beckerson1 Posted December 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2012 We were able to get the MX-3 put in yesterday, well roughly as the setup instructions are really vague... but to the install First off the unit itself looks really good with the chrome finish so I wanted it to be seen but with an extremely clean finish... I've been looking at the drivers side rear well for some time and imagining a nice flat finish with the unit inset with matching fabric that bleeds into the curves for a flawless flat finish... Kinda got the idea from those sub boxes that go into the same area... Just looks clean and flows With all this in mind we took a few measurements to make a mounting base for the unit with close to a 30 degree angle to give a nice look... The base was a basic triangle setup with a 3 in base and 8 in high... Want to say sorry for the crappy cell phone pics but didn't have my camera with me as this was a spur of the moment type of thing... The whole mount is drilled into the sheet metal right behind the carpet... Now that we had the basic mount done up we had to figure out what we would use to make the beauty panel to hide and clean things up... After running to our local Wally World we found a sheet of black Foam board that we could shape to the contours of the well... This stuff is actually quite strong and when coupled with the fabric/carpet finish shouldn't have much of an issue with things damaging it to much... I mean for $2 it wouldn't be hard to replace/fix... Basically we just used a utility knife to cut the general shape out... Being careful to not take to much at a time: Next on the list was to cut out the window for the MX-3... Once again we found and cut a small window where the unit was and then cut small pieces off until we got the finished look... At this point it was time to run power, ground, remote, and RCA input/output wires... Won't go into much detail about this but the wires where run behind the carpeting through the stock hole in the carpet from the screw tab that held the carpet up and to the unit itself... It was recommended to put a 5 amp inline fuse on the power wire as the unit itself isn't fused. We didn't have a inline fuse holder on us so we had to make our own... I do have on order a fuse holder and that will replace our mock up... Once it stop raining I will get more pictures for you... At this point this is a work in progress so things are not tied down Now tuning this thing was really unclear as there isn't much detail out there about the unit and the tutorial vids for this unit don't necessarily sit well with conventional amp tuning... I will probably make a DIY about setting things up correctly using this unit as things can seriously go wrong if things are not set up right... A few weeks ago we were able to determine that I have a slight dip right around 37 hz of roughly 3 db's... So we focused right on a 40 hz tone for the setup with roughly +/- 5 hz to either side of roughly 1.5 db boost on the MX-3. Depending on how good the clipping indicator is there isn't any hard clipping until the exact peak of my max output at 47 hz... And were talking a millisecond... I don't really worry about it as this unit seems to pick up any clipping within the recording itself and i can't really do anything about it. Hopefully in a few weeks or so we can get back on the meter to further tune the unit and tune things correctly at that point... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beckerson1 Posted December 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2012 Small update: I'm currently in the planning stage of building a centralized mounting board for my remotes, a rocker switch for disabling my ELD (thing pisses me off so much, the delay is horrible), and possible another voltage meter up front that will be on a switch that would allow me to run it when I want to keep an eye on it up front... Probaby will run all new wire directly from the battery to it if I decide to do this... I will be placing this in a din right in front of my shifter which I can part with... Its quite a large area so here is what i'm planning so far... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beckerson1 Posted December 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2012 In a couple days 98Civic and I will be busting tail to get things done before school starts. So here is whats planed: 1) Tap into the sensory wire and add a switch to enable/disable the ELD (Electronic Load Detector)... 2) Build a central mounting board for remotes, voltage meter, and switches... Here is the planning/build log for this little project... Won't go into much detail here so take a look at the link provided: http://forum.realmofexcursion.com/general-car-audio-spl-discussion/75912-centralized-remote-mounting-board-help-ideas-build-log.html Here are the switches and voltage meter: 3/4" rocker style switch, blue "ON" indicator light... Very audible click as well... Stinger voltage meter, Red, same as my one on my amp rack... 3) Fix courtesy lighting wiring. Place them under carpet for cleaner look, possibly put them on a switch as well... or possible wire them to work with both doors, as of now I have them wired to work with the driver side door (tap'd ground into switch)... Thinking we will have to use a series of relays and whatnot to make this work... Probably will post a thread for help to figure wiring as its a little over my head to know what exactly to do... 4) Deaden rear quarter panels, add foam tape to metal to plastic contact to kill rattles, fix any loose panels... Tighten things down and double check interior for more rattles... 5) Tare everything out the trunk and fix wiring from MX-3 to amp rack... Clean up 6) Strip boxes down and bondo boxes for cleaner look, Sand the crap ton out of them for flawless look, Repaint... 7) Repair mounting board and add either metal plates to bottom of board and add bolts for more secure mounting Replace boxes and components, Re-tune highs amp to 80-85W RMS and double check mono amp for correct gain setting (set it using my tone generated in audacity (WAV format for both highs and mono amp)) 9) Replace MX-3 and carpet beauty panel to match trunk carpet and get it looking nice... That should about do it, as you can see we have quite list of work ahead of us so we plan on taking close to 3+ Days to complete everything... Will post a lot of pics/vids if I take any and keep an eye on the central mounting board build log as it could be quite interesting how this will come out... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beckerson1 Posted December 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2012 Had good progress on my central remote board, take a look at the build... There wasn't a lot that we did other then that today... But we where able to get the MX-3 panel wrapped today: The carpet (carpet from our local audio shop) is a charcoal color... Slightly lighter then stock but still looks good... PS: Yes got all this audio in the trunk and can still fit my golf clubs, actually can fit two... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beckerson1 Posted December 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2012 Day 2 Progress: ELD work, meter work Had a very productive day running wire and getting things looking nice. Started off by removing the air box and battery (safety, also wrapped terminals so there could be no way to ground out the caps from the amps) for more working room... That's one thing about this car is that there isn't a lot of room to work with inside the engine bay.... BTW here is the DIY I used: Unplug ELD? - 8th Generation Honda Civic Forum Once we had some working room it was time to remove the fuse panel and pop some tabs to get to the bottom of the panel where the ELD is located... Next we had to find the sensory wire... Orange with silver hashes... and extend the wires into the cabin where I will be able to enable and disable the sensory feed... I took us a few mins to find the correct plug as it was located underneath all the mass of wires going into the fuse panel... Here is a shot of the wire cut: For the connections we used but connectors, heat shrink and on top of that electrical tape as well... And to secure this in place we were able to stuff most of it back into the stock loom for even more protection... The toughest part was trying to figure out how we were to get this into the vehicle as there wasn't in the way much we could work with going through the firewall... So I was looking around and noticed that it could be run through here: Up by the side mirror and down into the door cavity which we then ran it through the same place I ran my speaker wire: Thank goodness we had some petroleum jelly for lube as I'm sure my friend would have killed me, stole my car, and probably run it off a cliff... lol This ate up most of our time, but was worth it as it looks very clean... This wire then runs back behind the interior fuse panel: along the front, under the carpet of course, up into the cousel area and into the bin where the mounting board will be located... While doing these was also decided to run a direct power and ground from the battery for the voltage meter... The meters remote wire is wired directly to a switch so I can turn it on and off when I want even if the car is off... As of right now I have the switches and meter temporarily in place... After doing some initial testing the difference between the ELD on and off isn't really noticeable with the amount of power I running... Had to do some adjusting to the meters but running 14V full tilt and 13.8V- 13.9V with the air on... There was a lot of delay once the first initial start up happened, after reconnecting the battery, as I would dip down to 12.5V and it would then climb slowly, about 5 seconds to return to 14V, but testing it more today it doesn't dip below 13.2V in most cases... and jumps right back to 14.1V in a second or two... Driving down the road I was getting a solid 14.2-14.3V consistently, didn't matter what I was running... The biggest difference I will probably see with not running the ELD is gas mileage as basically is used to lower the demand from the alt which in turn improves fuel econ... It was simple to do and easily reversible if I decide to revert back... Today we plan on mounting the board, components, and potentially wrapping the board as well... Not quite sure if I will like the looks, or potentially do a more permanent setup involving bondoing the unit to the bin instead of making it removable and painting the bondo flat black to match the plastic for a seamless look... Then see about wrapping the board itself, or do what I'm doing with my boxes and paint it a gloss... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beckerson1 Posted December 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2012 Updates (Non-car audio related): Not to much going on other then work and trying to find some time to work on the car. So instead of making another thread and seeing this thread is mine:p I decided to post up car mods and whatnot else related here as well... So here is what parts I have for a cheap simple mod: Some Scotch 77 adhesive Yard of Red fabric suede, not exactly this stuff: Home Decor Solid Fabric-Signature Series Suede True Red*: home decor solid fabric*: home decor fabric*: fabric*: *Shop | Joann.com Hint it has something to do with the doors... That's all I'm giving ATM, should have pics up later tonight... I also have some pending items that I still need to recieve: 1) Aluminum shifter base bushings: 2) My shifter boot is wore out so I'm replacing it with a leather with red stitch boot: 3) In the mood for a weighted nob as well, plus the stock is a scratched up... Stay tuned for updates Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beckerson1 Posted December 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2012 Here is the result for the driver side... It was getting late and was getting tired and didn't want to mess the other side up so I just got the driver side done... I will tell you know pics don't do the color justice, its much darker then the pics show... Door off and insert removed... It was very simple to remove (13 screws and some plastic taps that needed drilled out): Here is the stock black suede: Tried to get as even a coverage as I could, let it dry till tacky and applied the new fabric: After some patience here is the new insert: Got it trimmed up: Here is the final look in the door: Door installed on car: Now I need to look into either fixing or replacing the arm rest there... Its faded bad... Maybe I will continue the red on the lower band there and keep the top black... I've seen the whole thing red and it looks tacky... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beckerson1 Posted December 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2012 Hey all I just wanted to post up the build for my new box. I want to thank Cxa for designing/modeling the box and assisting me in my decision, Fallen for drawing up the box and explaining things, and 98Civic for helping build the box... With adding the new box the amp rack had to be removed and the amps needed to find a new home. So I had some thinking an considerations to make as the only places that they could go were the back seats and the spare tire well. Seeing I'm a triple A member and rarely take long trips I decided to ditch the spare tire and place the amps in its place. Please excuse the mess as right now its temporary as we have to build up the area to clean the wires up, add fans, and add supports for the box: The mounting board we used is a piece of ply-wood cut to a rough shape of the bottom of the well. To anchor it down we used the stock bolt with a slight modification to firmly hold the wood down... Whats not shown it the relay which controls all remote/accessory power... Now this isn't done yet but I'm thinking that I will build up sides and a top and making a box that will support the false floor and box and then make an access panel with the two fans (pulling air out, drawing cool air in)... Now that the amps where set it was time for the box. We decided to use birch as the wood of choice for its strength over MDF, and its lighter weight as well... I will have to say its very easy to work with, better then MDF... Unfortunately we didn't have the luxury of a table saw and the T square wasn't so square... So we were forced to measure with a tape measure... Something I learned in Wood Shop was if forced to use tape measure to somewhat accurately measure something you go from the 1 inch mark over the stop as there is play and causes wrong measurements... And on top of that we had to free hand... The baffle section consists of two sheets of birch for strength. Here are some shots of the baffle piece cut out: Now shown here is the baffle being glued together. We made sure to add a lot of glue and used some screws in the area which will be cut out to pull it together and used clamps on the outside: Here are the final pieces all cut and considering they were done by free hand we did an amazing job as they were almost exactly the same size as the model drawing: Now with all the pieces of the puzzle cut out we mocked up the exterior walls of the box: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beckerson1 Posted December 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2012 Now some people don't do 45's but I felt it would be a good idea and wouldn't hurt: Being satisfied with the look of the mock up we started the process of gluing pieces together. The process uses both inset screws and glue as some people tend to just use glue: Now it was time to mark out the cutout for the sub. We found middle and determined the correct radius to use to form the cutout: After a little glue on the first set of pieces was dry it was time to paint the port (painted flat black, I will have to note that the birch really looks nice with paint and the fact that it doesn't absorb like a mad man is a plus): Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beckerson1 Posted December 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2012 Then continuing gluing pieces together: We also rounded the port as well: Gluing the port in: Very small slot port (Please note that everything is exactly to specs as to the drawing, NO BS here) : Here is the mock up of the start of the sealed portion of the 4th order: Once again glue and screw: Here is what she looks like inside: We decided to paint as I will be adding a visual access hatch: Finally after some time the sub is in: I don't have any pics atm but we used brass bolts for the + and - to connect the inside to the outside for easy removal of the box. There will be two access hatches (either both clear or one) that will be big enough to access the sub without destroying the box. Also I will also be painting the exterior of the box a base coat flat black and a finish of gloss. Initially we gain set the sub for 300W RMS at 2 ohms as we didn't know how the sub would react and we didn't know the rise of the box either. Now its set to 700W RMS at 2 ohms and the ssf set to 28-30hz... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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