03 Max/ib Install

[JoshP2002]

Hey,

I'm Josh - this is my first post here, I figured Id start it off with what my vehicle is like. Ive been admiring Meades work over on the RF forums for a while now, and have been posting this install for the last month and a half or so there as well - so a lot of these will be "reposts' in a way, but I hope you'll still give me some input as to what you think of it.

This is a bit of background.. and a lot of information. I dont expect you to read much or any of this, but if your curious about how I went about it and want to do something similar to it yourself.. I hope it helps.

The car;

03 Maxima

6 Speed manual

Black + tinted windows (Front and rear)

It looks good.

The sound;

IDA-X001 Alpine iPod specific deck. Got it last week, loved it ever since.

3Sixty.2

Power1000 5 Channel

Type X Rca's all around

Rockford 1/0 wire

FNX2614 (x1, door + apillars with FNQ tweets)

FNX2514 (x2, one set in the kicks, one set in the rears)

FNX1414 (x2, 2 speakers and a tweet per front door)

T212D2 (Soon to be put into an IB setup!)

Dynamat (100Sq ft or so for the trunk, then I'll focus on the frame)

The idea;

Switch it up a little! Im going to be taking out my old box and amp rack and rebuilding it all. Im going to flush my amp into the spare tire well by fiberglassing, use some plexiglass over it so as to not put the amp at risk. Then the sub will be put into an IB setup front firing into the rear seats with vinyl or leather to make it look factory (Ha!)

Old setup;

http://www.rockfordfosgate.com/forum/topic...?TOPIC_ID=29191

Materials;

Dynamat

R-20 Insulation for the baffle and possibly rear deck, I have a lot of it now.

"Great Stuff" for sealant

Two layers of 3/4" MDF for a baffle (1.5" total)

Vinyl or leather

Carpet for the trunk

Plexiglass

These are the speakers.. and where they are placed

I have 5 sets (4.66 as I dont have one set of tweeters, 1 tweeter per 2 4" speakers)

It looks like this..

Front door;

4 Mids (Broken down, (2) 4" in the door panel, (1) 6.5" in the door, (1) 5.25 in the kick)

3 Tweets (Broken down, (1) FNX with the (2) 4", (1) FNX in the A-pillar, (1) FNQ in the kick

Rear door;

1 Mid (Broken down, (1) 5.25 in the door

1 Tweet (Broken down, (1) FNX - Yet to be determined. I think I'll put it in the lower b-pillar so as to make a similar style idea to a kick in it.

All in all, there is 7 speakers per front door, and 2 per rear. All together there is 18, and then 1 12" subwoofer. With the quality of the speakers all around, the highs/mids/lows all blend together well without being overbearing on one another, although I still need to fiberglass the 4" speakers + tweet in. But I always have room to turn up the sub too, its set low on both the deck and 3sixty.

This is how its wired

Keep in mind Im running a 5 channel - but the sub doesnt concern wiring for the speakers, so 4 channels for reference. And! Since I keep things uniform (Left and right are symmetrical, so I only have front and rear now)

Front channels - FNX2614, FNX2514 (2ohms total)

Rear channels - FNX1414, FNX1414, FNX2514 (1.3ohms total)

My amp puts out roughly 170Watts RMS I believe at 2 ohms, and about 210 at 1.

So for my FNX on the front channels I have 85RMS a piece on 75RMS speakers.

For my FNX on the rear channels, I have roughly 70Watts RMS to 75Watt RMS speakers.

Keep in mind in that Im talking about the 5.25+tweet kick, and the 6.5+tweet in the apillar. Both the furthest front stage.

This works really well for me because on my front channels my two biggest drivers (6.5, 5.25) are powered well and will shine. This also for me (And should also affect your mrrairai) is a huge benefit because when I tune with my 3sixty.2 there is very very marginal difference that I would do to the speakers if they were separate. This allows me to tune them together, and not worry about if they were.. lets say 6.5 and 4".

For my rear channel I have 2 FNX1414 and 1 FNX2401 tweet in each front door, situated in roughly the middle further back. I'll post pictures of that soon, but I have to wait for it to heat up before I can do anything to it too. The rear channel also included a set of FNX2514 in the rear doors for the passengers so they arent overcome with bass.

This also works out really well - because I need minimal midbass in the back I can tune the 5.25 + (2)4 speakers together and focus on the 4" speakers. They are slightly underpowered by 5Watts RMS which is also not such a bad thing because they do not need to be giving the 5.25 and 6.5 a race, just keep up and do it proper.

[JoshP2002]

This is all the progress I made since I could only work in my house - but something is better than nothing. Or so Id hope!

Here's the new 4 channel amp wire, cleaned up.

Every thing will be soldered, once I run it in the vehicle then I will solder on the terminations/connections so as to not have to deal with trying to drag that through as well.

My old dash was really out of place too - for one thing, I never use the pocket below. For another its a black dash kit.. my dash is silver for the majority of it.

Heres the metra kit, the one in there currently and the one that I made the next piece out of - or rather added on I guess?

So I grabbed another dash kit like the one above for the time being, put some materials behind it just to keep the MDF in place, and bondo'd it. After this I sanded, painted, sanded, painted, sanded.. you get the idea. Its still not to the point of perfection that I want it at either, but its getting really close. I went back from work today for lunch and gave it a good go again.

This is how its coming..

Sanded..

Even more

This is where it sits right now -

Almost done!

You can see in the picture the small black lines as well leading up from the heater control, Im going to try and replicate that on the dash kit. We'll see how that goes.

Otherwise the three holes - those are for the 3Sixty, and then 2 are for the Power1000 5 Channel. Quick control for changing genres of songs, and the knobs match the silver/black interior as well.

I'll probably run the new 4 channel amp wire, new REM, Power, and a siren trigger alarm to the back come Tuesday night too. Im hoping that dynamat comes in soon to do the trunk, and I'll design the baffle out of just cardboard this week before drawing and cutting onto MDF.

[JoshP2002]

Heres what I did for the heck of it.. ripped out the old speaker wires and such, and ran new ones.. cleaned up behind the dash.

My dash before..

Its a rats nest.

Heres what Im running now. Its a pain to run multiple cables.. I should have taped them before I ran them. Lesson learned. 5 18G wires (2 REM, 2 Power, 1 Siren remote) and Im picky about it.. thats why I have 2 REM and 2 Powers rather than 1 distro'd - along with that, another Cat 5 for the 3sixty, aaand the new speaker wire.

You can hardly see it but there is four crossovers back there, which I'll soon use velcro to stick onto the side and keep in place. Works well.

Soldered and ready to go into the crossovers

Wires for the kicks

Hidden away under the seat going into the trunk

What my trunk looks like laid out with wires.

So far its been kind of a bust for the build, but I hope to change that around Saturday. Remove the back seats and all of that plastic around.. and see what comes up

[JoshP2002]

I took my car into the shop today, ripped out the back seat and paneling - and every move I made I realized my car is perfect for an IB install. And every move there was new idea's too

Back seats almost out..

Back seats are out!

Trunk

My Mess

More..

Just empty. Tire well is where my amp will go. That I might actually be able to hook up tomorrow afternoon again.. just to speakers.

All of my wires reran through a more appropriate place - now they wont be in the way.

The perfect place to start for an IB install! Or so I think!

Drawing it out

3/4" MDF

First sheet screwed in.

Second sheet

Two sheets = 1.5" thick with dynamat in the middle (Once it arrives!

Installed back into the vehicle for support.

All in all Im pretty happy, I ended up getting sidetracked helping a guy try to get his windshield wipers on.. so that took up a while too, his car was messed up.

But this is whats going to happen -

I only have a couple of screws in that baffle Im sure you guys noticed - no, its not going to hold a sub like that Once Im finished it will be mounted properly and very strong. Im going to mount the sub inbetween the two, dynamat in the middle to build it up, get it strong.

This will be covered in a vinyl that I found that is exactly like the leather too, its nice. So when you flip down the seats it will look good, but not flashy. With the second layer of MDF covering it you wont see any screw holes, it will almost look like a w7. The sound on the other hand will dominate the w7

Other than that the amp will go into the spare tire well with plexiglass covering, and Im not sure if I want to put the 3sixty there too or on the side, Im undecided.

It will be really nice to dynamat the car - without the rear seats in at the moment, it sounds so loud. I'll take a picture of all of my equipment tomorrow, theres a good amount..

[Bass4Lyfe]

first off welcome to SMD!!! and that looks SICK i'm just beginning to read the full of it but so far looks awesome u got some good stuff bro keep it up!

[BASS14]

welcome to the site bro!!!! i read some it....that is too much to read but i do like the car.....and the sub....cant wait to see wat its like when ur done!....good luck with the build.

[JoshP2002]

The dynamat.. Holy. Hopefully within 2 weeks now, I need to give the guy a call on Monday (Tomorrow) to see what comes of this. Since it wasnt ordered then, Im going to get another 100Sq feet for kicks and see what comes of it, my floor I realized is very noisy. Especially without the back seats..

I went to go pick some up at the store, 500 retail with 250 cost for 36 square feet! Thats brutal. almost 14 bucks a square foot. So I didnt do that, I'll just be patient.. 2/5 the cost and almost 3 times as much.

Since I miss sound in general I started up a bit of an amp rack today - what looks like nothing in these pictures is quite a bit more than something. Its perfectly level, and theres multiple feet underneith for support and structure. I'll probably put the amp back in tomorrow, the weather was not nice and I only had the option of working outside.

Heres the amp rack..

Heres the amp on the rack..

So I'll screw it onto that rack, I'll end up doing sides around it and carpeting that, then putting my floor cover overtop and then plexiglass over a cutout over the amp so as to make sure nothing scratches it and having full funcionality of my trunk. Im playing with the idea of putting LED's or something around the amp to give it a glowing accent, but Ive never really been into that either. What do you all think, to LED or not to LED?

[roscoe1129]

I wasnt aware that the Fosgates could be ran I.B.

[JoshP2002]

All that is changed is the trunk a bit - I cut a big hole for the amp to show through. Speaking of which I sent my amp out too, its on its way to Ontario to be serviced as the LED's are acting up. RF really handled that one nicely too, great customer support.

Heres the amp rack coming in..

Im going to put some Flex Filler around the edges to make a smooth edge and then put plexiglass over top to make sure nothing scratches it. Plenty of air down there, and it doesnt get too hot so it should be good for keeping cool.

The cardboard is a cut out of the exterior wall. This will hold the insulation inbetween the baffle and the back. Theres a gap in the middle.. Im going to brace this piece to the baffle and then have an opening around the sub chasis - how much clearance do you guys figure I should have? I was thinking 2-3 inches around it, just so that it gets proper air movement. But at the same time I want a minimal amount of front and rear sound waves intermingling.

Two panels.. they will be carpeted, braced, stuffed with insulation for sound blocking..

Right side

Left side

Altogether!

So thats all Ive got for you guys for now, with dynamat coming in this week everything should get going on a roll and I should be able to have the sub in soon. Then the amp comes back in about 3 weeks I guess, and we're good to go!

[JoshP2002]

The speaker is fit, the MDF hole came out pretty darn nice -

The top piece to the baffle WAS good..

When I ended up remounting it in the car and then sucking the bit of metal in that was "warped" I guess from factory it tossed the top baffle off creating chaos. So it no longer fits over the sub properly but! I can easily make a new one since I have the cutout.

The dash is color matched as best as possible.. I paid a bit of money just to color match and spray bomb it, and its still not perfect, but it will do - in the dark lighting of my car, you wont notice a difference.

This package came back from RF for me - shipped it out snail mail on the 23rd after a lot of help from RF tech support, it arrived on the 1st (My fault for sending it out so slow! Oh well.) and it got back today! Thats pretty impressive. Fixed and shiny! Heck ya.

In its unpackaged state (Very well packaged, the girl at UPS did a great job for me, very kind! Sorry to see Thummps bad experience in his thread!)Im pretty sure they even cleaned it up too. Kudos!

Alright.. so I drove 300km there and then 300km back today to pick up these..

Heres stock

Stock nissan 17" - now winter tires!

The rubber on the new ones is thinner, but the rim bigger.. all in all, they almost even out

Except for the fact these are so sexy.

I got home from the trip, wanted to see the rims on the car, ripped into the garage and spent a bit of time getting down and dirty to see what they were like. Not much time at all, and well worth it!

MRR 18" rims, 8.5", 235 in the front 240 in the back.

You all know I love them, but what do you think? I wont cry if you down them, and yes, I will wash my car soon - and no, they arent installed yet, its still winter here, and summer tires on snow do no good againt anything. Give it a half a month or so and I'll be rolling on those!