I'm trying to put together my dream system for my dream car with this install. I'm halfway through the initial installation and there could/should be some equipment changes as funds become available. Here's my equipment list as of today:
Source: Pioneer DEH-P880PRS
Source Integration: PAC RP4-CH11
Frontstage Speakers: Dynaudio Esotec System 362
Frontstage Amplifier: Zed Audio Leviathan III
Substage Subwoofers: 2 x Infinity Kappa Perfect 10.1s run Infinite Baffle
Substage Amplifier: Hifonics BXi 1610D
Acoustic Treatment: RAAMmat BXT II bulk pack and 4 x Luxury Liner Pro sheets
Signal Wires: Knukonceptz Krystal Kable (4 meter 4 Channel, 4 meter 2 Channel, and 1/2 meter 2 Channel)
Wiring: ~140 feet of 12 gauge (100 foot spool of DIYMA, ~40 feet of TCA from Knu, ~20 feet of various brands of 0 gauge (probably 4 different brands))
Power Distribution: Knukonceptz KonFUSED digital power and ground blocks
Plus a bunch of hardware and other assorted odds and ends from Home Depot.
So to begin with my substage isn't up to par with the rest of the equipment, and the deck is on it's last leg. These subs are pretty good SQ subs and they're infinite baffle capable, so I went ahead and installed them from my truck. I'll probably end up with a pair of IB 15s and a higher quality sub amp to power them, but those are on the back burner for now.
The head unit is great, but it doesn't have the processing power to run a 4 way active system, plus I've patched it together on numerous occasions. To start, the picofuse blew in the preamp outputs so I had to solder bypass it. The faceplate motor is off it's programming so it gets bouncy and noisy with me when it's used. It's been like that for a couple of years now so it's only a matter of time until it burns out. The CD mechanism got misaligned so I had to purchase a new one from Pioneer and replace it. Some of the springs wore out and a CD went in funny leading to it not accepting CDs. When I opened it up the rest of the springs got stretched and it was just a big mess. I bought a new CD mechanism to install. During these multiple openings and repairs one of the ribbon cables got torn a little bit, so I had to replace it. Replacing that meant replacing the faceplate attachment too. That was some of the smallest soldering jobs I've done, but it's working. So it's a seasoned veteran that I need to put out to pasture. If anyone has questions about repairing head units I've got a little bit of experience with that thanks to this unit.
The new 80prs doesn't have an IP-Bus or HD radio, so my HD radio would be gone if I swapped it in. Throw in the lack of 4 way processing and the double DIN slot I have available to me, and I'm in the market for a new source/processor combo. I've been shopping around, but nothing looks particularly appealing right now. I'm waiting on the 2013 models to roll out at CES before I pull the trigger on anything. Maybe I'll find a flagship double DIN with nav and 4 way processing, but I'm not holding my breathe. I might be left with a carputer, but there are plenty of hurdles with that route that I've only scratched the surface on. I don't find too many people running a high level SQ system off a carPC, and those that do seem to have a lot of constant headaches. With the newer cars there are a lot of other integration issues. If anyone out there on Challengertalk is keen on carputers I'd love to pick their brain on their install.
So I started with the head unit since that was the easiest and I already had the equipment in hand. I had to buy a PAC harness. A quick check on Crutchfield and PAC's website directed me to the RP4-CY11. It allows you to keep steering wheel controls with most aftermarket head units, including my 880prs with a little 3.5 mm jack plug in. I also bought the Metra single DIN adapter bracket for the bezel. It comes with a little pocket which is nice. I'm a smoker and didn't have any great places to put my smokes. The center console holds other assorted junk. The PAC has worked pretty well. I had a weird incident the other night, but my system was barely playing midbass at the time and I'd been fooling around in the dash. Some of the buttons weren't behaving themselves so the brand selector on the PAC was probably to blame. Or my head unit might have been gasping one of it's dying breathes. All's well since that incident though. Here's some process pics of the dash area:
Bezel removed looking at the HVAC control and heated seat button plugs:
The back of the bezel:
All installed and testing:
No flash:
Here are some MS Paint drawings I did to illustrate this integration process for others:
Those apply to the Sound Group I and above systems with factory amplifiers. The connections are a little simpler on the lowest level audio (base 4 speaker) since you can keep fader control on that setup. So white goes to white, gray to gray, green to green, and purple to purple. Just match the colors.
So later that week I started tackling the substage install. My goal with this trunk setup is to keep enough room to hold two sets of golf clubs, keep the spare tire accessible, and be able to put my backpack, tools, and other assorted equipment back there without scratching up my install. The trunk on the Challenger is class leading. There's enough room to hit my goals, but it needed a bit of planning. I started by taking measurements at limiting points. It's all going behind the spare tire access hinge point just barely. My current amps were just a little bit too wide to put side by side. They'd fit, but wiring wouldn't. So I came up with the idea of putting them back to back on a common mounting board. The amp rack portion of the box turned into a little amp cabinet. Here's some MS Paint sketches I did in the planning phase:
The pictures are probably easier to understand than explaining it in words. The face of the amps are hinged so I can swing them out and make adjustments to gain, EQ, filtering, etc. as necessary. This is important with my current deck handling the processing. My plan is to run the subs on the deck's low channel, the midbasses on the mid channel, and the midranges/tweeters share the high channel. That means handling the lowpass for the midranges and highpass for the tweeters on the Zed. It's still technically being run active, but it's not ideal because I don't have tweaking control on that crossover point without getting into the trunk with a tiny flathead. It's also limited to a 24 db linkwitz riley rolloff because that's what the Zed has onboard. This might cause a blending issue, or at least not allow me any flexibility to play with it. It also means I've got a full 360 phase flip on the midrange so I won't have any way to fix that for now. I just realized that while writing this, and that's probably going to mess wth my imaging until I get a processor to fix that. Bummer.
So I started putting the box together with 3/4" MDF. I had it already and it's easier to do math with than 5/8".
Rough assembly:
On the left side in this picture you can see the beginnings of the amp cabinet door:
Front of the door:
Wire holes. I ended up needing to cut 2 more, and may still need another. I woefully underestimated the amount of wiring involved:
The trunk of the Challenger slopes downward toward the back. To level the box so it wouldn't look goofy, I put spacers on the front edge. This worked nicely because I could snake my wires from the bottom:
Because this box is "Infinite Baffle-ish", the seems aren't quite as important. If I were building a sealed or ported box here I'd be reinforcing the corners with fiberglass. In this case it would just be extra weight, time, and effort.
So I started laying down a basic coat of black so that anything showing through the front wouldn't stand out so much. It's just a rattle can of regular black I had in the garage:
Again this isn't the finish on the box. It's just so the light color of the MDF doesn't draw attention.
Next I worked on the trunk's beauty panel. I'll preface these by saying I'm not very happy with this in it's current form. If I add a processor I'll need to redo a lot of this anyway, so it's a work in progress:
I also tried to match the finishing fabric to my Toxic Orange exterior. It was about as good as I could find at my local fabric store, but it's a knitting and sewing fabric store. There's not a lot of automotive materials available there.
I also applied some 1/2" foam to them to give it a bit of protection from trunk debris. I think 1/2" is a little too thick for this application, even crushed down pretty tight and stapled. Before applying the fabric I had to go ahead and mount the Zed. The board it sits on is screwed into the front of the cabinet (the hinged part). The order of assembly was important here. Since I'm pretty proud of my Zed, I wanted to showcase it. I'm studying to be an electrical engineer and since the Leviathan III has a plexi top showing the guts, I thought it was cool.
It's a full range class D amp, so it runs very efficient and cool. All the same I put a little vent in the top and bottom so the heatsinks are more exposed. At it's limits it's rated for 1800 watts RMS (300x6 at 2 ohms). Assuming around 90% efficiency that's up to about 180 watts of heat generated at any given moment, and another class D shares this same piece of MDF.
Here's a shot from the top showing some of the wire routing:
Source: Pioneer DEH-P880PRS
Source Integration: PAC RP4-CH11
Frontstage Speakers: Dynaudio Esotec System 362
Frontstage Amplifier: Zed Audio Leviathan III
Substage Subwoofers: 2 x Infinity Kappa Perfect 10.1s run Infinite Baffle
Substage Amplifier: Hifonics BXi 1610D
Acoustic Treatment: RAAMmat BXT II bulk pack and 4 x Luxury Liner Pro sheets
Signal Wires: Knukonceptz Krystal Kable (4 meter 4 Channel, 4 meter 2 Channel, and 1/2 meter 2 Channel)
Wiring: ~140 feet of 12 gauge (100 foot spool of DIYMA, ~40 feet of TCA from Knu, ~20 feet of various brands of 0 gauge (probably 4 different brands))
Power Distribution: Knukonceptz KonFUSED digital power and ground blocks
Plus a bunch of hardware and other assorted odds and ends from Home Depot.
So to begin with my substage isn't up to par with the rest of the equipment, and the deck is on it's last leg. These subs are pretty good SQ subs and they're infinite baffle capable, so I went ahead and installed them from my truck. I'll probably end up with a pair of IB 15s and a higher quality sub amp to power them, but those are on the back burner for now.
The head unit is great, but it doesn't have the processing power to run a 4 way active system, plus I've patched it together on numerous occasions. To start, the picofuse blew in the preamp outputs so I had to solder bypass it. The faceplate motor is off it's programming so it gets bouncy and noisy with me when it's used. It's been like that for a couple of years now so it's only a matter of time until it burns out. The CD mechanism got misaligned so I had to purchase a new one from Pioneer and replace it. Some of the springs wore out and a CD went in funny leading to it not accepting CDs. When I opened it up the rest of the springs got stretched and it was just a big mess. I bought a new CD mechanism to install. During these multiple openings and repairs one of the ribbon cables got torn a little bit, so I had to replace it. Replacing that meant replacing the faceplate attachment too. That was some of the smallest soldering jobs I've done, but it's working. So it's a seasoned veteran that I need to put out to pasture. If anyone has questions about repairing head units I've got a little bit of experience with that thanks to this unit.
The new 80prs doesn't have an IP-Bus or HD radio, so my HD radio would be gone if I swapped it in. Throw in the lack of 4 way processing and the double DIN slot I have available to me, and I'm in the market for a new source/processor combo. I've been shopping around, but nothing looks particularly appealing right now. I'm waiting on the 2013 models to roll out at CES before I pull the trigger on anything. Maybe I'll find a flagship double DIN with nav and 4 way processing, but I'm not holding my breathe. I might be left with a carputer, but there are plenty of hurdles with that route that I've only scratched the surface on. I don't find too many people running a high level SQ system off a carPC, and those that do seem to have a lot of constant headaches. With the newer cars there are a lot of other integration issues. If anyone out there on Challengertalk is keen on carputers I'd love to pick their brain on their install.
So I started with the head unit since that was the easiest and I already had the equipment in hand. I had to buy a PAC harness. A quick check on Crutchfield and PAC's website directed me to the RP4-CY11. It allows you to keep steering wheel controls with most aftermarket head units, including my 880prs with a little 3.5 mm jack plug in. I also bought the Metra single DIN adapter bracket for the bezel. It comes with a little pocket which is nice. I'm a smoker and didn't have any great places to put my smokes. The center console holds other assorted junk. The PAC has worked pretty well. I had a weird incident the other night, but my system was barely playing midbass at the time and I'd been fooling around in the dash. Some of the buttons weren't behaving themselves so the brand selector on the PAC was probably to blame. Or my head unit might have been gasping one of it's dying breathes. All's well since that incident though. Here's some process pics of the dash area:
Bezel removed looking at the HVAC control and heated seat button plugs:
The back of the bezel:
All installed and testing:
No flash:
Here are some MS Paint drawings I did to illustrate this integration process for others:
Those apply to the Sound Group I and above systems with factory amplifiers. The connections are a little simpler on the lowest level audio (base 4 speaker) since you can keep fader control on that setup. So white goes to white, gray to gray, green to green, and purple to purple. Just match the colors.
So later that week I started tackling the substage install. My goal with this trunk setup is to keep enough room to hold two sets of golf clubs, keep the spare tire accessible, and be able to put my backpack, tools, and other assorted equipment back there without scratching up my install. The trunk on the Challenger is class leading. There's enough room to hit my goals, but it needed a bit of planning. I started by taking measurements at limiting points. It's all going behind the spare tire access hinge point just barely. My current amps were just a little bit too wide to put side by side. They'd fit, but wiring wouldn't. So I came up with the idea of putting them back to back on a common mounting board. The amp rack portion of the box turned into a little amp cabinet. Here's some MS Paint sketches I did in the planning phase:
The pictures are probably easier to understand than explaining it in words. The face of the amps are hinged so I can swing them out and make adjustments to gain, EQ, filtering, etc. as necessary. This is important with my current deck handling the processing. My plan is to run the subs on the deck's low channel, the midbasses on the mid channel, and the midranges/tweeters share the high channel. That means handling the lowpass for the midranges and highpass for the tweeters on the Zed. It's still technically being run active, but it's not ideal because I don't have tweaking control on that crossover point without getting into the trunk with a tiny flathead. It's also limited to a 24 db linkwitz riley rolloff because that's what the Zed has onboard. This might cause a blending issue, or at least not allow me any flexibility to play with it. It also means I've got a full 360 phase flip on the midrange so I won't have any way to fix that for now. I just realized that while writing this, and that's probably going to mess wth my imaging until I get a processor to fix that. Bummer.
So I started putting the box together with 3/4" MDF. I had it already and it's easier to do math with than 5/8".
Rough assembly:
On the left side in this picture you can see the beginnings of the amp cabinet door:
Front of the door:
Wire holes. I ended up needing to cut 2 more, and may still need another. I woefully underestimated the amount of wiring involved:
The trunk of the Challenger slopes downward toward the back. To level the box so it wouldn't look goofy, I put spacers on the front edge. This worked nicely because I could snake my wires from the bottom:
Because this box is "Infinite Baffle-ish", the seems aren't quite as important. If I were building a sealed or ported box here I'd be reinforcing the corners with fiberglass. In this case it would just be extra weight, time, and effort.
So I started laying down a basic coat of black so that anything showing through the front wouldn't stand out so much. It's just a rattle can of regular black I had in the garage:
Again this isn't the finish on the box. It's just so the light color of the MDF doesn't draw attention.
Next I worked on the trunk's beauty panel. I'll preface these by saying I'm not very happy with this in it's current form. If I add a processor I'll need to redo a lot of this anyway, so it's a work in progress:
I also tried to match the finishing fabric to my Toxic Orange exterior. It was about as good as I could find at my local fabric store, but it's a knitting and sewing fabric store. There's not a lot of automotive materials available there.
I also applied some 1/2" foam to them to give it a bit of protection from trunk debris. I think 1/2" is a little too thick for this application, even crushed down pretty tight and stapled. Before applying the fabric I had to go ahead and mount the Zed. The board it sits on is screwed into the front of the cabinet (the hinged part). The order of assembly was important here. Since I'm pretty proud of my Zed, I wanted to showcase it. I'm studying to be an electrical engineer and since the Leviathan III has a plexi top showing the guts, I thought it was cool.
It's a full range class D amp, so it runs very efficient and cool. All the same I put a little vent in the top and bottom so the heatsinks are more exposed. At it's limits it's rated for 1800 watts RMS (300x6 at 2 ohms). Assuming around 90% efficiency that's up to about 180 watts of heat generated at any given moment, and another class D shares this same piece of MDF.
Here's a shot from the top showing some of the wire routing: