Awesome!

Looking forward to seeing more pictures!

Nick C.

Thanks. My knee is getting better, so I may be getting started on it soon. Two more weeks before I have to go back to work.

Bump.

Any updates? How's the knee?

So, I got a little motivated tonight. I was going to do some work this weekend, but it was the first weekend for college football so no work got done. I've got some photos,

Got some minor things done. Removed the rear speakers, put some damping on the rear deck (butyl, CCF, and mlv). Also got some new speakers for the front. Will now have some ID mini horns on the front stage with the peerless 8". Also got some L brackets made to hold the new Zapco amp.

I've got some CCF on the bottom of the wood filler plates to help decouple them from the body. The L brackets will probably be mounted to the wood pieces to prevent any additional holes in the body. They are mounted into the factory speaker holes using the factory screws.

Next up is to mount the amps, run the wiring, then mount the horns.

I think to retain the factory Bluetooth without getting any echo I will be using the rear speakers as the input to the alpine H660 and fade the sound all the way to the rear. Then I will leave the front factory 5x7 hooked up to the radio. That way when I use the Bluetooth calling I'm still using the factory setup and the aftermarket system will automatically be muted.

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Oh. And the knee is a lot better. Still a little limited by what I can do, but I'm about to back where I was prior to the injury....not that it was all that great to begin with.

Some work done last weekend. I went out to changed the oil and ended up working for 8 hours or so. I got the trunk completed (all wired up), wiring run through the cabin, interior put back together, and under hood wiring done. All that is left is to mount the PXE-H660, cut the RCA cable to length, solder the RCA heads on, mount and wire up the under dash horns, install the 8" in the doors, and tune everything out.

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A couple more photos:

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Photos of the next step. I've never done them before, so I'm pretty excited. I'm thinking of mounting them up, and doing some sort of grill/finish cover to have grill cloth on. I don't want anything getting down in there. I've already test fit them. One was cut down before a bit (got them used obviously) so it fits, but the other needs to be cut down very slightly to fit.

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:drool::drool: You lucky duck! Can't wait to see them mounted!

So, I finally got around to doing a bit of work. I've been working on a five week battle with bronchitis. Today I mounted the passenger side horn. It was much easier than I thought it would be. It is mounted by three points. Two on the front attached to the dash under the glovebox, and one on the rear where the motor is. This is so solid it does not move when I try to wiggle it. Next is the driver side horn, the door mids, a bit of speaker wiring in the kick panels, then hook up the processor. I'm getting so close.

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Awesome!! I'm so jealous. Wish I could hear it!

Me too. Lol. Hopefully soon. It is nice and tight against the dash, and doesn't get in the way of my legs or feet at all. I just hope the driver side goes just as smooth.

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Driver side is mounted. There was an opening where the OBD plug went. I used a small piece of plastic and some CCF to fill the hole. Now there is a pretty smooth transition to the dash from the mouth of the horn.

Working on the driver side mid now. The mid is in the door without much of a hassle. The difficult part is getting the factory trim ring to sit over the new mid. I think I have some ideas for it.

So, all speakers are installed. Got the 8" peerless in each door. Made my own grills with grill cloth. I separates the chrome trim from the main ring, then applied the grill cloth. I think it looks so much nicer without the factory waffle grill.

All that is left is to put the speaker wire on the subs and to install the processor under the front seat.

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Looks so good! :drool::drool:

Thanks. I'm really happy with the way today's work came out. It is getting so close I can taste it. I don't have any days off until next Monday, so I may try to get it done then. The biggest thing is going to be getting it tuned, but hopefully the pxah660 gets most of it done easily.

So, it's playing now. I'm having some trouble getting it tuned though, have a bit of noise to hunt down, and i think the enclosures for the door mids may be too small. I'm not sure about the last part though, as it could be that i need to flip the polarity of one of the mids to get some of that lower midbass back. The subs sound amazing, and the horns are so freaking efficient. I do need to work on the EQ a bit for the horns though.

I'm having a bit of trouble with the H660. My laptop is not recognizing that it is plugged in, but the H660 is recognizing the laptop. Maybe it is is Windows 7. I may have to try one of our old XP laptops to see if that makes a difference.

I feel like i'm missing the impact that the 8" in the doors should be providing. It also seems like the really high frequencies are lacking a bit. I forgot i have an RTA on my phone that i can try out just to see what i'm working with though.

The bit of noise i have is a high pitched sound in the background when the car is running. It doesn't fluctuate with throttle, so i don't know if maybe it is noise picked up through the RCA's running by the fuel pump area. Since it doesn't fluctuate with the throttle i'm pretty sure it's not ground loop. I can still cut the ground shield from the amp side of the RCA cables to see if that helps. The other problem seems to be noise floor on the horns. With the car not running i get some background "white noise" that is just always present and doesn't fluctuate. I have the gains on the horns almost all of the way down and it doesn't seem to fluctuate with that. Not sure if that is the Zapco amp or the Alpine that is producing it.

That is pretty much it so far. I'm still working through everything. I figure it should be a bit. Oh, the review mirror rattles like crazy when the subs are cranked up.

Great looking build. I am thinking of stealing your idea of the plywood supports in the rear deck holes for the mounting of my amplifiers. With my setup, I'll be pushing so much power up front in the doors, I really wont need rear 6x8s to 'fill in' the sound. I had considered putting both amps in the trunk as some people have done, but I'm concerned about generating heat in such a confined space.

Also, I want to make the amps easy to pull out for when the day comes when I can hit the track. My head unit is finally being shipped so the plan is to have my build finished this time next week!

Starting my own build thread now too. :metal:

Thanks for the compliments. I'll be following your build. I love seeing the different things that people come up with. Also, definitely steal any of my ideas from this build. I think the deck is a bit stronger because of the wood there. Also, check out how I ran the wires through the doors. It was pretty easy, but just took some patience.

UPDATE:

I changed the inputs from just the rear speakers to front/rear/sub into the alpine processor. That has made a big improvement in the sound. I still need to work on some tuning, but it is starting to sound as it should. At low volumes the noise floor is still a bit high, but it is sounding way better. The biggest complaint I have is that the processor still doesn't conic to my laptop for further tuning.