i work with mostly stainless and aluminium. . .i hate it. Aluminium has just gotten to be a pain in the **** [img]graemlins/puke.gif[/img] stainless isnt much better

 

Pictures will be posted.

 

The start of my adventure:



I just had to see how this thing sounded, so I hacked appart my trunk, ran a too short to reach any further than my back seat Toslink cable, and fired the beast up.

Here's my expert interpretation of how to do a ghetto dash install:



So from there, I kind of already had a plan for how I wanted to rebuild my trunk. Part of this plan was to actually strengthen the rear deck area instead of "floating" the subwoofer mounting to allow for chassis flex. To do this, I got a bunch of this:



This is a picture of the aluminum subwoofer baffle prior to machining:




Then I started gutting my trunk (for the 4rth time in a year) Everything got pulled out, including some sound deadening on my rear deck.

 

...and here's the stripped down rear deck area:



After I got a 4 meter long Toslink cable, I started working on installing the processor display module.


...and the finished product for now:


This is all of the aluminum after being cut and bent for my project:


This is the 1/2" thick sub baffle prior to plasma cutting:


...and after plasma cutting. Plasma cutting is pretty messy, so it took about an hour of grinding to get the holes cleaned up and ready for driver installation.

 

Here's a before shot showing a hole after plasma cutting:


...and an after shot illustrating the grinding:


Here are some shots of the 1/4" thick aluminum mounting bracket that will anchor the electronics rack, and part of the subwoofer baffle:





The 6 holes in the above picture are tapped (threaded) to allow for for easier assembly.(no bolts) Although as I used the technique for just about every point of attachement, it's not the easiest thing to do.

Here is the sub baffle prior to installation. Note the mounting bracket attached to mate up with the bracket inside the car, and all of the subwoofer bolt holes have been prepared.

 

....and this is how I possitioned the baffle for final installation...with a car jack!




I used 6 large bolts to attach the sub baffle to the structure under the rear window. To do this, I drilled 1/2" holes in the structure. Then I used a small Snap-On pick to position the nuts over where the bolts poked through, and threaded them on very carefully. It was a very trying task, taking almost an hour in 30+ degree weather. The picture below just barely shows the holes and the nuts that were fastened inside:


Here is the finished subwoofer installation:



Yes there are plans to make the rear deck totally air tight, I just haven't gotten to that yet.

This is the electronics rack part way along:

 

Well, I got in a big hurry...and forgot to take pictures of the electronics being mounted. All the wiring will be cleaned up eventually, I was just in a hurry to get sound in my car before I had to go back to work.

Here is the finished electronics rack installed. I have a laptop connected to the PXA-H900 processor and my LMS RTA hooked up to the car for tunning:









And here's a teaser of the Alpine software package for controling the processor with a laptop:


Much more fun planned...

Adam

 

Wow! [img]graemlins/bow.gif[/img] Did you use a template for plasma cutting out the sub holes? What subs are you using? Nice work.....

[ July 26, 2004, 08:35 AM: Message edited by: JeepBeats ]

 

The plasma cutting was done "free hand". I just used the marker lines shown to illustrate where to cut. Because Plasma cutters don't cut with a perfect 90 degree cut, the holes were undercut to allow me to grind them out to the desired size. Even after grinding, my bolt holes to hold the subs in were very close to the edge.

Subs are Focal Polyglass 21V2. Very impressive sub, they take all the crap I dish out at them. Rated at 200w RMS continuous, my 500w to each is a bit excessive.

 

Nice, thanks for the info. I have used a plasma cutter a few times, for cutting out doors, etc, they are great because you can use wood, or scrap pieces of MDF as a straight edge guide. Any material that does not conduct, I believe? Nice work, keep those pics coming!