume that you just buy the stuff off the shelf at the store, hook it up so that it powers up and it's all going to work right and that's rarely if ever the case. Sure, it might power up and make sound but there's a big difference between just working to make sound and working RIGHT.

You have to understand that we've seen hundreds of threads just like this, where the person absolutely swears everything is right and they know it as gospel, only to find out they were wrong. We push people, and we push hard, to go through and check, recheck, and recheck again because it can be so easy to miss a detail that seems small and insignificant that's actually the key to the entire issue. You've not given us any details when we've asked for them, only assured us that everything is good. Trust me when I say that we take nothing for granted and mean no disrespect but until we have all those details and can verify they're correct we're not going to just assume they are. We need the facts to verify they're indeed fact in order to help.

to the forum and the hobby!

Okay, as promised here's some more pictures. Got one of the where the liner belongs in the block after it was all cleaned up. A few of a co-worker, we'll call him Bill because that's his name, greasing the hole so it's ready for the liner to slide in nice and smooth. Then I got some of the oil filter housing, without and with new filters inside. The last two pictures are of one half of the connecting rod bearing that we also replaced while doing this. Here's the block and Bill. Here's some of the filter housing before and after filters were installed. And here's the lower (cap side) half of the connecting rod bearing.

The enclosure looks killer. Take it from someone who knows just how hard it is to finish an enclosure in paint and make it look decent when it's all done.

Here's some more pictures of the engine parts. We had coolant leak into the oil in the engine. Upon making some inspections we found where some coolant looked as though it had leaked around one of the engine liners and caused our issue. This week we tore into the engine to repair the issue. What we found was a crack in the liner where one of the O-Rings that seals it inside the block goes around it. I got some pictures today of the piston and liner outside of the engine and I'll post a few up of the signs we found that showed us we had an issue with this particular liner (#5 cylinder) and then I'll get some pictures up of some other interesting stuff like the oil filter system for these engines and the 96 filters it holds inside the filter housing. Here's the evidence we found of the coolant leak inside the engine a couple of weeks ago. You can see the greenish-yellow staining around the bottom of the liner and rust on the bottom of the piston skirt. Here's the old liner out of the engine block. In the last couple of pictures you can make out the crack that was the source of our coolant leak issue. Here's a few of the piston and connecting rod from out of the engine and the new liner behind it. Here's some shots of the engine block where the liner came out of. You'll notice just how nasty it got inside there around the liner thanks to that coolant leak. Tomorrow one lucky member of our team will be climbing down inside, standing on the crank and cleaning all that mess up. I'll try to get some pictures of that as well. So there's some neat stuff not seen by the average person. Let me know of there's any other aspect of the engines, plant, etc. you'd like to see.

How do you know the enclosure is to spec? Have you measured it and done all the calculations? Is the SSF (subsonic filter) set correctly on the amp? Just because the shop "says" the box is to spec doesn't mean that it is. As a matter of fact some shops will seldom build a custom enclosure to the specs a person asks for because it's a lot of trouble. They just kind of build it close and call it good from most I've seen. If they didn't build you a custom enclosure and it's in a pre-fab I can almost guarantee it's nowhere near the right specs. On top of that if the SSF isn't set right and you're playing it below tuning (which is very easy in a pre-fab enclosure as most are tuned above 40hz) the sub could be unloading and causing that noise in that case.

If the voltage at the amps terminals is dropping badly then it's a connection issue. Bad ground, bad fuse connection, loose connections, and the list goes on. There's a bunch of things that can be wrong that can cause problems. What about the enclosure? If the sub is in the wrong enclosure you could be hearing the sub under mechanical stress and it have nothing to do with amp itself. It could also be an issue with the signal source clipping before it even goes into the amp. There's a ton of things that can cause issues like this. Knowing HOW it all works, interacts and what the issues can be and what causes them is absolutely necessary if you're going to be running a high powered system IMO. There's too many things that can go wrong and either cause these sorts of problems, or destroy equipment, or even worse take the vehicle with it.

Have you measured the voltage at the amp's power terminals while it was giving you an issue? I'm not particularly fond of Hifonics either, but considering the amount of overhead you have over the rated power of the sub you should easily run into limits on the sub before the limits of the amp. What makes you think it's clipping? Measuring the voltage at the amp's terminals will show you for certain if it's a connection problem or not. When troubleshooting an issue like this one seems to be just monitoring voltage at the batteries isn't enough.

Use the calculator to calculate what the tuning would be with the different length scenarios you're talking about. You're not really going to hear any difference if the tuning is off one hertz or so. I mean, unless it's a competition box that you're trying to nail the tuning to one exact frequency to match cabin gain or something to get every single dB out of it you can it's not going to hurt anything to be just a tad off. Ears aren't going to be able to tell the difference between a 31hz tune and a 30hz tune, especially at high output levels. As long as it's close just go with it. It's also possible, especially if space allows, to plan the enclosure a little on the large side with slightly lower than desired tuning, then just add bracing and/or filler blocks to get the desired airspace/tuning. FWIW

I think what the OP is getting at is that his port runs right up to the back of the enclosure. At the current length he's long when measured down the center of the port, including the bend the air has to make at the back of the enclosure which is part of the path. I think what his problem is that if he reduces the port length an inch to theoretically take bring it from the back and take the bend out of the equation that he's coming up too short. Is that close to the issue?

Happy Birthday Aaron!

You can't get anywhere near the potential of the amplifiers (unless they are small in power). Once the current capability is exceeded the voltage will drop drastically. Whether or not it would hurt anything depends on a lot of factors, but if it's only for testing and such it shouldn't be an issue.

Great minds think alike? lol Got the boys Wolfenstein to play, installing it now. Hopefully I can keep up with them on that one too, but that's a typical weekend for us. Next time we go playing on the fourwheeler I'll grab some pictures of where we ride at around here. As Porkchop can attest to, we live out in the middle of nowhere. It's a short ride in any direction to a place to ride, including quite a few acres of family property right behind the house. There's a river about a ten minute ride away with lots of places to ride in the river bottoms all along it. There's also a couple of state riding areas a short haul from here as well so there's plenty if riding to be had around here.

Thank you again guys. Have had a decent day so far. Beat the kids on CoD Black Ops II Zombies this morning, took a hell of a good ride around the area on the fourwheeler with my wife, and now I'm grillin' out some steaks for my birthday dinner. All in all a good one.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes brothers.

LOL, close, 1997 actually. There's no such thing as too old, Alma Gates proved that. Hell no, no one around here knows of SQ/AQ, Fi, Sundown, SSA, DSS, AA, or any other great and reputable brand that everyone else in the country knows about but these backwater rednecks, lol. I'd love to check out your HDC sometime. I got to hear one a few years ago at the VU car show and it wasn't bad at all. Maybe I can show you what the Q's can do as well.

Vincennes?!! Awesome! I'm from Monroe City and Vinny, even graduated from LHS about a lifetime ago. It's great to finally get a REAL local member on here!

My only experience was with one that had one of the capacitors break off. I bought it from the guy that happened to, repaired it and sold it to Porkchop. Dunno if he's still using it or not but it seemed like a solid amp. On a side note, where are you at in southern Indiana?

I can say that I'm interested in that 2 channel, but don't have the funds to spare for it at the moment.

WOW!!??!!?? Had NO idea that was going on. Sure hope there's not any other surprises. Was really wanting and figuring it to be a great deal on the car with little to no real work needing done to it to do what you wanted to with it.

to the forum!