Nightshade

Mechman is a strong alt. I wish I could have got them to do one of their 270 amp units for my car. I have a 220 and it is great, but the output at idle is not what I wanted. I guess that's what I get for having a pain in the ass car to get an alt into. If there were more room then I could have done one of their 270's.

Definately put the battery under the hood. I wouldn't ever reccomend just running a battery in the rear unless you want to burn up your alt. If you could run 8-10 runs of 0/1 then it may not be a problem, but since you can't your going to thank yourself for keeping it in the front of the car.

The new battery that you installed may have a bad cell in it. Try testing the second battery by itself and see what kind of readings that you get.

Sorry it took me a while but I got the pics uploaded to my account. Here you go, thanks again Josh. And for fun here is one of the sub setup in the car.

I took a few of them yesterday with it installed. I'll post them up when I get home from school. It's crazy how much room is in there since this alt is quite a bit smaller than the Iraggi that was in there.

It looks and feels like grey powder coat, but I can't tell for sure. There is another color of aluminum on it so that is why I think it's been coated.

I figured that I'd post up the pics of the new alt that I got from Mechman yesterday. I made the 4 hour drive to Tennessee to pick it up and can't wait to get it in the car. I took some pics of it for all the other Focus owners out there to see. I honestly can't wait to compare it's performance to that of the now broken Iraggi alt that I have that's supposedly a 260 amp unit. I've had nothing but trouble with it for the past 2.5 years. I love the fact that the new alt comes with a 2 year waranty right out of the gate. So, no issues like the Iraggi from the start. I also wanted to thank Josh from Mechman for his excellent customer service and help along the way. I called him on a Friday and the alt was done and ready for me by Tuesday to pick up. Nothing but class here. I strongly reccomend that anyone wanting to upgrade their alt take the time and money to go through Mechman. Especially the Focus and ZX3 owners out there. I'll update soon on how well the unit is performing in my car.

I run 4 of the same subs dual 4 and all. I run 2 Sundown saz3500d's, but I do have quite a bit stronger electrical. If your planning on running off the stock alt and a single group31 battery that you have I'd try something like a single saz3500d at 2 ohms. This should be good enough on power until you upgrade the electrical to handle another amp, then you can run two subs per amp at 1 ohm and be very happy. I know I am with mine, numbers that I have done are in a no wall setup tuned to 37hz peaking at 42hz.

It is a good amp, I personally owned one before. However the price is quite a bit high. If you would take $70 shipped I would buy it from you.

Gamestop is not a bad place to work at, but the pay is not very good at all. I quit my fulltime job so I could go to school and got the job at Gamestop so I could at least have some money. As you can see though it's got it's perks like the free trial cards, and not to mention that I can take any game I want home and play it without having to buy it.

I have about 60 of them sitting at home in my living room. I work at Gamestop and every game that comes in that someone trades and leaves the code in there becomes mine. Send me a pm if you want.

I have some pics from my Escort trunk installs of the past. I never attempted to do an 18 though. Here they are if you wanna check out how I did what I did. All of the subs in the pics are of 12" woofers.

Yes, but it was just barely under 32 degrees when it snowed on Sunday in NC. Not that it matters but he said the temp there was -14 and that's a 46 degree difference then what the temp was here when it snowed. On the topic though the Kinetik 800 is not a strong battery to begin with and the cold on top of your vehicle and stereo use is definately why it died so quickly. You were using a battery comparable to a AAA battery to do the work of a D battery. You didn't have enough to begin with and never gave it a chance.

I recognized a lot of those faces in the video. However, I don't know about Jay taking any rings from Derrick in 139.9 this year

For 1K-1.5K rms I'd run the Sundown Audio Zv2 12's. They are a beast of a mid level woofer and will outperform either of the other two subs that you listed. If you wanna step it down a little then the Sundown sa12's are no joke either. They are only a 600 watt rms driver but I run 4 with a 3500d per 2 at .5 ohms and they take it quite well.

Or [email protected] I was there the other day and he had some laying around.

I have this cdt comp set here http://www.woofersetc.com/p-9108-es-610x470-cdt-audio-eurosport-65-2-way-component-speakers.aspx They are mounted in my doors to go along with a PPI comp set in the kicks and they are fantastic. They produce very loud clear mids/highs as well as accurate loud midbass. I would reccomend them to anyone. As you can see they are marked down $330 since they are last year's model so your getting a great deal too. I'd like to get another pair of them to replace the PPI comps in my kicks when I can afford them.

Here is a link to the actual build. I kind of stopped updating it after a while cause it seemed like no one was interested. http://www.stevemeadedesigns.com/board/topic/38750-nightshades-focus-zx3-build/page__p__550978__hl__%2Bnightshade%26%2339%3Bs+%2Bfocus+%2Bbuild__fromsearch__1#entry550978

I will also add my .02 on this by saying choose a REAL career to spend your hard earned college money on. This seems to be the overall feel of responses that your getting here because it's not all it's cracked up to be. I've installed in the industry for about 3 years and absolutely hated it. I didn't like the dick for a coke head boss I worked for, not to mention all the pressure to get shit out the door. Like Dave said speed is important and sometimes quality will suffer because of it. I'm much much happier to do installs now that I don't have to fuck around with random people's nasty as hell cars all day. You do get nice cars most of the time, but then there are those cars that come in and your just like what the fuck is this shit. It looks like people actually drive their garbage cans into the shop expecting you to be some sort of fucking comando digging fox holes to run some effing wires for an amp that is worth more than their whole car. Keep it as a hobby, the schools that are available cost way too much for how little you actually learn. They're not worth it trying to teach you enough to get a job in the industry for the 2-3 months they last. If they were more like a year or two that would be a different story.

Or was it that your just that much more of a beast with the persuader? Either way one of the best series of videos I've seen pertaining to car audio in a long time. Thanks for the entertainment!

Honestly not enough port area in my opinion. With 2 6's and 7 cubes your looking at 8.07sqin per cuft. My box that I run the equiptment in my sig is at a ratio of 11.59sqin per cuft and plays anything from 30-60hz loud and clean. If you want my honest opinion I'd do 6 4" ports in your setup as well. Iirc the aeros at partsexpress are $12.50 each when you buy 4 or more so that's $75 for all 6. Where as the 6" ports are $38 each, so $76 for two of them as well. I'm very sure that the 4" ports are going to be louder and I actually did a box in my car setup that way for 2 15's. I ran 2 Nightshade 15's in 7.2 cubes after displacement. Then used the 6 4" aeros tuning the box to 37hz. They were powered by a pair of Sundown saz3500's, and did a best score in that box of a 153.1 on the dash sealed at 42hz. This was my daily box for the longest time and I still have it sitting in my garage portless. I have some pics of it if you wanna see. I did happen to run it different then most anyone that I've seen but this was the loudest way, which was subs firing back at the hatch with the ports firing up at the roof.

Still quite a victory. Maybe one day people are gonna wake up and realize that when the sun goes down your score goes up.

Ouch, not quite the compliment that I would be looking for but.... Did you happen to see that it was done at 29hz???? There aren't that many people around that can do over a 150 below 30hz, so I'd say that is definately an achievement. I'm sure if he wanted to tune the box higher to work with the vehicle's resonant frequency you'd see about 3db added to that score. Congrats Jimmy, that is an impressive score at the frequency your playing. I'm afraid to even let my subs touch 29hz let alone burp and be loudest there.

EXACTLY

How many X12's do you have?