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My 2011 R/T Classic Build Log (LOTS of pictures)

21K views 97 replies 13 participants last post by  detroitdbzchallenger 
#1 · (Edited)
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:
 
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#2 · (Edited)
Some pictures of the hinges and clearances:





I used some cabinet hinges from Home Depot. They're much nicer than the hinges on my kitchen cabinets! When they don't have about 50 lbs on them they've got 2 locking positions. With 50 lbs the closed position helps hold the door locked against the rest of the box, but they've lost a bit of their springiness.

The power and ground distribution blocks got slapped on the side near the battery. The power and ground wire runs are still a mess, but I'm glad I haven't cut my trunk liner up yet since it looks like some of this is going to change.




Next I've got some bigger shots with the beauty panel being test fit in and out of the car:









I used some industrial velcro to hold the beauty panel to the box. It's actually a little too strong for it's own good. Since I used so much of it (can't have anything rattling around on a sub box), it's a real beast to pull the panel off. I've already pulled some of the adhesive off.





I also had some of these big chunks of foam from the scrap bin at Joanne's Fabric for the corners. The goal in an IB setup is to separate the front wave from the rear wave. I tossed these chunks in the corners to help me do that where I had some free air passageways.





It could be more sealed up, but I took care of the big issues with this stuff.

Moving around to the front you can see what the passenger's would see with the rear seats down.






I cut a front beauty panel with a nice cutout to recess the subs in. My circle drawing skills needed some work. I used a dinner plate and it's not as snug around the subs as I would have liked, but since it's all black back there (black paint and black vinyl) it's not very noticeable.





You can also see the RCA runs in those pictures. I wasn't ready to mess around with hiding the runs in the rear deck yet. I haven't fixed that, but since I'm probably redoing a lot of the substage anyway, this box might get tossed and I can do it then.

That brings me to running the RCAs. I went down the center console and I'm using the little pockets under the rear seats to hide excess wiring from the front:


I spread that out and cleaned it up a little since then. It's generally not a good idea to coil up wires that are carrying a signal. You may accidentally create a little inductance in the wires. In the case of these RCAs they're triple shielded and low voltage (relatively) so it's probably not a big deal. But once noise enters your signal you can't really get rid of it so heads up out there. That might be a good way to steal back seat passenger's loose change. Setup an electromagnet under their butts and flip it on before they get out!

So the RCAs. Getting into the center console wasn't that hard. Up front you've got to remove the shifter's surround (the shiny rectangle trim). I did this by sticking a flathead in a soft cloth, then prying up from the back (away from the dash). I'd recommend doing it that way because the prongs are on the sides. If you force it up from one side you might break the other side's prongs.




Next comes the top of the center console. This is surprisingly simple. Just take a firm hold of it back near the cup holders and their cubby hole and yank it up. Once the back is free you just work it around the sides until the whole thing is loose. Don't pull up on one side more than the others too much. You could break the front tabs. Also, there are some electrical connectors down there for the cup holder light and the 12V plug in front of the shifter. These plugs come out easy too. They're just your standard release plugs. If they've never been messed with before they might be a little stuck on there. If you need to, poke the release tabs with a soft tip (like a flathead wrapped in a towel). Try not to break any of the release tabs. They're also the thing holding the connection secure and I wouldn't want to have to replace one. Here's some pictures of that:





And a few showing how the shifter surround plugs in from the bottom:




So now that this top piece is free and since I'm running RCAs down this console I had to get the whole thing loose. There's a little more to this part, but it's still real easy. The front has 2 phillips screws. You can see the hole for one in that last picture. The back has 4 bolts hiding underneath the storage hole. Empty the storage area and pull up it's floor. It comes right out easy. Now you can see the bolts.



I want to say they were 10 mm, but I might be wrong on that. I did this part about a month ago. With those out, that's as far as I needed to take it. The console was loose, but I didn't need to remove it from the car. If I did, the shifter might have gotten in the way of that. I snaked the RCAs down from the dash and ran them through the console.



I also popped up the rear seats at that point. Again, really easy to understand, but popping them loose took a pretty strong yank. There are only 2 tabs holding the rear seat bottom down. One in each front corner about 6-10" from the ends. You can work your hand up underneath the seat bottom and then just brace your feet and give it a firm and deliberate yank upward. Try to keep your hands close to the tab. The piece is a little weak. DON'T yank from the middle. You could snap the whole thing in the center with the force required to get it up. This was to run RCAs, but could apply to other things you might be doing back here (like installing a leather seat kit). I remember breaking a sweat and googling this a lot because I didn't expect it to require that much force. Maybe it's the 6 sigma manufacturing tolerances that started in MY11.

Lastly for the RCAs there was a little bit of carpet to go from the center console to the rear seat area. Again, this was frustratingly tight. That's good from a quality standpoint, but tough for running wires. I worked them through after about 15 minutes and then gave my wrists a break. It didn't help that these are pretty bulky RCA cables.



I swear the carpet doesn't look that dirty when I'm not taking pictures for the internet. Oh yeah and don't forget to run a remote turn on wire for your amps too. That little black wire is mine.

That's enough for one post dump. I've got twice as many pictures for the sound deadening and midbass install, which I'm just wrapping up now.
 
#3 · (Edited)
Okay. The RCAs are run and the sub system is mostly installed at this point. Here's a few "finished" shots of that:












Those are some loaded quotes on finished up there. If this were the final product I'd be putting in some kind of trim around those inside edges of the fabric. I intended to, but fell out of love with this box. The beauty panel sticks out just a bit much in the back, so when the trunk light comes on you can see the crack. Fixing that would be a bit of an undertaking. Also, I didn't fully think this out in my measurement's phase, but I could have made this cabinet as wide as I wanted. I made it just barely big enough to fit the amps. As a result, the RCAs are a really tight fit and I have to jack with them when I open and close it. The interior baffle/beauty panel isn't my best work either. I've since picked up a little compass to help with circle drawing, but those aren't as easy to find as I remember.

Moving along we get to the front doors. The plan right now, and this might change, is to put the midranges and tweeters together in the A pillars. I've roughed out a template for that with paper, but it might change once I put in a little listening time for any big problems it's going to cause in my soundstage. The kick panels would be another alternative, but I'm not sure the mids will fit down there with the emergency brake. They're pretty big mids and very 3 dimensional.

Here's some pictures of the dynaudios:








Setting them up for some break-in/demo time in the spare bedroom:



Moving along, here's some stock shots of the inside of the passenger door:











In the door looking toward the door pop and locking mechanism area:




Taking the weather protector and this door's brain (passenger door module?) off to prep it for deadening:


You can see 2 patches of deadener that came with it from the factory presumably. I bought this car used a couple of months ago and did find a business card for a DFW car club that must have slipped in the window at some point. Probably a solicitation in a parking lot somewhere because I think this car used to live in Oklahoma.

Now a bunch more with more detail before I start messing with it. These sort of pictures are always really hard for me to find online, so I'm including them all for anyone that's interested in what the inside of the door looks like:


This guy seems to have something to do with the ability for the door to sense the hand on the outside and maybe the lock and unlock functions. He sets off the emergency flashers when I plug/unplug him.


Here's a repeat showing the brain when the weather protector was still on, and then one with the brain removed showing the 2 plugs:



There are 3 holes, but only 2 used for my challenger.

Speaker removed along with it's factory mounting baffle::
 
#4 · (Edited)
You can also start to see some of the deadener I applied on the inside of the exterior door skin.

More exterior skin deadener:






The exterior skins got about 70% coverage with butyl deadener from RAAMaudio. This stuff I put my full faith behind. I used an earlier blend of it in my truck and that stuff was great. This stuff seems to have had a formula tweak because it's grey butyl now and even easier to work into corners. Plus it's easier to get off my fingers. I see no reason to spend more than $100 for ~40 sq. ft of deadener with this stuff for sale. Definitely not dynamat, and not second skin either. Perfectly fine products but the retail on them is just killer. Dynamat Xtreme retails for ~$280 for this quantity. Second Skin isn't far behind that. I can't vouch for the longevity of this particular blend since the last stuff was black, but the last stuff held up great for the 5 years I had it in my truck. I was in there the day I handed the truck in removing my install and the stuff was still perfect.

Next up I had to cover over the access holes. This cleans up the midbass and gives a little more output out of the door speakers. I used some chicken wire from Home Depot as a skeleton to hold the deadener.




The important things to take note of here are the holes for the door pop arm, the lock rod up top, and the wire bundle that runs out to the lock mechanism. I'm using my passenger door for the example pictures, because on the driver side I didn't give myself an indicator for where the lock pin would end up. It's a little sticky for now with the interior panel back on for that side. I'm probably going to need to go back in there and do some cutting. It's working on both sides, but the driver side sticks.

Also, you can see the mass loading vinyl barrier (MLV) on the inside of the outer door skin back there (the black stuff behind the chicken wire). This is the Luxury Liner Pro from Second Skin. I'll stop here for some brief comments on this product. If I had it to do over, I'm not so sure I'd use Luxury Liner Pro. It's pretty expensive. I went with Second Skin because they attach a layer of closed cell foam (CCF) to it with a fusing method instead of relying on a vinyl contact adhesive to bond CCF to the MLV. I figured this would make the installation go quicker. The Luxury Liner Pro seems like a pretty good product, but it's not the easiest to work with, very heavy, and I don't think it's necessary for the challenger. I've figured that the easiest method for applying it is to trace the basic shape I'm going for by scratching the vinyl with my box cutter, then go over my lines 3 times going deeper each time. The first gives me a groove so I can really penetrate on the second pass. The third is to get through the layer of CCF on bottom to get my cut square free. It goes on by spraying headliner style adhesive to the CCF layer and the surface to bond to. You have to let it tack up about 60 seconds, but I quickly abandoned that idea. Usually I'd give it a 5 count then stick it where I wanted it. That way it was still pretty easy to slide around to get it in position before the glue got too sticky. If I went back and redid this step I'd probably just do a layer of CCF from Rick at RAAMaudio (Ensolite is the brand he sells). That stuff is a lot easier to work into curves, and wouldn't add the extra ~50 lbs. to the car. He's selling a peal and stick version now that would have probably shaved 6 hours off my install time. Second Skin sells just the CCF too (named Overkill), but it's expensive compared to RAAMaudio. Rick at RAAMaudio started selling his wares as a side job because he looked for an acoustic treatment solution and couldn't find anything other than overpriced dynamat. To this day he's the model of customer service and value. I placed my order at about 5 PM on Friday, December 14th. I honestly didn't expect to see it for at least a week with the holiday shipping. I had a tracking number in my inbox within 3 hours and it showed up the next Tuesday. For comparison, I placed an order minutes apart with Second Skin and it got processed on Monday. It showed up the next Friday. I'd already received my order from Rick and went back and forth in 5 emails about my install before I had a tracking number from SS. That was perfectly reasonable, and normally I'd even call it good order processing. No complaints with SS as a company, but you can tell who the business is and who the enthusiast is. Next time I'm going all RAAMaudio for my acoustic treatments.

Moving along I started applying deadener to the inside of the inner door skin.



The driver door was the learning process. By the time I made it to the second door I knew the pitfalls to avoid. I'm going to show a more finished product before discussing those because some of the later pictures will point out the places you don't want to block with deadener/MLV.

Here's the speaker baffle I fabbed up out of MDF wrapped in deadener.


This is a good time to talk about fitting an 8" midbass woofer in the Challenger's door. This speaker's outer diameter is 7.87". That dimension is no problem. A 10" class woofer might be a problem. The mounting depth on it is 3.07". Again, this dimension for most speakers wouldn't be a problem. The inner diameter is 6.77". This wouldn't seem like a problem, and on most 8" drivers it wouldn't be. In this Dynaudio MW172's case it was a little bit of a problem. Looking back at a previous picture here:


You can see the shape of the basket. Basically the inner diameter runs about 1-1.5" deep, then starts a gradual taper toward the bottom of the basket. My first cut baffles weren't allowing me to mount them because the bottom corners of the basket were hitting the stock 6x9 sheet metal hole. I ended up having to bring the baffle out further and further to make up for this irregular shape. When I say these things are crammed in there, I mean they don't have a millimeter of extra clearance. I didn't want the basket touching the sheet metal because that would scratch up the basket and impact my sound. You can't have the cone hitting the plastic door panel either, so it's got to be just right in this case. I managed to avoid cutting the door's inner sheet metal, but it was looking questionable for awhile.

Here's some clearance pictures of it (with a little MLV applied to the inside of the inner sheet metal):











I'm finishing up the MLV layer on the inside inner sheet metal today, but the plastic panel has been test fitted and the driver is wired and working.
 
#5 · (Edited)
Without as much explanation, here's pictures of the driver door:



Stopping right there, I'm going to point out the plastic door skin's mounting points. It's worth mentioning that I don't have a finished picture of this door at the moment that shows the rest of the MLV, but it's about 95% coverage with 5% going to the cracks around the edges of modules and wire runs.

The Challenger door is attached with multiple stages. Starting at the top left of that last picture you can see the little green circle. There are 4 green circles seen in that photo all on the upper half of the door. In the top right you can also see a white circle (white for some reason). It's the same thing. The door panel pushes into these like a lot of other parts of the interior. Looking at the leftmost green and rightmost white circles there's also a little empty circle. These are necessary for fitment plugs. Don't cover them. I've already discussed the door lock pin arm and the door popper arm (with the yellow sleeve on it). The edges are important to be mindful of too. This picture again doesn't show my final product on this door. In the top left corner you see the little rectangle cut out. I ended up having to extend this line downward to trim off an extra inch or so for the plastic panel to go back on easier. You want the plastic door trim piece to fit back on snug, but it does have to fit back on. So you've got the 5 plug in circles, 4 plastic pop rivets on the rearmost edge (left in this picture), 3 plastic pop rivets on the frontmost edge (right), 3 screws along the bottom, and 2 screws in the middle going into the little metal flanges. Here's that same picture with some circles showing the points of interest:


With the exception of the factory speaker wire plug, there are 7 plugs on the driver side and 5 on the passenger's side that need to be pulled out to deaden and then replaced before the panel goes back on.

A shot of the right side plug hole:


Here's a comparison shot between oem 6x9 and Dynaudio 8:


That slant on the oem baffle is what would stop you from doing a 10".

I decoupled the outer baffle ring from the inner baffle mount on the driver side. This was a fitment issue more than an audio thing and I may redo the driver side to get rid of that if I get some weird spikes on the Real Time Analyzer (RTA) during tuning. I found a better combination for the passenger side with 3/4", 1/2", and 1/2" MDF that let the speaker basket fit.

Here's a picture of the backside of the plastic door trim panel. I have to give it to Dodge with these Challengers. They seem to be a lot more audio friendly than my previous Dodges.

Snaking the new wire into the doors was easier on this than most. Here's what I believe is the factory amplifier hiding behind the steering wheel on the driver side.


Here's a picture of the metal sheeting I used to protect the backside of the magnets from any weather that gets into the door:


It's screwed in 4 places and deadened on the back side to create a weatherproof shield. Mind the windows if you do something similar.

Here's some interior shots I used for planning. Like some of the door shots I can never find these online, so here they are if you stumbled across this thread from google:






























Here are some quick mock ups with a little traced template for my midranges and tweeters:





That pretty much clears out my picture collection from the last month or so. There are probably a few more I didn't include, so here's a link to my photobucket album if you need more.

They'll stream in a bit more slowly going forward since I've got to actually do work before I can take pictures.
 
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#6 ·
Saving space 4
 
#8 · (Edited)
Thanks man. If anyone out there wants to know about any part of my install, ask away. I'm happy to discuss anything I'm doing at length. I might get carried away and miss something important, or something I didn't think out too well.
 
#11 ·
It's a synthetic suede yeah. I was just out picking up some supplies to start the fiberglass project. I want to do some interesting curves with it so it doesn't just look like a triangle in the corner. I'm not very experienced with fiberglass, so I'm probably biting off a bit much, but I learned some things from the first A pillar tweeters I did in my last vehicle.
 
#13 ·
Didn't really read but looks good. Hows the MLV doing? It's been on my to-do list forever but will probally never get done. Also why did you go with an IB set up and still use almost all your trunk space? My primary reason for the IB was to have all of my trunk still, other wise I think sealed would of been ideal.

Are you set on fiberglassing the pillars? Thought about kicks?
 
#14 ·
Didn't really read but looks good. Hows the MLV doing? It's been on my to-do list forever but will probally never get done.
There's a mini-review on the MLV inside that mess of pictures and text. I don't think I'd spend the money on it if I had it to do over. I went with luxury liner pro since I really wanted to do it right. The door panel still vibrates a good bit, with about 50% coverage with deadener on the plastic skin and a full treatment of deadener and MLV on the inner sheet metal. I'm using 8s that can really put out some volume though, so I don't know if there's anything I could do to fully tame it. The tunes pour out of the car still, but it's mostly the high mounted mids and tweeters.

Also why did you go with an IB set up and still use almost all your trunk space? My primary reason for the IB was to have all of my trunk still, other wise I think sealed would of been ideal.
I like the sound of IB. It's plenty of output for me and seems to stay linear a little lower than the ported or sealed boxes I've used in the past with these same subs. I could seal them up pretty easily, but I'm happy with the sound as-is. I don't do much hip-hop anymore (what happened to that genre?), so I prefer a blended level match out of the substage. They're crossed at 80 Hz in my early listening, but I've been playing with dropping it down to 63 or even 50 since these 8s are capable of going low.

Are you set on fiberglassing the pillars? Thought about kicks?
I've spent today demoing different mounting locations. The kicks weren't doing it for me. One of the problems is that I've only got a 3 way active deck and the mids/tweets are sharing the high channel off the 880. They're still actively crossed on the Leviathan, but not as easy to tweak in the trunk. I was out of room to do the mids and tweeters down there, so they'd have to be separated. That's what I demoed (mids in the kicks, tweeters on the pillars). Basically it comes down to the image, and the kick mounted mids were crap. Obviously there was a little output loss mounting them low with the center console and legs in the way. I wasn't getting any additional width on the staging. Lastly, because they're domes they stick out pretty far. Glassing them into the kicks might have been an issue with the e-brake and careless passengers. I gave them an honest shot down there for about 2 hours of listening time (spread out over 3-4 hours so my ears could rest), but like the pillar mounting better. All my demoing has been off a fresh autoEQ/autoTA for conveniences sake. I'm heading back to work tomorrow after a week of vacation time, so project time is going to slow down some. It sure would be nice to have a 4 way processor with auto tuning right now.

I think I've got a nifty pillar pod idea cooked up, but it's going to take some work. 90% of the pod installs I see don't seem to pay any attention to the aesthetics of the car. I'm going to try to have my cake and eat it too.
 
#15 ·
Drop those 8s low! I know they can play lower than mine and when I have mine set up for SQ they are at 63hz, it really brings the substage to the front of the car.

On kicks... did you try putting the midrange and tweeters higher up and more forward, like in the parking area, and closer to the glove box area on the passenger side? Basically having them hidden up in the dash. You would loose output but staging and imaging should be outstanding if you could pull it off.

Not trying to criticize, just share thoughts.
 
#17 · (Edited)
50 seemed a little too low. The door skins are already vibrating like crazy to the touch. The 8s are actually vibrating the transmission hump enough to be picked up on through jeans and socks on the reflection. It feels like I've got a speaker in the tranny hump shooting into my right leg. I've never experienced anything like it before, but I've never had a full center console car before either. If I could angle these upward toward my chest I think the midbasses might just cause heart palpitations.

I didn't move them too far forward. I put them at about the limit before losing line of sight on them. I've been laying them on some towels. The mids are pretty heavy and tend to fall over when the bass starts moving things. I never demoed with the tweeters in the kicks. What I've been cooking up is a somewhat forward facing pair of horizontal pods. The driver side would fill in the area between the cluster and the A pillar. The passenger side would sort of stick out, but not so much that it obstructs my view driving.

The output on these is just staggering. I understand what people mean when they say Dyns like power. At 30/65 you can hear it clearly from outside my closed garage, as in you can hear the lyrics of songs better than you could out of crappy speakers in your face. At 50 I got louder than I'd ever feel comfortable playing them at and zero changes in dynamics, although some panels started buzzing from the B/C pillar area. No clipping out of the Leviathan either.

I also understand the criticism of the MD102 tweeters. Compared to the midbasses and midrange they seem to sort of recede as you approach the upper end of the frequency range. As soft dome tweeters go, these sound like "some of the softest". You can sense the fabric dome waving as it plays. A slow attack and quickly rolling down decay that sort of lingers as it fades away. In EE we'd call it a shark fin waveform. It's what an inductor looks like on an o-scope with a square wave excitation. It creates a really dynamic reverb sound that adds a lot to the spacial feel, but it's an out of the ordinary tweeter sound. Really good on warm source material, but I haven't listened to much outside of acoustic and live stuff yet. This effect seems like it's at the expense of the crystally/sparkly highs of a metallic tweeter. I'd love to hear the esotar 110s for comparison because if they could capture some more of the sparkle while maintaining the spatial reverb effect they would truly be on to something. I hear that of the drivers Dynaudio puts out for automotive use going from the 102 to the 110 is the most noticeable difference. Unfortunately the esotars are like $900 per tweeter so that's probably not going to happen any time soon.

And another thing. The midranges wire hook ups are pretty poorly though out. They're on the outside of the inner diameter of the enclosed basket. The negative terminal is less than 1/4" from a screw hole and tiny compared to the midbasses or tweeters. I don't know why exactly they couldn't just run them to the back of the enclosure, except that they're apparently full of ferrofluid for damping. I'd take an extra 1/2" of mounting depth to move those terminals.
 
#18 ·
It's been a lot of time and effort over the last couple of months, and as far as I'm concerned I'm only maybe halfway there. The fiberglassing is going to take me some considerable time, and I'm still demoing different locations. 727 just gave me another idea to play with so I'm probably going to try that out. The glass job would be a lot easier. I haven't tried the tweeters in the kicks yet. I'm concerned with what folks call the rainbow stage meaning the center sounds perfect on the dash, but as you move to the sides the stage height drops down making a sort of rainbow shaped stage.
 
#19 ·
As far as mounting depth, could solder some speaker wire to the leads and bend them back? Sometime's this could get at least .5"
 
#22 ·
After looking at the leads a bit more I realized they're perfect solder lugs like I'm more familiar with on electronics components (like switches for instance). They're meant to have the leads soldered. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I'll probably solder on some wires with quick disconnects about a foot down.

Side thought... where the door panel screws in on the arm rest, did you deaden the fastening clips? That was the key cause of rattle, I just made tiny squares and put them around the clip. Also the window module rattles as well and is only held on by 3 corners and the 4th corner rattles, good place to put some deadener as well.
I'm not getting any rattles, but I am getting some resonance at high volumes. The whole panel is moving. Not audibly, but it's a huge physical cue that isn't great for staging. I'm not certain I'll be able to fix that at high volumes without something like fiberglassing the entire skin (which I won't be doing). There's just not enough mass loading to be done on it to cure the problem. The arm rest is sort of weird. It sounds like you've had the doors off and seen them. There's these fins down beneath the actual place you put your arm so I can't get in behind them to apply any deadener. I'm probably going to try to do something about it, but I'll be addressing that once the mids and tweeters are mounted so I can get the car driveable again.

I'm not 100% on what you're referring to as the fastening clips. I applied some deadener onto the metal "post" that sticks out from the inner door sheet metal and where it attaches to the metal assuming it might be a problem. I've got nothing directly on any mounting points (the posts or where they plug in at). There's also nothing directly on any screw points or fastener holes. It's hard enough to get the panels back on now.
 
#20 ·
Side thought... where the door panel screws in on the arm rest, did you deaden the fastening clips? That was the key cause of rattle, I just made tiny squares and put them around the clip. Also the window module rattles as well and is only held on by 3 corners and the 4th corner rattles, good place to put some deadener as well.
 
#24 ·
Thanks bud!
 
#25 · (Edited)
Progress has been slown down considerably with some bad weather that's come into northern Texas. The outside temp is too low and the air is too moist to be working with fiberglass resin at the moment, and it looks like that might be the case for the rest of the week. I may try to rig up a heater and dehumidifier in the garage, but beyond some initial reinforcement steps I'm not sure I'll be able to lay any glass for awhile.

Here's my molds. I'm doing a different method than I did for my last setup. I've built a skeleton out of MDF rings, dowels, and card stock. I'll be painting on some resin hopefully this evening to stiffen up the index cards, and the next step will be to come back over and shape them some more with bondo. Then 1-2 layers of glass on top of that. I'm going to lay glass on the whole pillar so it blends better. My last A pillar tweeter job had a small hump/slope to it that I wasn't happy with. It showed up along the black surrounding the windshield that it wasn't even. I don't think any amount of gradual feathering would have made up for it. I'm also going to avoid using a "milkshake" mixture with this one. I did that last time and after a few years the surface started cracking in a few places. Granted those A pillars had grab handles, so the weight from people lifting themselves up into the truck couldn't have helped, but I intend to keep this car longer than the truck. The extra strength from 1-2 layers of chop mat should pay off in the end.

I carved the stock pillars with a box cutter and a paring knife. I went over it back and forth pretty quickly with the box cutter to start a medium depth groove then worked the paring knife through it. I also used some tin snips to trim off some of the reinforcing plastic on the back side so I'd have more room to work with on the inside.

I'm very tight on the fitment on my midrange pods at the bottom, so I'm going to have to keep an eye on the thickness. That might lead me to only using 1 layer of chop mat along the bottom edge of the midrange pod.

Here's some progress pics of what I CAN do until the weather gets better:




With index cards applied to form the rough shapes. Bondo will smooth them into their final form.




If anyone else is doing this, you need to constantly keep in mind that once the fiberglass goes on, there's not much turning back. Make sure you've got enough access to mount your drivers where they'll end up. In my case that means trimming out the inner edges of the midrange to accommodate the speaker lead attaching points, making sure my curve on the back doesn't make it too shallow to hold them, and with the tweeter I need a lot of access behind it to secure the tweeter and get my wiring hooked up. This would be pretty tough to do once it's been glassed.
 
#26 ·
Oh yeah. I had started a detailed post about mounting locations but my dog nosed my mouse and managed to hit the back button killing everything I'd written. It was beautiful. It hit all the high points and left you on the edge of your seat the whole time. This is just a tribute to the greatest mounting location post ever.

I've settled on mounting points (as if the last post didn't sort of scream that out). I'm doing the A pillars mounted on-axis. I demoed the kick panels for 2 solid days of listening with both the mid and tweeter down there. In my opinion, the kicks are the best choice, at least for my equipment in my car. Unfortunately when I started getting ready to build my glassing skeleton I figured out it was going to be impossible to cram the mids in there. The only way to have done it was if I did something about the parking brake. I'm not much of a welder and don't have any of the required equipment for that, so I've fallen back on the pillars.

Here's a quick review on the places I demoed. My source material for this weren't a bunch of esoteric composers or Jazz musicians like most reviews. I mostly used an IASCA SQ CD (the '95 version), a couple of Focal demo discs I downloaded from a forum a couple of years ago, a Garth Brooks greatest hit album with good recording quality and a lot of stereophonic imaging tracks, an Eric Clapton live album, some Tool for midbass testing, some Rage Against the Machine and Black Keys for some "wall of sound" testing, a new M83 CD I got for Christmas with a lot of post-processing, and a live album of Zac Brown Band I really like. The Zac Brown Band CD has been great because it's the recording that came directly from a charity concert. It came with a video DVD of the performance so it's helped me with auditioning the staging effects of the different locations. Since I know the stage layout I can tell if the bass, guitar, and horns players are in the right place. It's also a multi-tiered stage they were playing from, so there's some Z-axis differences I've been shooting for to get my stage height right. Width is one of the biggest challenges most systems try to maximize, but height is really tricky to do since our ears aren't as good at picking up on that. I started with an autoEQ and autoTA tuning session with my 880prs and the supplied microphone to give me a baseline to work from in each position. I played with the TA some, but not much EQing. My biggest concern for this part had to do with stereo imaging. The speakers handle tonality pretty well right out of the box, so EQing will just come down to cabin issues I run into and I can use some EQing tricks to help the imaging along as I get into the more advanced tuning down the road.

So the first place I'll discuss is the factory dash location. This one only took about 15 minutes to rule out. I've talked about how the MD102 tweeters are very soft. Well shooting up into the windshield brought out some really spiky peaks in the 6-10k Hz range. I'd be pretty comfortable saying to avoid the stock dash locations on a custom mounting install. I'd hate to hear what a hard dome tweeter did shooting into the windshield. Very aggressive and almost no imaging off an autoTA and autoEQ on my 880prs. I might be able to tame it some with heavy EQ, but it's not a good place to start from.

I've already talked briefly about splitting the mids and tweeters with mids going in the kicks and tweeters in the pillars. This might be because of my limited processing capabilities (mids and tweeters are running off the same processing channel on the deck), but I couldn't put together a good stage with this configuration. It would be nice to test this more extensively with a 4 way capable processor.

I moved on to A pillar mounted positions from there. This is where the capabilities of the esotecs started to really show up. I had a lot of flexibility with TAing this arrangement to create a stage on my dash/hood. Width didn't get much beyond the confines of the car, but depth extended well out onto the hood with some tweaking. I had trouble localizing the lead vocals, especially on male voices in the center. So far the best I've managed was something in the neighborhood of 12-18" wide vocals extending from about 6-9" to the left and right of the alarm light on the dash. The edges were phenomenal. In some of the Clapton tracks there's a piano that comes in and just totally fools my ears. It seemed to jump way out of the car to the far back left corner of my stage somewhere around the corner of my garage. I couldn't get this effect with any other recordings, but once I knew where to find it, it became a favorite during my demoing. In the IASCA testing CD there are some imaging tracks for left, right, and center with a voice that says something like "My voice should appear to be coming from the far left of your stage. It should be highly focused and easy to localized." or some such business. Left and right were great most of the time. The center voice is a midrange female voice that just sounded sloppy most of the time. I picked up on a little bit of a speech impediment the vocalist had with her tongue, which speaks to the quality of the speakers tonality, but it wasn't easy to focus her in the center. I played with phase inversion quite a bit here. It seemed like the midbasses in the doors might have been the give away. Since I'm not custom mounting them, I might have to live with a sloppy center image. Door pods might be in my future down the road, but I told myself I wouldn't cut up the door skins because they're not the cheapest to replace.

I played with on and off-axis positions some. Anything past 90 degrees (pointing at each other across the dash) brought out some windshield sharpness I wasn't liking. Cross firing to the opposite headrest was pretty good, and near headrest was good too. These are dome mids and tweeters, so to some extent they're made for some adjustability in off-axis mounting. Dynaudio has a very commendable technical datasheet for all of their automotive speakers that even shows off-axis FR plots. Again I wish I had more processing flexibility. My midbasses are limited to a 1250 Hz low pass and no lower on the 880prs. The midranges can handle down to 700 Hz comfortably according to Dyn. This might help fix my center image slop if I could drop those down lower. I'm pretty sure I'll be purchasing a processor before too long. Hopefully I've got a decent tax return coming for 2012.

So the advantage from A pillar mounting were stage depth and height. The drawbacks were width (not bad, but could be better), center image focus (I'd only give this maybe a C- right now), and visibility with some of the angles I played with.

Next I'll discuss the mid/tweet in the kick together demoing. I spent 2 days of free time listening to this setup. I concluded that it was the best setup of everything I tested, but wasn't possible with the dimensions on the midranges without some welding on the parking brake. If you've got shallower midranges I highly recommend demoing this location. It was everything I mentioned in the A pillar combination above, but the width extended more to about the middle of the side view mirrors, so maybe an extra 6 inches on the left side. The right side might have gained a little width too, but it was tougher to pinpoint how much. Depth might have suffered a little, but not much. I had to adjust the levels on the high channel to make up for the obstructed location (my legs and the center console), but the path length difference drops a lot in the kicks and the center image narrowed some to maybe +- 3-4 inches left and right. Still not perfect and worse on lower range vocalists (mostly male), but as mentioned before I think that's mostly the midbasses in the doors. Stage height was unchanged. Once I played with the gain on the mid/tweeter tonality was fine. The sides of the stage sank a little bit leading to the rainbow stage I was concerned about. The left side dropped several inches going into the dash. The right wasn't as bad, but probably about on plane with the dash.

Adding some imaging tweeters to the pillars or factory dash locations might really make this configuration shine. Imaging tweeters are used to adjust your stage height. They overlap your main kick tweeters frequency duties but at a reduced output level. The kicks still dominate the output, but adding in these secondary tweeters can toss in some subtle cues that trick the brain into believing the stage is taller/wider than it would be without them. It's not easy to tune for, and there aren't any cookie cutter tuning solutions when using them. This isn't recommended unless you understand everything I've written to this point because doing secondary tweeters without tuning experience can destroy your stage. You would want individual EQ control over these for sure, so you would need an active system and a strong processor. If it's part of an already 4 way active system, you'd need custom processing (either pro audio or carputer) right now. Nobody I'm aware of is offering 10 channel processing in a car audio product. A center channel might also be useful here.

So this wasn't the best locations review in the world. This was just a tribute to the marvel I wrote earlier that got deleted.
 
#27 · (Edited)
IMO roundover and flush mount the speakers, will look much better. Also the parking brake is easy to take out if you have an auto and don't need it. Went without mine for over a year.
 
#28 ·
These speakers have rounded edges already. I considered flushing them into pods, but I don't think it would look quite right. I'm going for the no-border look with this since they have a decent size outer diameter to them.

If I'd have known it was easy to take out the parking brake it would have been a harder decision. Mine doesn't work too well as it is. I think the previous owner might have driven a bit with the e-brake set. I've got a driveway with about a 30 degree slope and the e-brake doesn't hold it there by itself. I do have a line on a member here that has some backup a pillars he says are in mint condition (replaced them with gauge pods). I could go back to kick mounting if I don't like how these turn out.

I just put on a coat of resin to stiffen up the skeleton. Hopefully it dries sometime tonight so I can start the bondo shaping.
 
#30 ·
Ceri, nice write up on your install. Even if your not into sound, the various pics on the first page are worth bookmarking this thread.
As for the A-piller pods, are you thinking of glassing the entire a-piller or just the pods?
 
#31 ·
The entire pillar is going to get a layer. I've done pillar pods in the past and tried to feather the edges to blend, but it still ended up with a little bit of a hump/slope to it that showed up against the black trim on the windshield. I'm going to try to do a full layer to keep that line even. I'll be finishing it with a vinyl weave that's pretty close to the factory look.
 
#32 ·
ceri, do you have any tips for someone glassing for the first time? As in, i have 0 experience and would like to know what materials are best as i'd like to experiment on mock things to practice and learn the technique.

I was messing with my tweeter locations today and your post prompted me to ask. I dont see me doing a flush mount as the swivel isn't extreme enough for positioning and i dont think i'd be happy with the sound. I can use the angle pod which just scres in thusly causing less pillar damage aha.
 
#33 ·
I'm not an expert on glassing. I'm relying on a lot of guides myself. I don't do car audio for a living like a few people around here. I'm just a do it yourselfer. A few things I do know are you need to do it when the weather is cooperating. I laid down some resin on my skeleton and 4 hours later it's still "wet" to the touch in the garage with a heater blowing on it.

I know polyester resin is cheaper, but puts off toxic fumes and has bonding trouble on more materials. Epoxy resin isn't toxic and apparently easier to work with, but more expensive. I'm using poly I bought at Home Depot. I'm not sure where to get Epoxy resin. Poly also has an adjustable work time based on the amount of hardener you use. I don't think Epoxy does.

I went with hot glue, dowel rods, and MDF for my skeleton. Index cards I'm not 100% sure on. Most folks mention "card stock". I'm using some thick index cards I had from school. I don't see them being a problem, but then again my skeleton isn't dry after 4 hours when the instructions say 2 hour cure time.

The last method I used was stretching an 80% cotton/15% polyester/5% spandex blend over my form and slathering it in resin. I don't think the fabric type is all that important, but you want something stretchy for shaping. I let that cure and then applied some "milkshake" which is a blend of bondo and resin with their hardeners. It's not as strong as actual fiberglass, but it's really easy to work. It's like a muddy bondo consistency so it's easy to shape and a little stronger than regular bondo thanks to the resin mixed in. This worked well, but after about 4 years I noticed some cracking and stress fractures on the passenger side pillar (mostly around the handles). There was no true fiberglass layer in that build. Just the fabric and milkshake.

For this project I'm doing a resin reinforced cardstock skeleton, then bondo to form the final shape and even the sides out. Then I'm going back over it with an actual layer or two of 1.5 oz chop mat for strength. It's new territory for me so I'm not sure what sort of results to expect, but I'm going off a collection of information I've researched over the last month or so. There's a fiberglassing forum I've been looking over int he last couple of weeks that's been helpful. What I've gathered is that it's a real DIY spirit. A lot of things can work and there's a lot of flexibility in materials. If one thing isn't working too well, try another.
 
#34 ·
Weather can be important but unless its extreme conditions the proper amount of hardener should counteract the temp. Never used epoxy though. The best material to use is fleece, which can be picked up wal-mart with a cute design. Bondo is the most difficult stage IMO. Be gentle with your hardener and use a cheese grater to smooth it out. Mess up that stage and you may be working for a while with sanding and/or more bondo. Duraglass is really good stuff if you can find it.
 
#35 · (Edited)
Here's a little progress. I did resin on the index cards. Let that dry. Then some fiberglass hair laced resin I accidentally bought (Bondo Glass). I let that dry. Today I've started laying down layers of bondo to start forming the final shape. That's curing overnight. Here's some pics. I thought I'd taken some of the resin-only layers, but can't find the pics.





Tomorrow I'll be sanding it down and bringing the shape out. There will probably be another layer of bondo, or maybe some milkshake to fill in low spots before I lay down chop mat fiberglass. After that, a firm sanding. Then, bondo to smooth it out. More sanding. Then I get to see if my vinyl fabric will stretch enough to conform to it. I've got a high temp heat gun to help me stretch it if it looks possible. It's going to be tricky.

It's slow going since I'm working again. I get to do one thing after work then I have to let it dry/cure. Hopefully they're close to finished by the end of the weekend.
 
#36 ·
WOw. That's impressive. Nice craftsmanship.

I may have missed it but are you able to move that custom box easily once it's installed or can you get to your battery easily?- probably a dumb question- but I couldn't tell from the angles of the photos if the box was over the battery area. I'm curious because I thought of doing something along the lines of a killer system but didn't really see a happy ending with the trunk being set up the way it is. And with the power of these vehicles I wanted something that would be well mounted. Until I saw your post I had kind of given it up...like I said, I probably missed it but I'm very curious now!
 
#37 ·
It's easy-ish to remove. A lot of the wiring has to be undone obviously, and that's not quite as simple as it sounds, but I've pulled it out a couple of times. The battery is fully accessible, along with the spare tire. That was one of my big goals was to use up half the trunk and not really miss it.

As for the craftsmanship, apparently it looks a lot better in pictures. :D It's not my proudest work, and therefore, once I figure out the new things I'll be adding, I'll probably rip the trunk apart and start over. It's playing for now, and looks halfway decent for an amateur, but I never fully finished it with the anticipation that it's going to get fixed. The trunk light shows up on the top edge of the beauty panel, so I'm about 1/2" too far out. Gaps are bad, and won't be tolerated. Thanks though! :)
 
#38 ·
That bondo looks like a lot of work. I feel bad for your hand when you start sanding lol.
 
#39 ·
Power tools are awesome. I bought a little dremel jewelry kit with a polishing stone conical attachment to reach the tough spots. Otherwise it's mostly been a little hand power sander with 60 grit paper.

It's funny how I can spend 10 hours working on this sort of project and not have much to show for it. I had to sand off a lot of bondo on the bottom edge on the driver side. I'm probably going to have to do something similar on the passenger side. Anticipating the fiberglass layers adding a little bit to the thickness, I had to slob bondo on the inside so I could go through my skeleton a little bit. Making sure it was going to fit back in took a lot of work and my angles were a little below horizontal on the midrange (which is what I was shooting for). I built up the rings with a few layers of bondo and leveled them out. The glass is going to have to give them some strength, and I might need 3-4 layers at least over the rings. This is definitely a bigger task than my last experience fiberglassing. The midrange pods are trouble, and I'm trying to not settle for just okay. I think the finished product should last me the life of the car though.
 
#40 · (Edited)
Fiberglass and bondo/duraglass are one of those things where practice truly makes perfect. I know exactly how it should be done but I still can't execute to how I want. I am OCD on things and that's why fiberglass drives me nuts. If you think the bondo is too rough, it will be MUCH easier to rip it off and start over again. Fiberglassing is easy, getting it smooth is the hard part. You don't need really any strength on these speakers. Some fleece with resin would be strong enough for mid ranges.
 
#41 ·
My concern with them is passengers messing with them. I don't want something that will bust because someone accidentally knocks into it on a turn, or grabs one crawling into the car. I don't think I'd be able to hold back that look of depression/anger if they broke it. :D
 
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