03 Silverado Singlecab 4x4 First Fiberglass Enclosure, Box repainted and door speakers getting replaced Options

[The Performer]

So I got started today on the new box I plan on putting in my truck. The setup will be a sealed fiberglass box that will stretch the entire back of the wall behind the seats and will hold two 10 inch DC level 2's. (Still saving up to get them both at once)

Anyways, started out by pulling out some leftover MDF from my other box builds and seeing what I had to work with. I found a perfect sized sheet of 1/2" hobby plywood in the shed that my dad must have been hiding. He said I was free to use it so that's great news! I'm not sure if it's really called Hobby Plywood, that's just what dad calls it, it's the birch sheet that has many thinner layers than common plywood.

Here's some shots at what I got started after rounding up all the wood I would be using.

The plans and a few of the cardboard templates I cut out to fit my truck.


My new toy Figured I'd use the last bit of graduation money to get myself a drill so I wouldn't have to wait to borrow dad's after he gets home from work everyday. This little guy is a beast, It's got a hella lot of power for a pocket drill but most badass is the li-ion battery, I've yet to have to charge the first one since I bought the damn thing.


Putting together the center piece with braces that the amp and cap will mount to.


(The perks of dad being a contractor...)

^Never short on supplies.



Adding some holes to open up the channel between the two subs. There's gonna be plenty more tomorrow.


Letting the mounting rings setup. Tomorrow after they're dry I should be able to route the outer edges up.


Here's a shot of the Hobbyply that I drew out most of the back wall on. Tomorrow I have to go match the curves of the bottom in the truck with some cardboard.


That's it for tonight, only spent a few hours but tomorrow I'll try and get a few other things done. I'm pretty excited about this one, it's gonna be my first fiberglass, but this should also be my final setup for my truck, I've been through about 8 different combinations of equipment throughout the year...

This post has been edited by The Performer: Aug 6 2008, 11:54 PM

[stereomayhem]

Good luck with your first fg build. You only get better with practice. Make sure to keep the pics coming!

[Blue]

I'm tuned into this one. Giving me ideas for my next rebuild, might have to copy your design. Keep the pics coming. How big is the box going to be approx.?

[The Performer]

I'm tuned into this one. Giving me ideas for my next rebuild, might have to copy your design. Keep the pics coming. How big is the box going to be approx.?

You know I have to say, I'm not 100% sure yet with this one. For one it's a bitch to figure out what the vol. is going to be with a stretched fiberglass, but I haven't set in stone what my sub depth is going to be just yet either so there's flexibility there as to what the vol. will turn out to be. Once I do decide on that factor I'm not sure exactly on how I'm going to be able to estimate the volume yet. I have an idea of how to do it, but if any of you guys have a trick to doing it I'd be happy to hear.

[Torres]

looks pretty good so far. your dad is a contractor and you only have 1 drill? i think there's 4 or 5 cordless around here, and 3 or 4 corded ones

[Stephen]

good choice on the rigid stuff. My uncle remodels houses as a side job and that almost all he uses now.

[The Performer]

looks pretty good so far. your dad is a contractor and you only have 1 drill? i think there's 4 or 5 cordless around here, and 3 or 4 corded ones

There's his cordless makita, then there's two corded makita's, an old cordless makita and black&decker that the batteries are shot on and it's basically cheaper in the long run to just get the newer stuff out than to order replacement batteries for them. The black&decker uses some POS batteries in my opinion. It was my brother's he had with a kit of a drill, circular saw and flashlight, and he went through 4 batteries with it in about 2 years then he gave it to me and I got a new battery and it lasted about 4 months for me before it finally went to hell.

So yeah, when it comes to cordless drills there's my rigid and dad's makita now, but like I said, he's always got it with him during the day.

good choice on the rigid stuff. My uncle remodels houses as a side job and that almost all he uses now.

Yep, we're growing fond of their tools here at home too, dad got a damn good circular saw by rigid, and now I got this drill so I'm seeing alot more purchases from them in the future if we ever have to get new tools.

Thanks for the replies, I'm uploading the pics of my progress from today so I should have them up in a bit.

[The Performer]

Ok so today I got alot done even though it was raining and I had to do all my cutting under the shop porch. Also I was able to get the good camera today instead of my phone, so the pics from today are better quality, and that's always a good thing.

Started out cutting the sides out.


Shaping out the back wall.


Attaching the bottom.


Sides.


Put some more holes in this part. (I made more after the piece was setup and glued later on as well)


Starting to take a shape!!!


Must have been a john wayne marathon today or somethin...


Trying to figure out where to place the rings...


Not sure what the hell this thing is called, It's like a cheese grater in a sanding drum shape... Anyways, it does an amazing job at smoothing out the inside of mounting holes.


Had to pull out the bandsaw to start making the ring braces.


Another badass tool that comes in handy when working with angles.


Hot glue the proper way.


Now I'm getting excited!!! Only thing is I'm still not set on how high I'll have these sitting yet. I'll use shims to set them the right height when I get to that point.


These are the only 10's I have to test fit... I'm considering using these in the box when it's done until I get the DC's... They fit in the hole a tad smaller, but I could make it happen.


The last shot I took tonight, gives a good idea of what I'm headed for.


That's it for now, today I got pretty damn far. Worked from when my lazy ass got out of bed at noon until midnight, (wish I was getting paid for this)

I'm not sure when I'll be getting new pics yet, the next step is to mold out the bottoms of the feet in the truck. I'm going to have to figure out how to get the bolts out of floor though, I could just cut them off, but I'm hoping I can knock them out or something through the bottom and save them. (I know, I'm weird like that...)

Thanks again for the comments guys.

[Blue]

You know I have to say, I'm not 100% sure yet with this one. For one it's a bitch to figure out what the vol. is going to be with a stretched fiberglass, but I haven't set in stone what my sub depth is going to be just yet either so there's flexibility there as to what the vol. will turn out to be. Once I do decide on that factor I'm not sure exactly on how I'm going to be able to estimate the volume yet. I have an idea of how to do it, but if any of you guys have a trick to doing it I'd be happy to hear.

I've seen plenty of people use packing peanuts to get an estimate on the volume. Take the peanuts, put it in, once they are loosely packed take them out and put it into a 12x12x12 box, which will represent a 1ft^3 of air space.

The box progress is looking good. As i said before, can't wait to see this get finished and see vids.

[The Performer]

I've seen plenty of people use packing peanuts to get an estimate on the volume. Take the peanuts, put it in, once they are loosely packed take them out and put it into a 12x12x12 box, which will represent a 1ft^3 of air space.

Yeah, that's the best way I've seen so far, but I was hoping for someway to get an estimate of the volume from the current progress I'm at, as in before I do the fleece stretch over the top. I think if I chop up the design into sections and estimate the volume of each part then put them together I can get a VERY rough estimate, but other than that I don't know.

Any takers on that? Like I said, this is my first FG so I'm not 100% on the pre-build vol. estimating.

[The Performer]

Ok, so maybe I jumped the gun last night when I said there wouldn't be pics for a while. Turns out there were a few things I still needed to be doing so I got some of them out of the way.

First of all I needed to get those nasty bolts that held the jack and cover out of the way.


Figured I'd give my persuasive tool a shot.


The bolts didn't agree, so I hated to, but had no other option than to revert to this...


Pulled up the carpet to get to them. (Look at that nice clean paint)


Fuck if I would have known the carpet padding would have caught fire that easily!!! I thought that shit would have been flame retardant or something!


One of the bolts proved to get the best of me. This was the main reason I didn't want to use the grinder, fuck if I wasn't pissed at myself... It's a terrible feeling cutting into a perfectly good truck...


Eh, life goes on. JB weld FTW, I don't want the metal to rust there now. Also I put some over the sawed off bolts so they weren't all naggy like that.



Now some blue tape so the padding doesn't glue to the damn floor.


Carpet back down and better than new!


Here's the first bit of excitement for the day, Now I can test fit the box!

^Like a mufuckin glove!!!

No sooner that I pulled the box out and put the 12's back in some buddies show up to say hi.
They wanted to hear how my current setup sounded so I gave a quick demo.


Turns out one of them wants to buy them after hearing that, so we test fitted them in his truck and he loves the fit and he's gonna hook them up to his amp tomorrow and try the sound out. I know the bastard wants them even if they wont sound as loud with his amp so I'm pretty sure he's gonna buy them.
$100 bucks closer to the DC's!!!!!

Unfortunately though, that means back to the oldschool MTX terminators for me... I cant complain though, atleast I had something on hand to throw behind the seats. (Even though I'm still borrowing them... ) Gotta love brother-in laws.

After about 10 when my buddies FINALLY left... I got back to the box. I needed to see JUST how much I had to space the rings off the box to fit the DC's.
I made a ghetto version of a test fit sub.

^Don't hate, it does it's job.

Trying some spacers to get the height.


^I'd say just about perfect.

Letting the spacers glue on over night.


Well that's it for today, Gotta work in the morning and mow yards in the evening so I'm not sure if I'll get to work on anything then but sometime before the weekend I plan on bulking up my ground in preparation for an electrical upgrade. When I get the DC's and drop the amp to 1 ohm I'm gonna need to run 4 gauge. Which by the way, any of you know where to get some good RF or kicker 4 gauge power and ground for cheap? At a local shop they have the RF for $2ish a foot and the kicker for $3ish a foot. The guy kept trying to get me to buy the $80 POS kit but I guess he wouldn't take the hint that I didn't need all the flair that came with it. I already have good RCA's and remote wire.

Anyway, if anyone knows where to get some cable for a decent price I'd love to hear.

[wL<3bass]

Anyway, if anyone knows where to get some cable for a decent price I'd love to hear.

http://www.knukonceptz.com/productMaster.c...lossus%20Kable#

$1.35 per/ft

[The Performer]

http://www.knukonceptz.com/productMaster.c...lossus%20Kable#

$1.35 per/ft

Looks good! I'm not crazy about the split clear and red and such, I looked around on their site and they have a different line that is just red and black, more of what I want and not too much more.

You think ordering about 18 ft since I need some to work with between the amp and cap and just cause I'm paranoid I won't have enough. Then about 6 ft of black ground to work with and I'm going to need some 12 gauge speaker wire for inside the box as well as the outside amp connections. It would be decently cheaper to order from them instead of buying an expensive kit with rca's and remote that I would just be wasting money on? I can most likely talk to the guys at my favorite shop to sell me some 4 gauge ring terminals and such. They are really good about that up there.

Basically I don't want to spend a ton of money on wire that's going to be JUST BARELY enough and I can't do a clean install cause the wires are running straight and such. Then have rca's and crap left over. At this stage of the game I cant be wasting money.

[The Performer]

Ok so I got a few things done these last couple of days, but not as much as I would have liked, had to work most days.

What I did get done was the feet of my box fiberglassed out. (You guys were serious when you said fiberglassing wasn't cheap, $35 for resin, $7 for a 3x3 sheet of mat)

Anyways, gotta do what ya gotta do and get the stuff. Here's some shots of taping off the carpet in the 4x4.


Starting to get dark outside! Had to get some lights.

That's getting the shape done, after that I pulled it all out and was able to put more layers and didn't have to stink up the truck any more.

Then last night I decided to prep for upcoming electrical upgrade. The ground I had was working, but I hate the idea of a sheet metal screw being my ground.
Forgot to take a shot of what it looked like before, but I think most of you guys know what a screw holding a ring terminal to a car looks like.
Here's the screw and washer though.


Little hole was from the screw, it was too close to the seat slide and annoyed me. The big hole is for the new bolt.
Ran into a problem underneath and couldn't find where the damn hole was.


Finally figured it out, there's section where there's a brace that was where the hole was at so I had to make a hole in the brace to fit the head of the bolt through and push it up through the bottom.

Handy ass light I got from walmart. Plugs into the cigarette lighter and has 10 ft of cord that reels up into the light. (Basically what I'm saying is you guys should get one)
Extending magnet to push the bolt through the bottom.

Worked out nice, I was able to just turn the bolt from the bottom and it screwed into the hole and stayed while I came up and added the nut.

Tightened it all up and added a bit of solder to a side of the nut onto the metal. Added a bit of solder to close up the screw hole too.



^Great little $15 torch.
It's a hell of alot better now!

Thought I would ask this, any of you guys ever tin the tips of your power wires? I grew up with electronics so I've learned TONS of tricks and such over time and one thing I do whenever working with amps that you stick the end of the wire in and tighten down the screw is tinned the tips with solder.

Just thought I'd share, I never see anyone else doing this on here so I wondered if maybe you guys didn't do it. Either way I would recommend it. If you're going through the trouble of doing all your terminals, then not tinning the tips you're just killing it.

And now onto today, I got the 3rd layer of fiberglass on my box feet. It's sturdy as a MO-FO now.


Maybe tonight or tomorrow I can finally cut the feet to shape and get ready for the fleece stretch.

Anyways, that's all for now.

This post has been edited by The Performer: Aug 10 2008, 04:53 PM

[ChevyBoy]

http://www.stevemeadedesigns.com/board/ind...5690&st=120
read post #128

[Brick2560]

Looking good man, that box is lookin nice, if I had a single cab thats how I'd want my box.

[The Performer]

http://www.stevemeadedesigns.com/board/ind...5690&st=120
read post #128

Nice! He's got it down! Yeah, I'd just never seen anyone do it in their builds but I guess I missed that guy's.

Thanks for the comments guys, I got a couple more new pics I'm putting up soon so stay tuned.

[The Performer]

After the feet cured up better I got back and cut them to shape finally.

Got the cuts as straight as I could, but I'm gonna have to work a bit more on them tomorrow to get it a bit more straight.

Here's a pic of what I'm going for now. I'm getting more and more excited each day.

[Dale]

this looks really good so far man...keep the pics coming

[The Performer]

Ok so I got SOME work done today, not much but some. Had a couple things go down, one disaster and a good thing or two.

The disaster was I lost a soldier in battle on my way home from work. (My right side sub fried. )

The leads here are pretty bad, the wires are burnt and it seems as if the voice coil had unwound inside and pulled the leads tight.

Cut off the dust cap and yep, fried...

It's shot to shit, you can thump the cone and hear the coil inside, it sounds like a slinky.

That just means I need to get my ass in gear and finish the box and get the DC's.

Since I got the subs out I decided to shoot for a test fit to get some more eye candy.



Came inside and aligned/glued the rings to the box finally.



It's looking sexier each time I work on it!

I stopped by the fabric store today and got some nice stuff. The lady said it was all they had that would stretch in all 4 directions. It's some kind of dance/swim wear something... Anyways, it looks like it's going to stretch GREAT. I'm just going to have to route my rings deeper a bit more tomorrow on the edges where the fiberglass will meet the mdf.

Anyways, off to bed soon, gotta paint a garage and start trim work at another house tomorrow and the rest of the week. (Gotta work hard to make the money )