06 Civic Build - New Build List on page 60

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Now that’s not all of it of course. I’ve got fans and wires and other things going in as well. These are more going into the component wall than anything. The fans will be in amp racks and behind the processor, but it all has to go in. Here’s a picture of some of that (minus the Pioneer module, that’s gone).

So as I said to fit this much equipment anywhere takes some designing and thought and patience in trying to make it all fit, let alone make it fit cleanly and pop! So how would someone make things fit without actually building it. Well you could draw it out, if you could draw, which I’m not great at. Or you could measure it out, which I’m better at. Or you can spend a little bit of money on some cheap materials that you have no care about destroying or not and start doing a build mock up. That’s exactly what I did.

I bought a few sheets of some cheap insulation foam sheets from Home Depot, or you can get it at Lowes and places like that. It’s about $8.00 per sheet and they come in different widths. The thought process is that you can build whatever you want; using the size sheets you’d use in MDF, and not spend 30.00 per sheet to mock something up. Sounds like a golden idea to me.

So with that in mind, I started mocking things up. First I started with all my amps and the processor as well as some components like distribution and fuse blocks. I even had a helper! Take a look! Now in these pictures, I had plans for different batteries. Those are no longer being used. Now I have the Stingers.

My helper!

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So now that I have all my equipment mocked up, I can start building other mock ups of the actual trunk build. I have the component wall done, which I did mock up for that as well with the foam.

Rear Deck Amp Rack:

So the first step in the trunk for me is to get the rear deck amp rack done. Using Google Sketch up I drew out a diagram a while ago. This was going to be for a different design, but that has changed and evolved since then. Here are those designs. These will give you an idea of what I’m planning to do. In these diagrams you’ll see that the Audison LRx 4.1k and the Audison LRx 2.4 are in the rack. The only change in that is the Audison LRx 2.9 is going in, in place of the Audison LRx 4.1k. I have other plans, which I’ll get to in a bit, for the Audison LRx 4.1k. I felt it was too big and too beautiful of a piece to hide away in a drawer amp rack. The Audison LRx 2.4 stays.

This is with a cover on it, exposing only the tops of the amps. This was for a couple of things. There’s no need to have a cover over these because unless the drawer is open, you can’t see the amps. The second reason is with the open top, venting will be easier and the amps will stay cooler.

Now in doing this rack, I had to sacrifice some stuff. Really only the stock rear fill holes. The reason for that is because the speaker magnets stuck down too low. It was hard enough to get this to plan out, and I had other pieces that need to go away, so to speak, and so I decided to do a completely different install for the rear fill. Along with the rear fill speakers, the center seat belt had to come out temporarily. I might leave it out at this point, but I’ll have to decide that at another time when I get further into the build.

Now some people are gasping, “oh no, don’t remove the seat belt what are you doing!” Well let me explain. First I have two daughters. They both are in booster seats, and remember that I drive a Civic. NO ONE, I DON’T CARE HOW SKINNY YOU ARE, IS GOING TO FIT IN BETWEEN THEM! So that, at this point, alleviates the need for a center seat belt, which is the one I’ve removed. When they get older, and I’m sure bringing friends’ home etc for play dates, then I’ll get it back in there. I may, in fact, figure out a way to get it in there now, but not put it in there until later. That way it doesn’t impede getting the back seat down. There you go!

So here’s a little bit of the mock up of the Rear Deck Amp Rack. Again I used the foam, but also used some wood blocks for some testing.

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That’s about as far as I got with that. The end result will be this. I’ll build a frame using this piece as the top plate. I’ve decided also to utilize the speaker holes in the rear deck for some attaching as well. The trunk springs or torsion bars will be removed later replaced by gas linear actuators. This will also create more room for the rack to sit up closer to the rear deck.

So after I build the frame for the rack, I’ll build a drawer for it and then the drawer will attach to the whole set up using a pair of Heavy Duty Drawer Slides. These slides have notches on them, so when closed they don’t slide open. But I fear that the drawer with the amps in them will be too heavy to stop it from sliding. I’ll do more testing as I get closer to that point.

Now in retrospect of that fact, I’m also going to be incorporating a linear actuator to open and close the drawer automatically. Again, more “WOW” factor! A button will be on the drawer or somewhere in the trunk to activate the actuator.

Now I had to do put that drawer first in line, in order to decide how much height I had to work with on the sub enclosure. The amps are their height, and there’s no changing that. I can alter the height of the sub enclosure. Speaking of let’s get to that next.

Subwoofer Enclosure:

So in my original quests to find a sub enclosure I really liked, and one that I thought would pop in the install, I found some pictures, I drew some diagrams. These are some of the early on diagrams that I drew to do a sub enclosure.

This one is with the subs firing into the rear seat pass through and sealed from behind. Each enclosure is a separate sealed enclosure.

I also thought about just facing the subs toward the back seat in a flat orientation against the seat. This is that diagram trying to decide if I needed to create more space between the seat and the enclosure.

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I also had a couple of diagrams that show a rear firing sub enclosure, vented, with the pass through in the middle. I can’t figure out how to save it in a JPEG format. So I won’t worry about that one.

But this next one is what I decided on. I’m not 100% sure it’s going to work but the way we all learn is by trial and error. I don’t have a diagram of it made up, but I did just mock it up and I like the looks of it, plus the cu ft numbers are right. So here we go with that mock up!

In order to actually mock up the sub box, I had to do something about the sub. These bad boys are heavy, and in order to not have to stand there and hold the heavy sub on the foam mock ups, I had to figure out how to make that work where I don’t have to do that. So, I mocked up the sub. Check it out!

After the sub was mocked up it made my job of mocking up the enclosure 1000 times easier. So I started that mock up. Here are the pictures of those. I’ll go ahead and explain the idea a little after the pictures.

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At this point I needed to check out the space and see how many actual cubic feet I had in each enclosure. So I used the old Styrofoam peanut trick.

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I ran out of peanuts so I measured the space I had left over to figure out my remaining cubic feet.

So with those two measurements, the original peanuts combined with the measurement of the remaining space, I got my full measurement of 1.23 cu ft. This is after displacement. That’s a little bit large I think, but I plan to put some foam in there on the walls so that should take up some other area as well.

Now these next pictures are with the little bridge of sorts in the middle for the Audison Bit One Processor. The thought behind this was to really show off the processor for that wow factor. I think this will pull it off nicely.

However, I’ve started thinking of different ways of doing this. I don’t particularly like the idea of a board going across. It’s too bulky, and I’m just not too wild about it. So I’m in the process of altering that design and trying to go with either a design that will utilize some metal poles, hollow so that I can pass wires through them, and a metal bracket, or some kind of acrylic design. I may actually decide to go with a platform that attaches to the bottom. I’m working on it currently. It all evolves from something.

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Trunk Lid Amp Rack:

So earlier I alluded to a design to really show off the Audison LRx 4.1k amplifier. As I said before it really is a big and beautiful amplifier. It’s about 21 inches long so it makes it difficult to really just put it anywhere. It really commands respect, and demands the center stage. It’s really for the front stage but you get what I’m talking about. So I decided to go off an original design idea I had from the beginning design stages.

In the original design stages of this build I had gone through a couple of different designs putting equipment in the trunk lid. Here are those designs.

This one put the Audison Bit One Processor and the Audison LRx 2.4 on the trunk lid. The thing that steered me away from this design was the amount of wires that had to go through there. There’s plenty of space on the trunk lid itself, but going from the trunk lid to the trunk itself was going to be difficult to say the least to do in a clean manner. So I nixed this one.

Then I thought to myself, remember the “WOW” factor, and came up with this one. The Audison Bit One Processor up there by itself, as a piece of equipment, and then flank it with an Audison and a Hertz Logo backlit with LED’s. Ultimately, as much as I loved the potential of this design, I was still faced with the same design issues of a lot of wires going through the lid arms.

Then I came up with this one with the Audison LRx 4.1K all by it’s lonesome up there. By herself, center stage, and showing off her beauty. Still some wire issues but after measuring the amount of bulk the wires would be and the way I was going to run them, this presented the best option for me! So I took that as a sign that it was meant to be.

So then I started the mock up of that. Take a look!

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So given the power of the linear actuator, or two if necessary, and the gas powered actuators, the trunk lid should not be a problem at all.

Battery Trays:

These battery trays will be pretty straight forward. Fiberglass, wood, creativity, and some flare! I started mocking up the trays but that was with the older mock ups. I’ve not started the new ones yet. Here are the old ones.

Now things have changed with this since then. Obviously, again, I’ve changed batteries to the Stinger SPP1200’s. I’m also changing the position of the Audison SFD-41C. Right now, in the pictures above, it’s sitting next to the battery. The whole side where the battery is going to go will be fiberglassed in. This will allow me some flexibility in order to place the distribution blocks.

The new positioning will be the battery where it is, and then the Audison Connection BFH11 and the Audison Connection BFH11-DGT will go next to it, where the SFD-41C is in the mock up above. The second thought on this is that they both go above the Stinger SPP1200 in a tower type of set up. The problem with that is that if the battery has to ever come out, it’ll cause a problem. I also have the thought of putting the battery trays on a set of HD Drawer Slides, much like what’s going on the Rear Deck Drawer. This would allow me to slide the battery out and then take it out of the tray if needed.

So obviously there’s some designing still to do with this yet. Whatever the design ends up being, it will go the same for both sides of the trunk.

Distribution Blocks:

I’m still thinking about this one. I have a couple of ideas, but I’m not sure one will work. The main idea right now, is to put them on the floor in the raised amp rack in front of the batteries, one on each side.

The other thought of placement was the trunk trim right where the trunk latch is, but I think the raised trunk floor will be too tall to make that worth the effort.

So more designing needs to be done in this area.

Floor Amp Rack:

This makes for the third and final amp rack in the build. We’ve gone over the Audison LRx 4.1k standing tall in the trunk lid. We’ve discussed the Audison LRx 2.9 and the Auidson LRx 2.4 in the rear deck drawer. Now it’s time for the sister amps, the Auidson LRx 1.1k’s. These babies will be front and center on the floor handing all the sub duties for the system. Remember the two subs we have going in the enclosure we spoke about before. We’re going to take these two amps, and we’re going to run them each to each sub. So one amp per sub is how it’s going to go. But, we needed to find somewhere to put it. Remember, space is tight. So what do we do with these beauties?

First I’ve got a base floor already done in the car. Here are some pictures of that project, including more foam mock ups!

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During the mock up process I put the previously mocked up amplifiers up there. This is how they’re going to sit on the floor.

This gives me a good amount of space to work with on the floor.

The base that I’ve pictured above will get cut just in front of where the final sub enclosure is going to go. The base board in front of the sub enclosure will then get removed and boxed in. The amps will sit in the spots like pictured above on the base board. On top of the boxed in base board with the amps sitting inside, a cover will go over it all with cut outs exposing only the tops of the amplifiers. It will get dressed up with some angles and other designs to dress up the area. This is the idea here; the one on top in this first picture is the one I’ve decided on:

Then following that covers will be made so that the amps can be covered up and the trunk has full functionality while protecting the amplifiers.

Doing it this way, allows me to have plenty of space for wiring and gives me the ability to wire freely by having that space. I don’t want to try to cram a bunch of wires and cables into a small place. I want to be able to clean it up the way it needs to be, and is supposed to be.

At the back of the amp rack, a piano hinge will be installed. This will allow me to lift the amp rack to access the spare tire if it’s ever needed, making this a fully functional vehicle, as well as a show type vehicle. Remember, I have two daughters that I drive around daily; it’s a must that I have that spare tire in the car. I don’t want to risk getting a flat tire, and be on the freeway or out in the middle of nowhere with a flat tired, and my kids in the car. I’d rather take the ten minutes to change the flat to a spare, and get my kids to safety.

So that pretty much concludes the trunk summary!

Phase 4 – Front Stage:

The Front Stage on this build is not too difficult to understand, nor is it going to be terribly difficult to do. I’m going full active with the front stage, and as I think I’ve said before, I like bass, so I like a heavier mid bass application. Now I know that when it comes to competition, I’ll have to tone things down, but that’s what settings and the Bit One are for. Otherwise, I’ll have it set up to be a bit bassier up front as well as with the subs. Since we’re already talking about it, we’ll start this phase off with the Mid Bass.

Mid Bass:

In the last build I used a set of Hertz Mille ML165 (6 ½”) mid bass for the front stage. I had them very well tuned at one point, well I guess some people would object with that statement, but for me I was extremely pleased with how they sounded. In all honesty they were very tight, very solid, and I felt that they did just as well as the subs for the low end. There was one point in time, I always turned off my subs when my daughters were in the car, when I had left the subs on and my kids got in when I picked them up at school. I turned off the subs and had made some comment about it apologizing because it was routine to turn them off. We took off on our way home, and my girls asked me “Daddy I thought you turned off the boom boom sound (that’s what they call bass).” I told them I did.

So again, as I said before, I was extremely pleased with the way those performed. So, some have asked, why did you get rid of them? Well I decided to move up to new gear. That’s basically it! I know it’s a little crazy, but nothing on this build is short of the line of crazy! So why should this be any different!?

In this build I’m using the newer version of the Hertz Mille line of mid bass, the Mille ML 1600. Like their sisters, the ML165’s, these are also a 6 ½” mid bass. I don’t know much about the differences of them yet, since I don’t have them in yet, but I’m expecting great things just like the ML165’s. Here’s the Hertz website link to check out both sets if you’d like. HERTZ by Elettromedia - Special Car Stereo Here are some pictures of the beautiful beasts.