2013 GTR SQ/IQC Competition Build

[Lunchbox12]

With a time shortage we forgot to snap night time pictures of the trunk, so i guess we will have to wait for JJ to provide us with some of those This is the only picture we took (prior to the ipad holders) in the dark...sorry

and lastly, a pretty fitting picture taken by Joey, i call it "a man reflected in his master piece" hahaha

So thats it for the finished pictures. Prior to it leaving, we didnt have a huge amount of time tuning it, but those who heard it at the open house knows its a nicely balanced system throughout.

Center is well placed in the middle of the dash with very nice height and depth. Width is sail panel to sail panel. the midbass output and extension on these gladen drivers is something else...and i truly believe that on some songs, if we allows them to run lower, you would not miss a sub at all. Overall, the sonic characteristic of this set is one of smooth airiness, with a lot of authority and good detail. its not bright nor edgy, but just well balanced throughout. If i had more time spent with these, i can give a more thorough impression, but those are my initial thoughts. The zero pros also a great job of blending in with the rest of the system...i see them as a pretty typical high end european style sq woofer, good output, nice impact, good extension and transience. Overall, i am quite happy with how it sounds and with a bit more tweaking, it will only get better

so...lets now move onto the build pics...

[Lunchbox12]

First up is the wiring from under hood to the back seat area:

A theme you will see throughout the build is that all the audio related cables have been wrapped in blue techflex (a color theme that was already present on the car), terminated by color coded techflex and labeled at each end. first, to provide adequate current for the system, two runs of stinger 0 gauge a able was routed into the battery compartment via the oem grommet. here the cables with the stock battery setup:

Joey utilized two factory mounting points for securing the fuse block, here you see the metal bracket after bending and trimming to mold to the two oem locations:

here is the stinger dual in dual out quad mini ANL fuse holder being test fitted:

the metal bracket was then grinded, hand sanded smooth, primed and painted black.

the bracket was then bolted to the car:

[matt14]

I seen this on there facebook page ( simplicty in sound ). Would have loved to be able to go down and see about a demo, but I think the car has already been shipped to the customer. We have a large GTR clientele at the Nissan dealer that I work at and my closest friend is a GTR tech. We had a GTR come in that was recently purchased used, but was in the middle of a install. They asked who to recommend and I tried to refer them to this shop

[Lunchbox12]

we also augmented the stock grounding cable with another Stinger 0 guage, the head of the ring terminal was ground down in one side to fit to the oem grounding location:

The short run between the battery terminal and the input of the fuse holder was then created, note that the wires have been fully soldered into the ring terminals. these were then of course techflexed and heatshrinked and everything was then bolted together and secured:

Then it was time to install the replaced XSpower D5100R battery, it is generally the same size as the stock battery but it is a little bit wider front to back and a little bit taller. So joey modified and extended the stock battery hold down to fit this new piece:

and finally, here is the fully completed battery compartment with the new battery and all the cables labeled, secured and routed:

moving onto the interior, here is a sample of all the speaker wires that have been techflexed...all audio related wires have been done the same way:

[Lunchbox12]

we also augmented the stock grounding cable with another Stinger 0 guage, the head of the ring terminal was ground down in one side to fit to the oem grounding location:

The short run between the battery terminal and the input of the fuse holder was then created, note that the wires have been fully soldered into the ring terminals. these were then of course techflexed and heatshrinked and everything was then bolted together and secured:

Then it was time to install the replaced XSpower D5100R battery, it is generally the same size as the stock battery but it is a little bit wider front to back and a little bit taller. So joey modified and extended the stock battery hold down to fit this new piece:

and finally, here is the fully completed battery compartment with the new battery and all the cables labeled, secured and routed:

moving onto the interior, here is a sample of all the speaker wires that have been techflexed...all audio related wires have been done the same way:

[Lunchbox12]

now comes a bunch of pictures showing the wiring bundles as they travel from the front of the car to the back. on the driver side was the RCAs, the driver side speaker cables DSP controller cable and remote turn on wires, while the power cables and passenger side speaker wires went down the right side.

both bundles are ziptied and secured to the car every 3 inches or less:

[Lunchbox12]

All the power and ground cables terminate in the stock bose subwoofer location. the stock enclosure was removed and a new L shaped wrack was built that bolted in place via rivet nuts. it features a slew of thread inserts that secure three distribution blocks, various ziptie hold down blocks and very importantly, a Stinger 40 amp power supply. This piece, used in conjunction with the smart controller, allows us to plug the car in, and it will either trickle charge maintain, rapid charge, or full on supply, automatically, depending on the situation. We had her playing all day during our open house with no issues. the extension cord for the power supply is routed to the gas cap filler area and allows the car to be plugged in with ease (more pictures of this later)

Basically, this was an exercise in routing a crap load of wires neatly, and still within the confines of the stock center trim panel and the seat cushions.

I kinda like the power nerve center skynet look when it was all done

here you see it with the stock bose woofer trim panel on:

when the car is completely back together, the front grill panel of the subwoofer piece can be snapped off by hand, allowing easy access to the fused distribution blocks:

[Lunchbox12]

Headunit/DSP controller Mounting Fabrication

As mentioned before, integrating an aftermarket headunit into the GT-R was a pretty interesting process and aside from some rumors that a few guys in asia had done it and basically extended all the wires and tucked the factory unit under the dash, we couldnt find any prior examples of this being performed...so maybe we are the pioneers?

anyway, so first, the dash area was taken apart, and here you see the factory headunit at the bottom of the center stack, thought its hard to see, its actually at a slightly different orientation than the dash it self:

here is the view with the front fascia removed, showing the actual size of the unit itself and the mounting point

What joey did then was to completely disassemble the factory headunit, removed the cd player mechanism and the sat radio board, and what he ended up with a much more compact single din sized module, well a series of boards really...he then built a new chassis aroundt he boards out of ABS, so now we have a smaller brain module that is much easier relocated:

the P99RS was then bolted to the stock bracket after some careful measurements and drilling and test fitted to the oem opening:

next, a template of the oem fascia was fabricated and a opening that precisely matches the P99's trim ring was routed out:

then the opening for the Mosconi DSP controller was also routered out of the template board:

this shape was then transferred onto a piece of 1/4" black acrylic that will act as a front snap in cosmetic cover. meanwhile a support piece was glued to the MDF template piece and once again it was test fitted:

next, the mdf piece got the support straps attached for the DSP controller, it was painted back, and neodymium magnets recessed into the front face, these magnets will grab onto matching magnets on the back of the acrylic top cover and locate it in the correct place, this whole structure was then test fitted once again:

next the acrylic top plate was polished and test fitted:

[Lunchbox12]

here you see the knob for the mosconi controller being turned on a file to create the shinny ring effect identical to the knob on the P99:

next, the wires coming from the bundles and the headunit is prepped and plugged together:

the headunit was then secured, the mounting plate secured and the mosconi controller wired up as well:

here you see the matching neodymium magnets attached to the back of the acrylic cover:

and voila, everything together in the vehicle:

[Lunchbox12]

Front Stage Fabrication:

First up is the door midbass, I kinda went overkill on the sound proofing lol

here is the raw door panel itself after the weather stripping was taken off:

next, on the outter door skin went 25 pieces of blackhole tile...the basic end result is that if you knocked on the outter door skin, its uh...quite dead.

next, two sets of techflexed stinger speaker cable was run into the door via the stock molex...tight fit but got em to go:

and the openings were completely sealed with a layer of Focal blackhole BAM XXXL composite damper: while some blackhole foil went on the surface surrounding the speaker mounting:

next, i fabricated a pair of spacer baffles for the Aerospace midbasses, and coated them with 5 layers of truckbedliner for protection from the much wetter elements of the pacific northwest, note threaded inserts used at the mounting hole locations:

and bolted the baffles to the door using oem bolts and mounting points, the edges were also sealed with butyle rope: