01 Explorer (2) AT Strato 18s in a 4th

[sounddesires]

Nice cant wait to see what ya got ... The at subs are actually surprising for the money

[slammedincouch]

Nice cant wait to see what ya got ... The at subs are actually surprising for the money

I definitely agree with you- for $120 subs they pack a lot of quality in them.

Got up early before all the football and got the subs in the explorer and wired up

Got about 10 minutes of play time on them and here are my impressions off of 780ish watts:

-The subs sound A Lot better to me in a slot ported enclosure compared to all the space and weight I gave up for the 4th order. It just isn't worth it to me.

-The subs sound great in anywhere from 4-5ft^3 per sub for the 18" versions. Yet again a nice space saver for someone with stock suspension that doesn't want to sag. The enclosure and subs seem to weigh a little bit less than the lvl5 with the enclosure which is another plus.

-Tried to get a variety of music going on them. Tested them on some dub (nero's remix of ghosts and stuff), rap (a$ap rockie wild for the night), pop-ish (bruno mars gorilla), and older stuff (the eagles witchy woman). Everything sounded pretty good throughout the whole setup minus the alt wine I have in the tweets that I need to fix I'm gonna try and throw some more music at it later including some country, trap, os rap, etc

Overall feeling about the Stratos is that I think I'm going to end up keeping them and possibly wiring them down to .5 and giving them ~1000-1100watts.

For someone looking to do a low power and low budget build, these are great subs. I'm not saying they're the loudest subs I've ever heard, but for a daily setup to get me through the winter months, they get decently loud and sound great doing so in the right enclosure (4-5ft^3 per sub; I'd say probably 4.5-4.7 is around a good place to have them). Not to mention that there aren't a lot of low power 18s in the market. I'd love to eventually test out some of the 12 and 15 inch versions to see how they compare, but for now these will do it.

Now I just need to figure out what I'm going to be doing as far as the amp rack and then I should be pretty set for winter.

[slammedincouch]

Finally moved my build log over to MAF, so figured I'd update this as well...

CURRENT UPDATES

So last time I updated this was in September. Since then:

Got an offer I couldn't refuse on the AT Stratos. Had to sell because I already have too many subs. Kid claims he shattered the rear glass on his explorer, but I still highly doubt that's the case, taking into consideration that he couldn't even figure out how to wire them to a 2 ohm load.

My stock alt started taking a dump right after I sold the stratos (we're talking chilling between 11.9 and 11.5 without any audio hooked up). Immediately made this purchase:

It's dope. Here's what it looks like installed. Cleanest thing under that hood.

I also upgraded all the wire under the hood finally to the DIYMA oversized 1/0 wire I purchased wayyyy back when they had that sale.

Always chilling at 14.2 now and it's amazing.

Before I update this on what's inside the explorer now, I think it's time to update this on things that HELD UP my build. I've had A LOT of issues with this vehicle and dry rot. it has not been my friend. At some point during its previous ownership to my parents, my dad tried to fix things on it with globs and globs of Body Filler (anyone who's friends with me on FB knows about this and there's been some great jokes at his automobile fixing techniques expense). Any who, here's the super fudged tailgate I've had to deal with (literally the whole bottom is straight body filler):

Truck then got to the point where it was rotting right through and wouldn't even lock (yep can even unlock the window with ease and possibly some tetanus)

The Ford way to fix it

The other major issue was the rear driver's side fender. completely rotted away thanks to the winters we have here and the salt. Here's after I removed my dad's mess of straight bondo.

I've got pictures of what it used to look like, and it was BAD. Didn't even look like a fender at all. There's also some more dry rot in that picture...

Yum. So me being me, I Wanted to have everything fixed the correct way with torching off all the bad and welding on some new sheet metal, but I don't have the tools, nor is the truck worth that kind of money at this point to fix it that way, so I fixed it as best I could with a ton of fiberglassing and cleaning it up with a small amount of bondo. My dad saw what I was doing and Tried to help, but he doesn't understand the concept of "a little bit of bondo goes a long way" SO here's what it looked like AFTER I sanded off all the bondo he slapped on it when I was out running errands one day.

At some point in time I got it to a finished quality, primed it and dipped it and never took any pictures of all the rust i had taken off the rest of the truck.

[slammedincouch]

Bottom of the doors were beginning to accumulate some rust at the bottom, so I sanded it off, bondo'd, primed, and dipped:

End result:

I dipped a bunch of other things on the explorer, but I don't have any pictures of it atm. Will have to take some pictures once the temp goes to 32 again aka not until later this week.

I also purchased a new tailgate back in November that has been sitting in the garage. Kind of pissed because I bought it off ebay, was told by the yard I bought it from that it was in AA condition aka best of the best with no minor defects and fully functional, but it arrived with a huge scratch/dent combo on one side and the rear wiper motor is broken. It looks better than what I had on there thought:

Have the whole tailgate dipped blacked, not because it looks good, but because it keep all the salt and moisture off the paint aka no rusted away tailgate. Need to get pictures of this as well.

I'll update this in the afternoon tomorrow with all the audio stuff when I wake up. Need to get some food and sleep for now. Also have the hiccups.

[kryptonite]

Lookin pertty dude!

[dionysus]

I'm diggin the build so far bro! I'm going to be starting on my explorer build as soon as the weather stays a little nicer!

[slammedincouch]

Lookin pertty dude!

Got some shots to post of her, but she's just drenched in salt so it's hard to even see what it looks like. Got anything going on in the ranger right now or just rollin with the swampers on?

I'm diggin the build so far bro! I'm going to be starting on my explorer build as soon as the weather stays a little nicer!

DEFINITELY hold off for warmer weather. Working in a closed garage with a tiny space heater isn't worth it haha not to mention you'll feel less rushed to get some fresh air if you're doing any sanding.

[slammedincouch]

AD: NEW Audioz/Current Build As of 1/21/14

Audio Update:

So still haven't had the M3 8s fixed...

which means...

Lvl 5 went back in.

Also decided I really wasn't feeling the CS 6.5s. I was having some major issues with alt whine because I didn't have a nice single speaker wire that could be ran into a passive crossover that would splice the frequencies for the woofer and the tweet (aka one +/- line in to wf +/- and tw +/-) and as you know about the previous run in with the doors, I couldn't fit another run of it in. So I had to basically cut into the factory speaker wire between the door and the HU to get the tweets amped.

Any-who, it sucked and I couldn't stand the amount of feedback I was getting from the way I had things.

Decided to get these:

They're sexy

I also got some more power for them too...

150x2 @ 1-4ohms is a beautiful thing. I love this amp and would totally switch over to more JL slash or HD series given the chance to.

Wasn't even going to attempt to screw these into the doors (which I will be redoing come spring) without added support. originally I had some ghetto pieces of mdf blocks holding them in, but they sucked and the holes also needed to be cut a little bigger

Made these, which I should have done from the beginning, but didn't have a proper router and jig setup to do so, but it's fixed so it's all good for now.

SO originally the plan was to do a direct swap from the DD comps to the JBLs. Of course nothing is that easy though. The mids fit in the door with a little cutting, but the mounts for the tweeters were another story. the T2 mounts were larger than the JBL's aka they just fell right through the panel's cutout when I went to test fit them. So no go there. Have to leave the tweets in the door to keep them sealed up too.

Decided to just leave the T2s in and run them, figure something out with the JBLs later on down the line and just get everything back to playing.

HATED the passive crossovers. Compared to how I had the DDs ran active (minus the alt whine), the crossovers felt like they were extremely limiting in the bandwidth freq.

On top of that, the T2 tweets were also distorting on higher frequencies due to being able to handle the power they were getting. I didn't want them in there regardless, so this was just getting to the straw that broke the camels back point...

[slammedincouch]

At this point, I decided to just say forget it- going back to to active with a vengeance. Plan was to move the tweets because A) I couldn't get a nice run into the door and there's better place to put them.

Thought it might also be a good idea, considering the surplus on 2 channel amps I had and an AudioControl 4XS that I bought back in 2011 that i've never used, to buy some mid range drivers for that added bandwidth (first time having dedicated midrange speakers in a car). After reading a ton of reviews on diyma, I decided to buy a pair of Fountek fr88ex drivers- they had great reviews and were within my price range.

Onto the pictures:

The very FIRST thing I did was test out that all the amps worked and that my plan would work.

Plan was:

JBL Mids > JL 300/2

JBL Tweets > DD C1b

Fountek Full Range drivers > Alpine 3542

Here are the founteks and the mdf flush mounted rings I made for them

Here's the crappy a pillars I have to work with- they're super limited in size/space (especially on the driver's side) and I wanted to mount them in a way where I wouldn't block any of my vision

Also should mention due to the limited amount of space, the drivers would be best mounted on axis. It was a good choice.

A LOT OF FRUSTRATION went into this part of the build. Trying to angle, hot glue, test to see if the FR driver was going to fit between the pillar and this stupid piece of metal that was in the way, and make sure that everything was Goldie Locks took FOREVER. I spent about 4 hours trying to get everything right, then tearing everything down, redoing, cutting more of the pillar away, rinse and repeat. Eventually I got the angles down correctly and decided they were as good as they could get.

Originally started them up high and then gradually made them go lower. also had to cut away some of the pillar so that they would look alright once they were wrapped up and glassed.

Believe they were too close to the windshield here, so I had to pull them off and redo things AGAIN.

Frustration made me skip a lot of the next few steps (i.e. the finished angles, wrapping and so on). So here's what they looked liek after a coat of resin and hardener

Looked like loose B-hole. I know. Speaking of which, new Workaholics tonight. Don't forget to watch that ish.

Went back after this, chopped into them. Made some cuts to glass over and basically give them a better shape. Idk why I only have pictures of the driver's side unfinished. Though I took some of the passeneger side, but I guess not....

After some more layers of glass and stuff, I got to the filler stage...once again, thought I took more pictures than I did, but I didn't. Here's the first coat on them

and here's after a few hours of sanding...

[slammedincouch]

Decided that I Wanted to wrap these in some nice vinyl, but that funds are tight on supplies and I want to buy an upholstery pneumatic stapler before I wrap them. Until then, it's plasti dip and stickers with A LOT of clear this time around. Went with matte clear this time and used a ton of it (2.5 cans I believe). one sticker on the driver's side didn't go down all the way, but other than that, they aren't going anywhere until I wrap them.

Finished-ish product

They look like they're mounted awkwardly with angles, but I assure you that they are on axis, aimed correctly, and sound Amazing. By far the largest difference in everything that I've done to the explorer was doing this. All my music sounds rich and full now instead of bland. Makes me appreciate the country and dub a little more (yeah opposite ends of the spectrum, but I listen to both in my explorer every day I drive it).

I love it so much that I take it out in blizzards to drive slow and listen to my tunes. I think this is where I'm moving more to an SQ based system 4lyfe build and I'm going to be moving out of trying to just be loud aka I'm probably going to have the Malibu when I pull it out of storage.

Next update is pretty recent: Getting everything tidy and getting rid of Spaghetti that is my backseat/trunk.