1986 Jeep Grand Wagoneer college budget install: EFFICIENT BASS ON THE CHEAP!

[rocketman123]

Hey guys! I've been watching this site and reading y'all's posts for a couple years and I've finally come up with enough money, time, and knowledge to dive headfirst into my first real car audio install. Now, this "real" install may not seem like a whole lot, but given my shoestring college budget and limited funding it's pretty big for me haha. But anyway, enough chit chat, let's get right down to it: I have been planning this build for about 6 months, when I received the plans for the enclosure (early December), but I didn't have the equipment, funding, or time to do it. I FINALLY got down to business and built and installed it over the last couple days. It took about three days and ~50hrs total with a couple of my friends helping to get it all finished.

The good stuff:

The enclosure is a 6th order series tuned bandpass, designed for one 2007 model Rockford Fosgate P3D215 500 watt sub. The amp powering it is a Rockford Fosgate P700-1BD. The enclosure is designed for audible performance over a 25-45hz passband, with a bias towards the lower end of that (27-36hz). I gave him the majority of the back end of my jeep, up to seat level, for gross available enclosure volume and he used basically all of it. The internal volume is around 13 cubic feet!

Before I had Pete design the enclosure, I sent the sub to him to extract accurate T/S parameters:

Needless to say, many of the parameters vary substantially from the OEM specs.

Theoretical frequency response and impedance profile at the driver's side headrest.

More to come tomorrow!

[ch0sen]

looking forward to it

[Scynte]

The design on that box is pretty awesome.

[bassface]

why does the port get narrow then expand out?

Edit: just read 6th order so disregard my prior statement.

Edited July 5, 2012 by bassface

[rocketman123]

Alright guys, here's more pics:

Had to move the table saw outside, 4x8 sheets of mdf are big! The lack of a sufficiently long fence on this portable table saw lead to some somewhat questionable cuts, but I was able to clean most of them up. Everything ended up being within about an 1/8"...not too shabby for what I had to work with!

Doing the cross cuts on an OLD radial arm saw my dad got for free some time back. It can make a 17 inch or so cut, so on each cross cut we had to flip the board over to finish it.

Wood is cut FINALLY. Took 8hrs with breaks from the time we started strategizing how to cut 4x8 mdf sheets on our limited equipment to time of completion. (Thanks for the help guys!!)

Drafted the designs on the bottom piece to help with baffle location. HELPFUL TIP: MEASURE TWICE. The double stack baffle was 3/4" off because I measured from the end of the board instead of the edge of the 3/4" mdf front face. I didn't realize it until I had drilled, glued, and screwed the double stack baffle to the bottom face. Had to back all the screws out, fill the holes, redrill, reglue, and rescrew the baffle. D'OH!!

[rocketman123]

The goods! and part of my big 3. (That Sundown E15 is part of a new project I've been planning for the fall, more on that later!)

Running the RCA wires. Battery to amp will come up through here as well, next to the factory rear speaker wire body pass-thru grommet. I had to run that amp power cable along the chassis, nowhere to hide oversized 1/0 in the cabin!

My redneck fuse install for the moment until I get the fullsize ANL fuse in the mail. Also, top view of the Big 3 (minus the alternator positive to battery positive, forgot to do that one until today).

Fully soldered and shrink wrapped ring terminals. Should last a long time!

Amp temporarily here until i get the firewall bushings.

Box coming together. The pictures do not do it justice. I am 5' 9" and a fairly muscly 190lbs, and without the internal baffling I could get in that box and close it up with room to spare inside. It's HUGE.

[rocketman123]

I wanted to make the top removable so I could take the sub out when I sold it and put in the E15 temporarily before I upgrade the whole system. I had some of this insulation stuff that I used to ship the p3 sub to pwk to test so I figured I could try it out and see if it would work to seal the top panel. I used these wide/super thin head trim nails my dad had laying around and I think the whole idea worked pretty well. I haven't felt any leaks around the perimeter of the box, not sure about the inside, but if the outside sealed, I'll bet the internal baffling did as well.

Wired the sub down to 1 ohm (dual 2 ohm VC's in parallel) with the Knuconceptz Karma SS 10 gauge wire and ran it through the two baffles with holes cut by a spade bit. Caulked the crap out of the pass-thru's.

Since I bought 10 gauge wire, and my sub only accepts up to 10 gauge wire on the voicecoil inputs, I couldn't just twist wire together and stick both in to one voice coil to run another pair to the other voice coil to get a parallel hook up. I had the bright idea to solder them together! Problem is, I didn't even think about the fact that the solder wicks up the wire, so these wires ended up solid all the way to the tip. I had to reheat and hammer them a bunch, then file them down just to get them to fit into the push terminals. Oh well, it is actually easier to put them into the push terminals now compared to the bare wire..

[rocketman123]

I drafted the enclosure design on the top plate as well and marked the places where I put nails in to hold the pink sealing stuff on so I wouldn't hit any of them when pre-drilling the screw holes.

And here she is!!! BEAST MODE. Weighs 200lbs+, ~13+/- cubic feet internal volume.

MOUTH OF THE BEAST

Some more pics.

Next post will be a vid or two of the system!

[rocketman123]

Well, apparently youtube craps itself when you try to upload .mp4 videos created with an HTC rezound? I'll see if I can convert it or something and upload it tomorrow unless anyone has any insight? This is my first time uploading vids to youtube

Edited July 6, 2012 by rocketman123

[Aaron Tuck TBA]

Looks pretty cool bud! not sure about the YouTube deal but excited to see a vid.