Box for S10 with JL10W7s, Paint, Raptor Liner Oh my!

[kdh]

edit.. this was posted on s10forum, but I thought I would share with you guys. =)

Took me a little while to get to it but I finally got to Texican420's speaker box build. I'm pretty excited to do this. I've never done a set of JL10W7AEs before. Pretty monsterous subs.

Normally I would have built this box to be a single long box. But these subs weight in around 30lbs each. Texican requested that we do 2 boxes so it could be easily removed from the truck by himself. When all is said and done, I'm guessing each box will weight roughtly 45 - 50 pounds. I'm building ported box's tuned to 32hz. From the research I've done, that seems to be a good middle point for most types of music. Each box is around 2 cubes each. Why 2 cubes? The JL Website Ported Encloused Specifications sample box ran at just under 2 cubes.

I used this site to help me with the box math and port tuning: http://www.bcae1.com/spboxnew2.htm and the JL website

http://www.jlaudio.com/10w7ae-3-car-audio-w7ae-subwoofer-drivers-92114to get all the specifications that I needed.

So onto the pictures.

Texcan wanted it so he could still put various odds and ends under the speaker boxes. Jumper cables, jack, some tools. Stuff like that. Here we are doing some test fits. from the lower part of the floor there is about 6" between the floor and the box for space. plenty of room for stuff.

Test fitting the other side. We made the passenger side wrap around the trim pannels to make it a little bit more of a custom install instead of a basic box.

Got the first box roughtly assembled and test fitting. As you can see we are going to flush mount the subs.

Give you an idea with the seat back..

Other box in there for a test fit.

Both in there to give you an idea as to how it will look.

And seats back.

Texcan got a shot me using my jasper jig to cut out the baffles.

Got one sub loosely in the top and bottle baffles. These subs are monsters.

box loosely put together.

Got the other box's upper and lower baffles cut out.

Got the passenger box all glued and screwed together. I actually sandwhich fiber glass weave between all the joints because some of the cuts were not perfect.

Inside shot.

Here is the edge of the passenger box that sits agaist the jump seat trim. I didn't get a shot, but I did round off that hard edge.

Little spandex action.. You can see i rounded that corner. Much cleaner.

All trimmed up.

I didnt get a shot of it, but I then covered the spandex with fiber glass resign to stiffen it up. I then added 2 layers of fiberglass weave and resign to all the seams. Again, this is to ensure I close and seal any gaps between some of my uneven cuts. Over kill? Yes.. But its 10w7s were talking about here. =)

Another shot.

Here is the resign cured..

Here are the boxes side by side. The 2 top baffles are not mounted.. They will be tomorrow.

Nother shot.. Notice the side wall is pushed in some? Thats so we can flush mount the amp he has into the box.

http://whoisdjkdh.com/images/oscarsbox/oscar0021.jpg

Again.. Another shot with weave and resign in the seams.

http://whoisdjkdh.com/images/oscarsbox/oscar0022.jpg

Here is the fiber glassed corner.. I forgot to get a picture of it, but there are 4 layers of chop matte on the outside, 2 layers of chop matte on the inside, and 4 layers of weave on the inside. I ran out of chop matt. It should be pretty strong. Might add another 2 or 3 layers on the inside tomorrow.

http://whoisdjkdh.com/images/oscarsbox/oscar0023.jpg

I don't plan to do any additional bracing at this time. The boxes are pretty stout. If it was a single long box, I would, but with these.. I don't plan on it.

Thats all I got for right now.. But the above is about 16 hours of work over the last 4 days. I didn't do it all, Texacan helped quite abit the first 3 days.

We have some big plans for what the final product will look like. But it will not only be functional, but super slick.

Keep checking back for updates.. Comments and suggests are welcome.

[kdh]

Here is todays work. You can see the chop matte in this pictures from the previous days work. This is before I trimmed it up.



Trimmed up and some light sanding.



Sanded down some of the excess lumps and bumps here around the box, this is kinda a boring picture...



I've done this in the past and it seemed to work pretty good. I mixed 4 OZ of Rage Body Filler, and 4 OZ of resign, added a bunch of catalyst and mixed it up. I guess this is called a milk shake. or some form of it anyway. I've read about it in the fiberglass forums. I brushed it on and left it alone. The idea is that it will self level and make sanding easier. Here it is before any sanding. I think it worked out ok for the most part.



It sanded pretty well for the most part with some 80 grit paper.



And more sanding with 80 grit paper.



I filled in all the holes with rage body filler, sanded them down and rounded over most of the edges.



The edges need to be hand sanded a little bit more. But they came out nice.



Cleaned up the area where the amp will mount, and rounded the inside and outside edges. Again, I need to hand sand this area little more to make it prettier.



I added plane ole rage body filler here, this area needs a final sanding but I think it should be good after this.



Doesn't look like much but that was 7 hours of work. Mostly tedious detail work.. Boxes look uneven, because the floor is a little uneven. There is still a little ugly with them, but they will be prettied up here very soon.

Still have to build out the ports and cut them into the baffles. Hope to sound test this guy by Wednesday night.

thanks for looking

[kdh]

small amount of work tonight.. finished rounding out the corners, and Texican came over and helped drill the mounting holes.

few test fits.. nice and snug..

and other shot.. That surround looks awesome.

Obviously we have to mount the top and bottom baffles, do a little clean up of my edges and install the ports.

If things go well, we hope to sound test on Wednesday, if not defintily on Thursday. It still looks a little ugly in this stage, but nothing a sander, some elbow grease, and some body filler can't fix.

[kdh]

We got a lot done from the last update. We'd be further but we had some pretty cold weather in Austin the last few days.

We got the ports cut into the boxes. in this picture I painted the inside of it, so it looks like a black spot.. Meh..

Another shot. You can really see that boogered up edge. I fixed it pretty good with some rage body filler and then re-rounded that edge.

Here is the other port.. Not painted.. You can see the edges nice and rounded.

Close up..

Here we got all the detail work done, sanded and complete at this point. All edges rounded.

Nother shot. You can see the top mounting baffle. And the 4 mounting screws we use to hold it down. Ports painted at this point.

Side shot.. That fiber glass edge came out nice.

Hmmm.. What seems to be happening here?

Uhh whats going on?

BAM! Raptor Liner. Texican and talked a lot about how to cover this setup. Carpet would be nice, but he plans to take these boxes in and out of his truck. Carpet would easily get dirty and messed up. Paint was out of the question. I showed him my bed that I did in my s10 and he liked the idea. So we went with a simple Black Raptor Liner.

Texican took this shot.

Nother Texican Shot..

Nother Texican shot.. Looking good. I love the coverage of this stuff. =)

This is after 1 full coat on both boxs, we used 2 bottles out of the 4. I actually shot this at 70PSI. The texture is very smooth. This stuff has a slight gloss to it. Very easy to

use stuff and the results are epic.

Another shot.

Looking pretty slick huh?

Close up of the texture. Wish this wasn't so blurry.

We did a 2nd coat, but a lighter coat to even things out and get any areas that appeared thing. The 2nd coat only used 1 bottle. Texican took this shot. Here I am being wacky. You can see the 2nd coat really evened it out, and you can see how large the boxes are. Im 5'11" for comparison.

Another Texican shot after the 2rd coat.

We still have a 4th bottle of Raptor Liner left. We closed up for the night and walked away. I'll look at stuff tomorrow and see if I need to use the 4th and final bottle, but I don't think I'll need to use it, and I think we should be OK.

We have 2nd surprise coming for the upper baffles, but that will take a few days to do.

On a side note.. We actually sounded tested one of the boxes today. I was worried about port noise, or chuffing as its called, but I don't hear it. But one thing that struck me as odd, was it was MUCH louder with the windows down then the windows up. I wasn't expecting that. Anyone else experience that with their s10?

Anyway, thanks for looking. keep checking back for updates.

[kdh]

And we are complete..

We got the boxes installed with the top baffle loosely mounted. Just to give you and idea of what it looks like in the truck. We sprayed the tops just flat black for now, just to get an idea of how they looked.

Close up..

Another shot..

Seats back

Got the top baffles primed..

Just another shot..

I used some Skies Hecker Black, the same black found on the new 370Z and Infinity G37 with a decent sized scoup of HOK Silver Pearl.

Based..

Cleared!

More clear. It looks like there is some screw up in the clear, thats the reflection of the plastic on the top of my gheto paintbooth.

Love it...

INSTALLED...

Amp installed.We are going to pick up some wire loom to clean this up nice and tight.

The tops have to be cut and buffed, but we need to let them sit for a few days till it warms up. We are also going to get some of the right sized wire loom to cover up the wires and make it look a little more pro.

Thats it! Thanks for following along. Hope you enjoyed the build. I'm pretty happy with it and I'm glad Texican gave me the chance to do it.

[Tecomah]

Amazing job. Love the paint.

[Eroc3k]

nice! very cool

[Rev. Wrath]

The boxes turned out really nice!!! Couple questions:

1) Are the boxes the same size? The width of the boxes looks about the same (or close?), but one of them has the inset side. It looks like about 3"? That would make a significant difference in box volume and affect tuning.

2) What is your port area per cu.ft? The ports look really small. That may be the cause of it getting louder with the windows rolled up? I'm not real sure on that one. I've never heard of that before so I'm just throwing out suggestions.

Overall, great work!!! And you have me considering Raptor Liner for my next box now haha.

[Rev. Wrath]

Double post fail!!!

[bmxscion]

Nice job job on the boxes! So you only ended up using 3 bottles of the Raptor? What size is the RF amp? What does the rest of the system consist of? Ahhh so many questions!!!!