durwood

in 2002-2004 I competed in SLAP around Illinois. But after the 2004 season, something happened (probably not any support from sponsers) and it died. I think SLAP still ives on in New England area, but this hobby is dying a slow death. I think it's just a rebuilding year. I was going to compete in the MECA org but missed out last year when there was shws almost every weekend. This year there are a total of 4 shows in IL, one of which I missed already. I might head out of state for two shows just for fun, but other than that I am sticking to IL. There will be one IASCA show in Aug here in Chicago too that is part of a NOPI event.

www.mecacaraudio.com
www.usaci.org
www.iasca.com

for anyone interested in competing in SQ

__________________

MP3Car.com

 

Dennis5587

btw I just wanna say your worklog has been helping me out, since I drive a Mazda 3, there are a lot of similarities for certain things, such as inside the door. I started to take it apart yestereday and knew that the window had to come out, and how it was going to look before I took it apart.

Looking over your worklog helped me realize what I was getting myself into, before I got myself into it

__________________

durwood

Awesome. Just be careful, the one thing I forgot to mention was that I broke two very important pieces on my door handle when removing the piece to get all the way inside the door. I had to get creative and I fixed it with some zip-ties.

__________________

durwood

I did this a while ago but decided to update it finally. I wanted to remove the factory sub so my trunk could breath in some of the nice AC for the computer.





Note the airbags.



I didn't go crazy with the deadening, just enough to lower the resonance of the panel and give it more mass. The was some pretty good padding on the cover panel as shown. Note how I didn't cover up the holes where the panel slides back into, it's no fun having to fight with it to get it to go back on.

I didn't take a picture, but the hardrive is now mounted beneath the factory sub opening. It was getting too hot and I had to do this for cooling reasons. There is also a large 120mm fan mounted above the drive and connected between the 12 and 5v lines to power it and have it still be fairly quiet.

__________________

durwood

Ok time for some more updates on things I was doing the last two weeks. I needed to build new tweeter pods since my new LPG tweeters were a tad larger than my vifas.

First I took out an old template I had from last time I did it. I had made one out of cardboard by tracing the outline of the factory sail tweeter pod.



Then I traced it onto MDF. I just flipped it over to make mirror image for the other side.



Then I checked to make sure it fit properly and adjusted by sanding down if it was too large.

__________________

durwood

Next I needed to construct a ring for the tweeter mount. I found 2"PVC pipe worked perfect. There are other ways to do this with wood and a hole saw, but I preferred this method.

So I cut the size of ring I needed with a miter saw.




Then I figured out how I wanted them aimed. I have done this before so I know optimal aiming for my application. I have to avoid aiming them anywhere near the gage hump or I get some reflections that mess with my soundstage.



With a little hot glue, I attach the ring in the position I need.



Then I reinforce the ring with a piece of metal backstrap. Making sure the mounting holes line up for later.

__________________

durwood

Finalized framework:

Note how the different sides are angled differently.





Then I wraped them in grill cloth and used super glue with accelerator to attach the grill cloth around the frame. I used grill cloth because it stretchs in any direction very easily and I really don't need massive strength with these. It's only a tweeter pod.

__________________

durwood

Then came the body filler and sanding. I didn't take many pictures of this, but there was plenty of sanding, adding more filler, more sanding, etc.

__________________

MP3Car.com

 

durwood

Then after they were sanded nice a smooth, I hit them with some filler primer, sanded a little more with 600 grit, then painted then first with texture paint to make them durable and followed it up with some SEM vinyl die spray. Here are the pictures of them mounted.

__________________

durwood

Had this done for a while. Please excuse the dirty car, it's almsot never clean

Final trunk pictures

__________________

RedGTiVR6

looks good!

is that your dog in the back seat?

__________________

durwood

Thanks

LOL, I didn't even notice him. Ya Jimmy must have jumped in there when I was messing around in the garage. He doesn't like it when I leave so he jumps in the car whenever he thinks I'm leaving.

__________________

scott_fx

i love the techy/future look of your amp rack (the heatsinks and the barbones pcboard).

__________________
New System in progress:
M10k
Phaze TD1500 ~> Dynaudio MD130
Phaze TD1500 ~> Seas g18rnx/p
Zapco Ref 500.1 ~ 12" tc-9
Behringer DCX2496 ~ Envision Electronics psu
Transflective Xenarc

My Car Pc Install

Dennis5587

looks good

__________________

durwood

Cool thanks! When people see it they aren't quite sure what they are looking at. Most of what you see in the computer is the soundcard folded over the motherboard. I'm glad audiotrak gave it a geeky sort of industrial look high end look too. The combine that with super old amps some people can't recognize and its future meets oldschool.


Your is coming along too. Sad to hear your troubles with your amp but at least you got the behringer piece to play with.

Update:

I FINALLY stopped being scared and switched over to all software audio processing using the ASIO method.I was having problems with my H701 acting really strange on me as if the settings were drifting. In the mornings it sounded one way, and then at night it sounded completely different. I gave up and it gave me an excuse to activate my software plugins.

All I can say is WOW. I was pretty pleased with the H701 originally, but now that I have been playing with the VST plugins I'm not looking back. It's noticable better than the H701. I'm sure the soudncard analog outs have somethign to do with this as well. I had to readjust my gains to compensate for the lower output voltage, but I have ZERO noise/hiss. The only issue I have is turn on pop ( which is very bad at the moment) and volume control. Using a rotary encoder tied to a mouse controlling Roadrunners volume, it doesn't have the necessary resolution to adjust smoothly. I tired changing the voltable.ini but it acts screwy. I'm hoping somebody has an answer to this in the RR forum since I asked.

I need to get my pop fixed ASAP, but for now I'm going ot manually turn my amps on by putting a switch inline with the turn on wire, but it will still turn off ok with ignition if I forget. I'm probably going to fix it forever with the Fusion Brain as it will also resolve my factory button integration issue.

Whew! That's a lot of updates.

__________________

MP3Car.com