Kickass Audio's new system

[kickass audio]

Burnt spider & tinsel lead on coil 1:

Burnt spider & tinsel lead on coil 2:

Now since the tinsel leads were broken and I couldn't fix it without taking the cone and spider pack off the former I had decided to take the sub and get a recone from Ascendant Audio and put it in myself. Now mind you I have never reconed a subwoofer at all before. The only experience I had was to take the surround from my old Kicker CVX sub and putting that on my dads old Pioneer subwoofer because his surround was dry rotted and that worked great. Anyways here's what I just did today. I took a utility knife and cut the first spider off the former and then I took a flat head screwdriver and lined it up straight and hit on it with a hammer. I did this about every 1/4 inch to crack the glue seam and then I used the utility knife to the spiders and cut from the inside to the outside and removed it from the former. The cone was the biggest pain in the butt to get off, I tried the screw driver and hammer trick but that was starting to make the very top of the former get bent just a bit, the glue was way too thick to get a knife through so i just took the cone and folded it in and out on each side to break the seam and pulled it off. Here is the result of the spider & cone removal:

Coil & former:

Ohm load on coil 1:

Ohm load on coil 2:

Little cleaner picture of my o-scope reading:

[kickass audio]

Here is the very quick video I made of the outcome from reconing my SMD 18" myself.

It was easy to do on a flat floor when I was in the basement however I smelled the glue before I began to apply it and it smelled very strong. I didn't feel like hearing my parents or sister who are mainly downstairs complain about the smell from that glue so I carried all my things to the garage. Bad move, the garage floor isn't even at all with the big ass tree growing next to it uplifting on the concrete so it was hard to get the coil centered on it in the garage. What took me 2 minutes every time I removed the recone kit and put it back in to center it in the gap with my homemade shims took me 10 minutes in the garage. But I kept practicing in the garage with it to make sure before i laid the glue down that i got it right and after 1 hour of practicing I figured "Oh screw this, it's so close to being centered, I don't get coil rub, just the cone when rocked hits sooner on some spots compared to the rest (note: it did this on the stock coil that came with the SMD so i wasn't too concerned about it, just wanted to see if i could make it perfect). I Had then put down a lot of the Stick Fast CA thick glue on the spider and surround landing and dropped in the recone. I clamped down just the spider pack and for the surround I tucked it into the little lip on the basket and then took a big piece of plywood I had from when I built my box and set that on the top of the surround. Then I took my old blown Kicker CVX 12" and set that face down on the board to use as a weight to push down on the surround. I left it like this in my garage for 2 hours and it was about 70 degrees that day (random hot week we had a few weeks ago). I went out after dinner and tested all the glue joints and i couldn't budge it at all. I still wasn't about to install it so I let the sub sit in the basement for another week before I installed it in the box and then in the next week after it was installed back in my Envoy.

edit: I forgot to mention that the only thing that didn't turn out too hot for me was the dustcap. I put too much glue down on the cone and when i pressed it down it oozed out quite a bit but when i tried to spread it out to make it even it was already hardened so it kinda screwed me. Its just the part where the glue came out from under the dustcap. There is still a solid glue joint on there and it doesn't leak any air from under it nor does it rattle so i'm very satisfied with it. It looks way more badass having a black & blue carbon fiber dustcap (courtesy of DC Audio) that is signed by Steve Meade himself. It really pops in the sunlight.

One last thing that is different from before is that now I have just one single amp for the SMD. Instead of two Massive Audio DB 8000's strapped at .5 ohms (stupid idea, i blew one amp, the other one still works surprisingly lol) I now run a single DC Audio 5.0k amp at .5 ohms before rise. My imp rise is barely at 1 ohm so its good for how its running and never over heats or anything bad plus I have wayyy more than enough electrical to back it up (except when in idle, I learned yesterday to not bass at a red light because my alternator will take so much power to try and feed that large demand of electrical current and it stalled my engine at the light lmfao. I dont normally bass at red lights but this one guy kept staring at me and had the look of "I want to hear it, turn it up" so i did lol).

Heres a guts shot of my 5.0k, im going to put this in the amp guts section too as well as the guts for my old Stetsom 2k6d amp I used to own and my old and beastly Precision Power PC2350 amp that I still own.

[kickass audio]

Another little update for you all. I ordered two SMD VU-1's for my Envoy as well as an XS power 12v compact intellicharger to help keep my batteries working strong. Right now the battery under my hood rests at 12.95v (wow, it usually rests at 12.5 when its less than 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside but thats not bad to me. When its above 30 it never gets lower than 12.7 so to get 12.95 now is very impressive for me. My rear battery bank sites at 12.85v but i think this is partly to blame for the .10v drop that i have in voltage from my front battery to the rear bank when the engine is off and even when its running. Im going to run a dedicated ground this summer to try and fix this and if it doesnt then ill run another positive run, not a big deal to me.

Anyways the one thing i wanted to see if i could get some opinions on or suggestions would be where i could place the two vu-1's when i get them. I thought of putting them in my dash however there is very little room in there right now. I thought about maybe relocating my HVAC controls to under the center consoles compartment and seeing if i can fit two of them in there but the opening is mainly a single din for that slot. I had another idea to put them both up in my headliner because it would be in view and i think would look awesome being up there shining down but my headliner and roof flexes really bad when i get lower notes playing and im afraid that when the headliner flexes too much that it would snap the pcb of the vu-1's.

One last thing, for the compact intellicharger, does anyone who uses one face any parasitic drains from keeping that constantly attached to your batteries? What i thought to do was to take the intellicharger and chop off the clamps that it comes with stock and put ring terminals on it and bolt it direct to my rear battery bank then bolt the box for the intellicharger to the side of my enclosure and then when i want to (probably once or twice a month to keep them up and running strong) plug it into my house and let it charge over night. Does the charger itself draw any excess current from my batteries when its not plugged into the wall to charge? I was wondering if i could keep it connected to the batteries all the time or if it has power draw to put a fuse inline with it and then pull the fuse for the charging wire when its not charging.

Thanks everyone for your help and tips!!

[kickass audio]

Alright so here is the updated video I made to show what changed (not too much) since the last update video i made. The only real changes are the addition of Future Vision 4300k hid's with their 32mm projector for the low beams and a 50w ballast for the high beams, the recone of my SMD 18 with a custom black & blue carbon fiber dustcap signed by Steve himself, changing from using two massive audio DB8000 amps for the sub strapped at .5 ohms to using a single DC Audio 5k for the sub and tuning the system with the SMD DD-1 and CC-1 (that is such a great improvement, I love that i bought both of them)

Here is my video:

Also I just recently bought two of the SMD-VU1's for my Envoy, still deciding on a place to install them at when i get them so if you have any ideas please chime in. Your help and input is always appreciated.

I have another video uploading now of me attempting a shirt trick. It didn't get too violent like most members on here but I dont think its too bad for a single 18" sub.

[Kyblack76]

Excellent my friend!!... you are rollin bud...

[kickass audio]

Thank you man. I can't wait to do some other nice mods this summer to it. I'm going to see about fiber glassing and do my a pillars with the four Ascendant Audio Mayhem tweeters I have (2 per pillar) then depending how hard i feel that was ill fiberglass my doors and get some more mids and highs for it. Maybe 2-4 mids and 2-4 tweets per door (not gonna bother with my rear doors, they are pointless with the seat being folded down you cant hear them at all. If i do the doors then ill upgrade my amp for the mids and use my old Precision Power PC2350 amp for the mids only and then use my 175.4 for the tweeters. It should be nice and loud with that.

[kickass audio]

And here is the shirt trick video:

Not too bad for my expectations, i didnt expect it to be all that intense. Probably would have been better if i turned off my infrasonic filter but w/e.

[Mostar]

Nice videos man! Looks loud for a singe 18. Nice gear too!

[kickass audio]

Thank you sir. Its loud for me and my previous systems. My older ones were tuned super high and hit hard but not low like i prefer. And thank you for the compliments. Im waiting to see what things turn out this summer and what i learn and how to fiberglass for my next set of projects.

[kickass audio]

Oh and one last thing i forgot to add. Since some parts of my dashboard (the headlight switch panel and my passenger side door controls) the backlights for them burnt out so i am doing a LED mod for them and depending on how hard it is i will do the rest of the truck with them including my cluster gauges. I was thinking about doing it royal blue or a navy blue, something like that. This summer shall be interesting for what im doing to it with the spare time i have.