03-05 Honda Accord Fiberglass False Floor...WIP

What I (we) have bought so far:
* 10 square yards of chop mat (fiberglass)
* 2 gallons of resin
* 8 assorted 1"-2" CHEAP! paint brushes
* 3 fiberglass rollers
* gloves, not latex gloves, but umm (jweller help me out here please)
* acetone....keep your brushes in here while mixing resin, it keeps the resin from hardening up on your brushes.
* aluminum foil and painters tape (need better release agent here)
* wood for enclosure frame
* misc screws and t-shirt pieces

I haven't used all of my materials yet, I will cover that at the end of this post to show how much stuff we have used.

So evil_jweller and I have started to work on getting my boom back in the trunk, and so far, so good. We decided to use fiberglass since well, I bought a ****load of supplies from my tax refund, and we have never worked with the stuff before. It really isn't too hard to work with, just use a respirator, this ish stinks like all hell. Anyway, follow along, and see how things are coming.

http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass01.jpg
^^ In this pic, you can see that I emptied out the spare tire well, and trunk, layed aluminum foil, and taped it all together so resin wouldn't drip all over the place. That is about the size of chop mat we used at a time for the first 2-3 pieces, then we used smaller pieces, 4"x9". Ripping the mat seems to be better than cutting it, since the ends are more frayed. After placing a piece of chop mate where we wanted it, we just started brushing resin over it.

http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass02.jpg
^^This is what one layer of chop mat and resin looks like, nothing special, but notice we layed more glass around the edges than we really needed. We layed 2-3 layers of mat in the spare tire well total.

http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass03.jpg
^^ jweller and I found that this stuff heats up nicely while it is curing, drink beer :drunk2: and when it is hard, pull the mold out of the car and peel off tape and foil......BTW, we found that tape and foil works, but not like we expected. Base mold is out of the car, and I stood on it, it's sturdy, but it's getting more glass :D

http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass04.jpg
^^ so jweller and I quickly make a stop at Home Depot, aka, Teh Hoe Depo, and bought some wood. We picked up 16 feet of 1"x1.75"x8' to build the frame for the 'box' part of the setup.

Now what I didn't show (because I'm dumb) is the garbage bag of packaging peanuts we used to calculate volume. I want a 1.5 cubic foot sealed box for my sub. SO, since work has trash, I was able to obtain a box of packaging peanuts. Ironically enough, I got a box with exactly 1.5 cubic feet of peanuts . So I put those peanuts in a trashbag, and was able to move the 'volume' around until I got the size I was looking for. That's how I knew how big to make the frame. I ended up making it a little bigger to allow for fiberglass and resin, user calculation error, and woofer volume displacement.

http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass05.jpg
^^jweller and I decide to get SMRT, and use his saw-zaw and trim up the fiberglass blob, and drill 2 drywall screws into the top of the wood frame to hold it in. So at this point, we realized how strong fiberglass can be. I stood inside of the blob, while justin saw-zaw'd and scrwed in those screws. Cool *****in' camero.

http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass06.jpg
^^old t-shirts are great for tacking down to create various 'walls' or whatever you need to start glassing. This area where the t-shirt is, is where my capacitor, and distrobution blocks are going to be hidden. So, since they are going there, we need to glass off the rest of the box from them. Staple gun is our new friend to hold the t-shirt down. You really need to stretch it to get it to work the best.

http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass07.jpg
^^ More glassing of the frame to the blob....sub enclosure is starting to get sealed minus the top where the sub will be mounted.

http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass08.jpg
^^front area for things has been completely glassed in. Looks good for the two of use fiberglass n00bs, but we seem to be figuring things out along the way.

Next step is to do one more layer of glass on the outside of the box (not what makes physical contact with the spare tire well) and then do 3-4 more layers of glass on the inside of the sub woofer enclosure. After that, we are going to glass in a few pieces of half inch thick wood to screw the distrobution blocks and cap into. Once we are happy with all of the above, we are going to fill the ***** with water, make sure there aren't any leakes (we don't anticipate any) and then flat black the thing. After that, it's time for the MDF top with the sub recesed, and then next installment of DIY comes in. More work to be done this week, so far 2 weeks in working on this...but only about 6-8 hours of work...not including curing time.

So far, we have used 5 square yards of chop mat, and 1 gallon of resin. So far, this project has cost $100....but as an FYI, both respirators cost me $40, and shipping pnwed me....and the little things add up. I bought my glass and supplies from www.USComposites.com, very nice customer service from them.

UPDATE TIME, :woot:

So here, life goes on with the glass update......

http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass09.jpg
^^ glassed a shelf for power/ground distrobution blocks, and capacitor to sit in under the false floor

http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass10.jpg
^^ isn't it starting to look like a subwoofer box now? jweller and I visited 2 of our favorite stores saturday, BJ's and the Home Depot where we bought wings, egg rolls, cheese, triscuts, and Mobil 1, man fuel (except for the mobil 1). We then went to the HD to get two sheets of MDF, both 2' x 4' sheets, one being 3/4" and the other being 1/2". The 3/4" sheet was for the sub to sit in, and the 1/2" sheet will be used to make the tray for the amps to sit in. I screwed up in the picture taking process, but a few pics down you will see the MDF ring we cut to have the sub sit in.

http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass11.jpg
http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass12.jpg
http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass13.jpg
^^ you may or maynot notice that we did in fact counter sink the screws that hold the MDF ring that the sub will be screwed into. We have completely adopted the idea that overkill is best. The reason why we just didn't use the router and route a groove/lip for the sub to sit in because looking at my old Q-Logic box, this is how they did it, and it seemed like a good idea.

http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass14.jpg
^^ ummmm, yeah, we couldn't resist...I think this pic explains everything.

So the other things that I didn't take pics of....I bought 5 yeards of speaker box carpet, so we have that. We also did flat black the MDF, just incase there were exposed edges around where the carpet ended, the seams would all be hidden, and I love flat black.

We also are going to use the terminals from the Q-Logic box to make hooking up the speaker wire to the sub look cleaner, more on that later in the week.

So far so good, I am really enjoying this project, what do you think?

it's in the car...the box and the sub....no amps yet....probably going to figure out exactly where I am going to mount them this weekend, and start on the amp rack. I'll tell you all of the little things that have taken me it seems forever to do.

So justin and I found out that the box was leaking in the corners. At this point, I was fed up with glassing mainly because we used all of the good resin, and I had to buy 'bondo brand resin' and it sucks.

So, after doing a lot of internet research, I found that a good way to seal a box due to some leaking, you need to make a milkshake. What you do is mix a cup of resin like you usually do, add the hardner, and add just bondo (no bondo hardner) until you get the consistancy of a milkshake. You pour it all inside te box...getting into all of the nooks and crannies, and let it sit till it hardens. Justin and I were kinda nervous about it not getting hard, he he, getting hard, but it did.

So after many big cups of this milkshake, I was very confident that it would not leak, mainly because we leaked 'milkshake' all over his garage. You can see the milkshake in the sub hole.

http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass16.jpg

Then we drilled a hole (oooooh a hole) to run speaker wire, patched that up nice, and we were now ready to put the MDF lid on it. We used an entire tube of silicone to put a nice fat bead of silicone between the glassed wood frame, and the MDF. I, in a moment of clarity, decided to predrill the holes in the MDF so screwing the box in would be money, plus counter sinking them.

We let that cure for a few days since it was a little cold outside, and that came out nice. The next thing that I found out was that I needed something to provide as a filler between the box and the trunk, it wiggled a little bit. I found that Auto Stoned sells black undercoating. So I bought a can of that, and sprayed the underneath of the box so that there was a rubbery layer to reduce vibrations, and well, be black. Perfect fit now.

http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass15.jpg

To make things nicer, we ended up bondoing over all of the screw holes, so that the countersinks would not be noticed under the carpet, nice little 'extra-mile' touch.

http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass17.jpg

If you noticed in the earlier pics, we did infact make the MDF sheet able to have the sub countersunk flush with the MDF. So I needed an OVERKILL method of securing the sub to the box. So we drilled holes for screws, got some t-nuts, and put those in the bottom of the holes. (ADD moment) we next put the carpet over top, stapled it to one side, sprayed our favorite 3M super99 adheasive, let it get tackey for a minute, and stretched the carpet over the entire top, and stapled it to the other side. After that set a bit, we cut the center out, sprayed more adheasive on the countersink, and made little X's with the utility knife so the screws would fit through the hole. Now, the overkill part is I bought nice stainless steel allen head screws, and the thing that sucks, is that you can't see them, but I know they are there. So carpet is done, sub is wired and installed

http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass18.jpg

in the car....the next thing to tackle is building my amp rack, which should be less time consuming, but who knows, I doubt it.

http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass19.jpg

and yes, the sub is centered....I was at an angle when I took the last pic

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 98EXL

http://www.98exl.com/images/fibergla...berglass14.jpg
^^ ummmm, yeah, we couldn't resist...I think this pic explains everything.

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you better clean that out before you put the speaker in

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Freelander

you better clean that out before you put the speaker in

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I did...man was it messy, and stinky ;)

Awesome job so far. Can't wait for more pics. BTW I hear that your sub will hit harder and more accurate if you leave your hard work in the box :lol:

I thought about it, but I didn't want to stink the place up :D

Amazing job guys... just curious as to what type of resin/glass you used?

Epoxy? Polyester? Do you rememeber the item#'s from uscomposites?

Thanks!

That looks great!!!!! Now the one picture above (you know which one) is just a little disturbing:eek:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lowspeedchase

Amazing job guys... just curious as to what type of resin/glass you used?

Epoxy? Polyester? Do you rememeber the item#'s from uscomposites?

Thanks!

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no I don't remember off hand, but I am pretty sure that I have the reciept still, I can look for it

If you could, that would be amazing.

Thanks :D