altoncustomtech

Why plywood? Get a bunch of cardboard from wally world or some place like it. Much easier to mock the external dimensions of the box up with the cardboard than it is plywood, not to mention it's cheaper too. I do highly agree though that if the fit is that questionable that you should definitely mock it up first and be sure it's going to fit!

You'd probably be very surprised. I currently have the HU running an active setup with 3" full range drivers on the dash, 6.5" dedicated midbass in the doors and the sub in the rear. Band 1 is set to 40hz and is down -6dB and Band 2 is set to 125hz and is down -2dB and the rest of the bands are flat. I have it set that way to keep the bass/midbass from the 6.5's super clean.

Thanks man.

If the design from that place doesn't work out there's a vendor or two on this site that does great work and they're familiar with the subs too. They can probably get you hooked up without a problem. I have a pair of 12" Fi Q's in my wife's van that have been the absolute best purchase in audio I've made in a long time. That install has been running strong for three and a half years now and the subs sound every bit as strong and detailed as they did from the beginning. I had never before had anything perform so well and take the abuse my wife has given these last so good. I fully expect the XCON in my Jimmy to give the same long service as well. The BL will be a great sub for you and I know how frustrating tight fits can be, lol.

They're a very small company. There's only a handful of people who work there and even fewer of them who actually answer the emails. Sometimes it takes them awhile to get back with answers to questions, especially with the volume of emails they get on a daily basis. Not that they don't think every customer is important but in the realm of things an email of that nature might not register high on the scale of importance to get back to quickly. Sometimes even with an issue or very important question it can take time and several emails to get a response mainly due to just how busy they are. People complain a lot about it but the way they're setup to do business is how they can offer such awesome drivers for such fantastic prices. Keep in mind they also OEM drivers for quite a few companies and do some industrial related stuff as well so they have a lot more on their plate than just the Fi brand stuff to keep up with. Don't get discouraged, the slow email response in no way reflects on the quality of the products!!

to the forum! You should love that BL!

I don't want to come across disrespectful, and will say up front I know absolutely nothing about C2 Audio. It's just my opinion but they look like a Sundown clone to me or basically another company that ordered a load of subs from a Chinese build house. On top of that a 4" coil with a 1500wrms rating seems like a waste. I personally wouldn't buy them but again this is just my opinion. So yeah, they look cool but I've seen several just like them.

More updates! I was able to get the power wire ran and the passenger side put back together, the rear deck deadened, then covered in CCF, the top baffles made and installed, the amp rack/bottom baffle made and installed, the Dayton's installed and the back half of the car all put back together here before the end of the day. It's not the prettiest job in the world but it should serve it's purpose quite well. Onto the pictures. Here's the rear deck as it was when I found it without the crappy Hifonics Zeus components in it anymore. Since the factory deadener was still well attached I went ahead with covering it at the mounting holes with some old RaamMat BXT I still have a roll of. I covered that with some IUO peal n stick CCF that's just as old as the roll of BXT that I had lying around as well. It's not the greatest stuff in the world but for this project it's just fine. I cut the baffles out from scrap left over from building the box for the XCON in the Jimmy. In the interest of getting this job done quick I just shot the holes out with a jigsaw and I glued and nailed them together real quick but I think they turned out pretty darn good. I test fit everything then screwed the top baffles to the rear deck from the bottom, then screwed the bottom baffle/amp rack onto the bottom of the deck. Then I went ahead and mounted the Dayton's. Just in case you're wondering about the CCF over the baffles, I did that to reduce the chance of having any rattles from the deck cover slapping the baffles. I hope one layer is enough. Finally, here's what it looks like with the back of the car all put back together again. Can't even tell all that crap is hiding under there. That's it until I get another chance to tear into it. I'll be mounting the amp, installing the HU and fabricating some way to mount the 4x6's to the door panels.

Thanks brother, it's not coming along too bad at all. Something ALWAYS gets in the way, it just typically happens at the most inopportune moment.

Another update. Got some wire ran this morning. I was able to get the speaker wires for the front doors and the RCA's ran from the front to the trunk and got the drivers side trim all put back in. I got the fuse mounted and the power wire ran from the battery through the firewall and left it with silicone sealant on the grommet to set up while I eat lunch. I find it hard to get pictures while I'm in the middle of doing work. I just get too involved, but here's some pics I got when I could and after I got some of this done.

More than most people are willing to put into it and almost definitely more than they have the knowledge to put into it. The more complicated the design/higher the order the more perfect everything has to be to get the response exactly as designed/predicted. Kind of like the difference between a sealed enclosure and a ported, or a standard ported and a band pass. You can be a good bit off on a sealed enclosure and not have any major detrimental affect on the response but you can't be anywhere near that far off on a ported enclosure. The same goes for the second comparison, let's just say for the ease of understanding that you can be up to 10% off on volume, or port length, etc. on a ported enclosure without having a seriously detrimental affect. You couldn't be anywhere near that far off with a band pass enclosure and have it's response anything like you had designed/modeled/predicted for it. That same rule applies with a 6th order, 12th order, etc. The more complicated it is the more accurate EVERYTHING has to be in order for the alignment to work as designed. It boils down to determining whether or not you really NEED that alignment and when taking KISS into consideration it hardly makes sense for the average person.

Spent a little time this weekend tearing into the car to see what I was going to be up against. The damned doors on this thing are more deceiving than I had originally anticipated. They used what looks like a 5.25" mid at the bottom of the door and a tweeter up behind the 4x6 grill. I don't think I'm going to let that deter my plans at this point and will still be building a baffle for the 4x6's to fit behind that spot in the door. I am going to make an attempt at angling them and I'll probably cut out the opening on the factory grill so that it doesn't affect the response and will cover it with regular grill cloth for a nicer looking finish. As for the 8" Daytons I'll be building a double thick 3/4" baffle to go on top of the rear deck with the baffle step cut so that the driver is recessed well below the surface of the 1.5" thickness of the baffle. On the bottom of the rear deck will be another baffle board spanning the length of the deck to add more rigidity to the deck and mounting for the Dayton's along with giving a solid surface to mount the amp to. Of course upside down isn't ideal for cooling but this amp shouldn't ever be getting ran hard enough for any real heat to become an issue. Here's some pics of what I found on the doors and of the mounting I did for the cheap and horrible sounding Hifonics Zeus components I had mentioned at the start of the thread. Here is a door without the panel on it. Sneaky bastards, lol. Here's the top of the rear deck with the baffles I had built to fit the components over the 6x9 holes. As much as I hate 6x9's a cheapo set of Pioneer 3 ways from Wal-Mart would have sounded better than these crappy components, but I used what I had on hand so I can't complain a whole lot. Last but not least a shot of the bottom of the rear deck. As mentioned before there will be a board going all the way across and the amp will be mounted to it. I'm hoping to dig into this and get some work done on it pretty soon. Now that I think I have a good game plan, some measurements will follow and the work will begin.

terrible idea, they will sound like shit. fix your current install. something is seriously screwed up if they're cutting off. I agree, ditch the "pro audio" idea as there's no way you'll ever get comparable results, IMHO anyway. The cutting off may be a result of a protection circuit in the passive crossover. The components in my van have such protection and when you're REALLY wailing on them one driver or another (typically one of the tweeters) will cut off for a moment. One or two clicks of the volume back down and everything is back to good. It's a really good thing the protection circuits are there or the wife would have popped this set a LONG time ago!

I forgot to mention, I'm processing everything right now with the internal capabilities of a Clarion CZ702 HU and I'll be running the SLS 8's with a pair of Boston GT2125 amps. I still haven't decided if I'm going to run the FR89's with the Focal Solid 2 or the Sundown 125.2 yet though.

I have to say the 3" full range plus 8" dedicated midbass driver with a proper installation should easily outperform everything you've ever used in the past OP. At this point in time I have the $13 Fountek FE85's in those old Logitech speaker boxes on the dash along with the Bravox 6.5's from the component set I had installed in the truck originally for testing. I have the XCON crossed at 50hz, the Bravox's playing 60-300hz and the Fountek's running 250hz and up as of right now with only some cut in the EQ at 40hz and 125hz to keep the Bravox's playing clean. I've never heard my music so detailed, so lively and with such even response. The FE85's may be the cheapest model Fountek makes but they are still extremely good sounding drivers. I've demoed the setup for several people including a guy who used to be an IASCA SQ judge back in the early 90's and they all give similar comments to my own. Probably the one and best way I know they're sincere is that just about every time I've demoed it to someone it was supposed to be just a quick listen. They end up finding reason after reason to listen to song after song after song and a demo that should've taken 5 or 10 minutes turns into an hour. That's with a pair of $13 drivers and some cheesy 6.5" drivers. I absolutely cannot wait to get the time to put the SLS 8's and the FR89EX's in and see what it can really do.

I was hoping to hide it for as long as possible, lol. It really is just an old beater of a car that will probably be the first car the kids drive as they get to that age. My daughter is 15, turns 16 right around Thanksgiving and will need something like this to start driving in but for now I'm driving to/from work until I get the trans replaced in the Jimmy. Here's shot of the car since you asked nicely, lol. I got a chance to start on a few things yesterday. I was only able to get a few feet of the RCA's zip-tied together and the inter coil connecting wires for the DVC's on the Dayton's soldered on but hey, progress is progress even if it is only little steps. Here's a couple pics of the wiring on the Daytons. Here's a shot of stock speaker location on the door panel. I've got to tear into it further to see exactly what I'm up against but since this is a simple build I doubt much more will be done that just reinforcing the stock mounting and tossing the speakers in. It would take more work than this level of build deserves to do anything much better for the speakers. Maybe in the future if the car ends up staying with us for a long time but right now I just can't justify it. I'll post more as it happens.

to the forum!

In there if you're interested....

Thanks man, though I don't think this build will be particularly noteworthy as it's going to be as simple as I can stand to make it. A little sound deadener, some custom baffles, and an otherwise stealth install with about the cheapest stuff I could find to meet my goals is all that's going on with this one. Eventually I may drop that 12" sub I tested awhile back in it just to get some use out of it but that will probably happen later on. I am going ahead and buying Sean's PPI S850.1 for the purpose though.

When I first started here all they had was a torque multiplier. Down right dangerous tool too. The RAD tool is like a Hydro-Torque only it runs on just air and not air over hydraulic power. That's make for one sweet subwoofer I can't imagine what a sub with 19" of stroke could possibly do, but it would be wild to see none the less!

to the forum!

WooHoo, more pics!! We found a broken head stud on on of our engines yesterday so we took that unit down and got prepared to pull the head off to get to the broken stud and work on getting the broken part of the stud out. We were fortunate enough that it wasn't as bad an ordeal to get it out as they can be and have been in the past. Usually we have to drill a hole out in the center and stick big heavy duty easy outs in and try to get them out. This time we got lucky enough to use an air chisel to drive it out. Then of all things to happen one of the guys found another one broke on another unit and using the same principal to remove this one we were able to get that one out and changed without having to shut the unit down. Anyway, here's some pics of the engine throughout this process. These are pics of the engines at the location I work at everyday. They are Turbo charged, eight cylinder, two cycle industrial recip engines rated at 2,700HP. Here's a picture of the piston crown in the liner with the head off the cylinder. It's hard to make out but this is a shot of the broken piece of the stud getting spun out by the air chisel. Here's the broken piece of the stud from out of the block. That's a 1-3/4" stud and we torque those heads down to 900 ft.lbs. Here's some down cylinder shots I took while we were inspecting the liner to make sure it was in good shape. These engines have a 17" cylinder bore and 19" of stroke. Here's some shots from the bottom end through the inspection door at the crank and connecting rod. Also a couple of the bottom of the piston. This is the tool we use to torque the heads called a RAD Tool. This tool runs on air alone and has a maximum torque of 2500ft.lbs. Well, I didn't get to work on the Olds today but I was able to snap a few pictures of the engines for you guys to look at! Hope you liked them.

It turned out not to be too horrible this time. Usually it takes a day, sometimes two to get those hardened steel studs drilled and broke loose. This one cooperated remarkably well. I got pictures uploading to the bucket now. Thanks on the compliment. It's nothing special though, just enough to be a decent bit better than what's in there now. HI CHOP!!! Long time no word!!

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to the forum!!