Door Panel Ideas?

[G_Reaper]

Hey there. Complete noob when it comes to the car audio world. Fortunately I'm a wiring tech so that should help. I'm looking to design some new fiberglass door panels in my car and I'm not sure about what I should be aiming for. I know how to put them together as I have been researching for the past few months however I'm not sure of how I should set it up (speakers, tweeters etc). The deck is a Pioneer (DEH-P310UB) and I'm currently running 6x8's (x2) in the dash, 3.5's behind the seats (x2) and a 12in. Infinity sub with a custom matched ported box. I was hoping I could post a picture of one of the doors and maybe someone could throw a concept together and I could get inspired from it and design something along the same idea. In the mean time I'll just doodle up some of my own designs.

Thanks,

Cody

[**Hollywood**]

How big u wanna go with this ? Do u have an amp ?

[bassrace]

I'd say 2 6.5" mid woofers and a pair of tweets to match, per door unless you wanna go bigger....?

[G_Reaper]

I forgot to mention I have a Mono Pioneer 800W amp powering the 12in. sub. I'm not sure how big I want to go. Like I said I'm so new to this that I know nothing compared to everyone else here I'm sure. So when you say 2 6.5's and a pair of tweets for each door you mean something like this? O.O.

[mbdblue]

are you completely new to fiberglass? if so, I would say full door panels would be a challenging first project; unless your building pods that attach to the existing panel. in that case, it would be a good first. but its really up to you. Id work with interacting shapes for your designs.

edit: this post would probably be better off in the fiberglass section of the forum.

Edited September 20, 2011 by mbdblue

[G_Reaper]

are you completely new to fiberglass? if so, I would say full door panels would be a challenging first project; unless your building pods that attach to the existing panel. in that case, it would be a good first. but its really up to you. Id work with interacting shapes for your designs.

edit: this post would probably be better off in the fiberglass section of the forum.

Yeah I plan to replace just the grey carpet lower half of the panels. I'm definitely not new to fiberglass. I'm just not sure how to interact the shapes that would be visually appealing. I was toying with the idea of something simple like a single speaker and a tweeter to take up the area at the front of the panel.

[drphilb]

I can appreciate your desire to learn how to design door panels. Before you go down the road of the actual design, you really have to consider what your objectives are. If you are building a pod to contain a mid and a tweeter or if you are doing mid bass. If you are doing a tweeter and mid then you should consider your front stage since both speakers are directional. Speaker placement for directional speakers is very important and also how you plan on tuning.

Box enclosure sizes vary depending on the speaker Q values and what frequency you are trying to achieve. For your door panel, it is best to place the mid bass drivers here and place the mid and tweeter on the floor if all possible. Placing speakers on the same plane and closest together will help the mid and the tweeter to arrive at your ear at the same time which in effects create a single speaker just like putting 2 subs together will do the same thing.

I went down a learning curve path as well and tried to build a box in a door panel for a Morel Elate 9. I was able to get 14.5 liters but the requirement of the speaker is about 30 liters. What happens when an enclosure is too small is it causes part of the band to spike which is a bad thing. There is a solution to this problem called an aperiodic membrane that you can create in the back of the enclosure. When building the enclosure all you need is just about 2 inches of clearance in the back of the magnet. This is where the membrane goes and vents into the interior of the door panel.

To get desired shapes you can use jigs to make MDF pieces to then fiberglass or you can use 2 part foam which is easy to work with but requires shaping and then you glass that. Make sure you get flow for the design

Look at some design ideas for the trim but build the enclosure small to fit your mid bass. If your going to do separates in the doors place them as far forward as possible. You will need time correction on your head unit. Separates work best with a 4 as the mid. 4s do not require much volume. I have a pod in the floor that is about a liter or so in size. Place the tweeter close to the mid and closest to the floor. Angle the plane of the baffle to the opposite headrest. You can use a laser pen in the middle of the baffle to do this. One thing to consider is the elements if you do not enclose your front stage.

If you are going for Bling then it really does not matter where you place these as long as it looks cool but if you want SQ then speaker placement is very important

[Sretenjovanovic]

You can make something like this. This is my setup. 0.5Cf sealed enclosures, kick bass is wicked.