Black Beauty Project Build - 06 Ford F-250 Super Duty **1/27/18 - New pics starting on page 41**

[scooter99]

....... i can dig it !! looking awesome!....

do you access to a scroll saw? it would help with for the hdmi cut out. anyways its not like anybody is going to see it

I don't, I've always thought about getting one, but never pulled the trigger. Maybe I'll pick one up in the future for version 2 and 3 and 4, cause I'm sure it'll continue to evolve as does everything else I do. LOL

Thank you.

sick handworks !

Thank you.

Your attention to detail and abilities in general astound me in every part of your builds, teach me the ways of the force jedi master?? I always look forward to your updates, they're so detailed and epic! Can't wait to see your screen build now!

Thanks man. Hopefully I can continue that. I'm supposed to have a double header today, but it's raining so who knows. If I get canceled I'll probably start on the next phase today.

Screen build? Do you mean where I incorporate an LCD screen or do you mean the tablet in the dash.

The LCD screen won't be for a while. At least probably not until the build is underway. When I get this working, I want to get the truck up and running and playing. I don't want to sit too long on it. I'll end up changing my mind lol.

The tablet case is mounted. It just needs to be body worked and painted etc. Otherwise it's good to go. Once I finish the main part of the SDU, I'll be ready to get that finished up and ready to go in the truck.

The unfortunate part of doing something like this, is it all kind of has to go in at the same time. Because I'm not using a head unit to drive the signal from the tablet, it'll be it's own independent source, I have to have this SDU done and ready to go for volume control. The Tablet, the HDMI Amp/Distribution, and the SDU must all go in at the same time, along with the power sources etc. So when I do get to the install of it, it'll most likely be an entire weekend project.

Between now and then, I'm hoping to get some amps in for the doors at the very minimum, that way when it is time time install the source part, I have something to drive the speakers with and don't have to be without for a full week until the following weekend which is likely when I'd have time again to put amps in.

Ok, time to get ready for baseball. We'll see what happens. Thanks for following folks.

[scooter99]

Ok so as promised, more work was done yesterday since baseball got cancelled.

I got quite a bit done, I'm pretty pleased with what I was able to get done since I spent half the day on a "Honey-Do" list too.

There are a couple of things that may throw a big giant wrench in this operation, and I have no way to test them out now, to see if I need to stop and replace the board, or if I can actually continue on forward or not. Maybe someone has some experience with these types of things, cough cough JAMIE WICKS cough cough, and they can give me some insight or tell me if I should be ok or not.

But, all that said let's see what progress was made, and I'll address the issues when I get to them in the order. Let's go!

So starting with the main body of the SDU, I had to do some modifications to the BLD. This will make it much easier to do. I have to remove some things from the board itself, I'll be adding them to another board that will go right next to the end panels, and that board will help with mounting them up. SO I made this with a picture, MS Paint, and MS Word. Page 1.

Page 2, which are the notes that correspond with the first page.

Now come a bunch of pics with not much description. Basically I'm taking off the following:

Gain/Clipping lights x 4 - 3 blue and 1 red for clipping.

Gain knob

High Level input connector

Cleaning up the RCA inputs that I cut off.

Power Terminal

Power LED

Clean up the RCA outputs I cut off.

Starting with the LEDs for gain and clipping. These will be taken off in order, and also paying attention to the direction of them. That way when I go to put them on the panel, they go in the same order as the came off, although i don't think the color matters since they're all blue except for the red one. But more-so the direction is most important.

I bought a de-solder stick the other day, so this will be the first time I've used it. Basically if you've never used one, like me, youtube is your friend, but you heat up the joint and then put the stick on top of the soldering iron tip while it's on the component, then remove the soldering iron, and push down the stick and press the button and it's supposed to suck the solder out of the joint. It's like a vacuum.

This is how I kept everything in order. I didn't show it here, but I did put a + and - on the paper to identify what side is what.

See how clean those holes are. WAY better than using the wix stuff. So much easier!!! Anyone see the issue in this picture?

I'm pointing to the issue. That is a copper lead, that goes along the board under the black paint. When de-soldering the joint for this LED, it stuck to the led black support frame. Like it was glued to it or something. It was not the solder that stuck to it. As you may be able to see, it's extremely small, and I'm not sure if I can solder it or not. I have a micro point soldering iron, and I think I can do it, but I'm not 100% sure.

Another view of the line that lifted up. It goes up to whatever chip that is at the top R48. I used a meter to test it and that's the only place I can see that it goes. So I'm not sure if it's just for the LED or what it's for. Maybe I don't need it, I don't really know. But there's issue number one!

[scooter99]

Next is the Gain knob and Hi level inputs.

Bought a set of little tools, lineman's pliers, wire cutters and needle nose pliers. I like them, except the needle nose pliers would've been better if they had teeth on them. They're a smooth jaw type.

RCA Inputs. I really hate my camera sometimes. My phone takes much better pics I should just start using it instead.

That de-soldering tool really cleans up the holes.

[scooter99]

Power Terminal.

Power LED

All of the components saved. Not all of them will be reused, like the Power terminal, and the High Level connector, but I wanted to save them anyway just in case.

Finally the RCA Output terminals.

A picture of the whole cleaned up board.

[scooter99]

Now that the board is the done, or at least started, I've gone as far as I can go with it. It's time to make a panel to mount the board to, and a relay to, so I can have it as one piece to mount on the amp case. To do that I'll be using a piece of ABS I had laying around. Need to cut it down to size.

The amp case already has some screw holes in it, so I was going to use those to hole the sheet down. This proved to be a bigger pain in the ass than I had planned on it being.

After getting the first screw in, I decided that I didn't want to use those screws, because they were for my pcb panels, and panel nuts. I wanted to use the different screws that I had got with the sole purpose of doing this. They have a phillips head on them as well. So I got my sheet set, and marked out my holes to go drill them out.

Plenty of space between.

And now I'll drill them out.

These are the screws I got to use. They're 3.5mm by like 1/4" long or something like that.

The panel is in. Everything looks good.

[scooter99]

At that point I ended up starting my "Honey-Do" list. But I had already had another issue. I'll get back to that though.

I decided to start putting the board on the ABS panel, and the Relay too. Here's issue #2. I went to pick up the board to lay it out on the panel, and i felt something moving on it. Well, I took everything off, basically for the most part, so what in the hell could be moving. I didn't feel anything moving earlier. So I started to explore, only to find this!!! I think it's a capacitor. Remember folks, I'm not an electronics expert, or even a novice by any means. I don't know component descriptions or what everything does, but I'm learning as I go. I think most of you know by now from following my projects, this one included, that I have no fear about taking things apart and moving them, or putting them back together or what not. I have always been pretty good at that. But I'm still trying to learn what everything does. This is the issue I'm mostly concerned about. This has come half off of the board. One side is separated completely, and the other one seems to be just hanging there. I can see another copper lead ribbon going under it, but I cannot see much else.

This is the end that's not connected to the board. You can see under it that there doesn't seem to be anything there. Even though that's a metal tab and it's soldered on top, there's no hole or what appears to be any ribbon under that tab. You can see on the board where the ribbons go to, they're the lines in the board if you don't know. So I'm not sure what to do. I'm not sure how to test it, or what to test, or what to do here. Where I said I can see a ribbon is about in the middle of the part. I also tried to heat up the tab with my soldering iron and see if there was anything down there that it would adhere to under the tab, and there isn't. I'm a little lost on this one.

It looks like it's an SMD Aluminum Surface Mount Capacitor. Here's a link to a picture of the bare version.

It appears that the ribbon cable I saw under the middle could go to the tabs in there. Maybe they don't just solder on the ends. I don't know. I'm not sure if I should just CA Glue it back down and see what happens. I just don't know. I hate to get this all done and find out it doesn't work, and have to buy a new board ($60-80) to replace it with. It's not just a swap, I'd have to strip it as well.

Oh well, moving on for now.

This is where I'm going to rest the BLD. There is so much coming off of the input side, side closest to the middle of the amp case, that having it this way makes the most sense. The only thing coming out of the other side will be the outputs out of the BLD, which will go to the Output panel anyway since that is the panel that will have the HDMI Port.

Drilling out the holes by hand.

Included one for the relay as well. The relay will be for the remote wire. I'm going to be running a switched wire, which will hook to the ignition as well, as my remote which will run it the SDU. It will go into the BLD as well as the remote relay, and then I will be adding a few output terminals for remote wires to the amplifiers. Containment in one case.

Added the panel nuts. These are screwed in from under the abs panel, so that the board and relay can be removed without removing the whole panel.

[scooter99]

Now, if no one noticed, there were not panel screws in the abs attaching it to the amp case in those last few pics. Well there's a reason for that. The reason, and I've said this 100 times or more, I do so much documenting and picture taking and writing is not just because I love to do it, because I do. But I do it so if anyone does something like this, I'm able to show things that go wrong as well as the things to go right. I'm not perfect, I make mistakes, and I don't mind showing those mistakes so someone maybe can learn from my mistakes. In this mistake, I drilled the original holes a touch too big. The screws wouldn't bite enough to keep the panel in place. So, I had to drill the holes over again. Shown here. That's what I mean earlier when I said this ended up being a pain in the ass. Operator error, not operation difficulty. Lesson learned.

I also used a tap to thread the holes this time.

As you can see even that didn't go as well as I'd like it to have. Broke a screw. DAMN IT!

TWICE!!!!

I also had to change this up from the panel nut, to a screw and nut system. I have a screw coming up through the abs, with a nut sandwiching the abs between it. That way I can add one more nut, like you see, and I can still remove it without removing the whole panel as before. The reason was, the panel nut put the relay to tall and it was possibly going to touch the bottom panel of the whole unit. I didn't want any reasons for rattling. So I quickly solved that issue.

But in the end, I prevailed and got it all done.

So, it's all attached, and in place where I want it all. Next order of business is going to be to get the end panels made up so I can mock those up for the RCA jacks, and plugs, and whatever the hell else is going to have to go in there. I'll try to do that tonight, but I don't know if that will happen until Thursday afternoon when I'm off. I may wire up some stuff and just run wires long for the panels when they're made. I can do all of that in my living room at my desk.

So that was yesterday's progress. It's really moving along now.

[Wicks]

Those ribbons as you call them are circuit board "traces".

Looks like you pulled a trace up as you removed the LED.

No sweat, I can fix that. Or you can, if the trace is still intact. When you resolder in the connecting wire, just lay the trace down and resolder the end back where it was. Then throw some CA glue over the trace to reseal it.

Yep, the second part is a surface mount electrolytic capacitor.

Looks like its solder pad got lifted from the board as well.

The lead appears to go under the part, as you mentioned, which is fine. As long as it is still attached.

If you're not sure, power the board and measure the voltage across the cap. Should be a small voltage under 16V as the cap itself is rated at 16V.

If that's good then just glue the pad down and be careful not to bump it again.

[scooter99]

Those ribbons as you call them are circuit board "traces".

Looks like you pulled a trace up as you removed the LED.

No sweat, I can fix that. Or you can, if the trace is still intact. When you resolder in the connecting wire, just lay the trace down and resolder the end back where it was. Then throw some CA glue over the trace to reseal it.

Yep, the second part is a surface mount electrolytic capacitor.

Looks like its solder pad got lifted from the board as well.

The lead appears to go under the part, as you mentioned, which is fine. As long as it is still attached.

If you're not sure, power the board and measure the voltage across the cap. Should be a small voltage under 16V as the cap itself is rated at 16V.

If that's good then just glue the pad down and be careful not to bump it again.

DAMN, what would I do without you man!!??

Actually that was in line with what I was thinking on the "traces". It's still intact. I was going to pass the wire through the hole, solder it up there, and then bend it over and lay the trace on top of it. Solder it and glue it. So that makes me feel better thank you.

As far as the capacitor, I'll have to double check it on the bottom. I'm blind though and even with a magnifying glass, it's hard to see under there. I may have to do the power up thing and see what happens.

Funny, i don't even remember bumping it in the first place. I've been trying to be so damn careful with this board because of all the little parts on it. It makes me nervous.

Thanks for the help buddy! I'll see what I can do with it. You da man!

[scooter99]

Ummmm, I'll just leave these here! 2 of them belong to a certain someone...........ME...........!! Just waiting for them to take the ride here now.

BUT, now I have to decide on what I want to run with them. I have the 2 XL15's, and I could do a blow through as originally planned. I still don't know that I want to cut the truck though. So I have another though about a 100% custom rear seat enclosure with 4 10's. The problem is the XL's have to sell in order to get the 10's. Annnnnnnnnnddddddddddddddd............every body wants something for nothing these days. So I may be forced to hold on to them.