[Final Update 6/6] 99 S-10 Blazer Build - Lots of setups

[ShadeTreeMechanic]

Nice progress! I want to work on mine but I am looking out the window and it is snowing.... lol

[RedFred]

On 12/30/2016 at 0:49 PM, ShadeTreeMechanic said:

Nice progress! I want to work on mine but I am looking out the window and it is snowing.... lol

I know the feeling lol. Kerosene heaters are a God send

Should have at least the 4 channel hooked up today. Not sure if I'm going to throw one of the 18s in the sealed box, or just wait until I have the new ported one made.

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Got both my batteries all hooked up, and the 4 channel playing as expected!

Here's my old lead acid starter lol:

The new G78 was a pretty tight fit, but we got it:

Then I ghetto-rigged the back battery just so I could test the 4channel and everything:

Geez man. I had no idea how much of a pain fusing and crimping all of this stuff would be....and I still have to do 2 more runs of negative and positive for the other two amps lol.

It took a little bit of time to tune the amp with the DD-1, and get the crossovers right on the new head unit, but it's all set. For some reason my back door speakers weren't playing very loud, so I was about ready to tear the entire dash apart looking for loose wires, and my dad comes in "hey bud, your RCA's on the amp aren't hooked up right". Fixed that and it eliminated my speaker whine, and made my back door speakers come to life!

I have so say I am super super impressed with this setup now. The head unit max is 62, and it's supposed to do around 50 unclipped from what I've read. I set the DD-1 at 50, and I haven't desired to sit in the vehicle with it up past 45.

Filmed by my mom with her iPad, and she used the wrong orientation

Tomorrow I'll try and find an isolated location to do a distance test.

We should be picking up the wood and starting on the box build tomorrow as well. I made a new design with more port, higher tuning, and less space since I'm certain that I'll be running the HDC's instead of the Xcon's.

[reedal]

You can use the DD-1 to find where your headunit clips/distorts at you know. rather than going by what the internet says. Build is coming along nicely though

[RedFred]

2 hours ago, reedal said:

You can use the DD-1 to find where your headunit clips/distorts at you know. rather than going by what the internet says. Build is coming along nicely though

Yep I'm aware. I was just too lazy to do it. I probably should go back and do it though.

We made it this far with no major issues, might as well do it right.

[RedFred]

I had a New Years party to attend, so I got the vehicle all ready to drive for the first time since the build started.

Threw one of the new HDC's in the sealed box, and crappily wired it all just so I could get a general idea of how everything is now:

Things I noticed:

1) My front right 6.5" grill keeps falling off. It'll need super glued or something.

2) My roof console is slapping around a ton for some reason. I'll probably attempt to deaden it, or just remove it totally.

3) These mids/highs are waaaaayyy too loud for my liking. I tuned them at 50 on the HU volume, but 25 is probably about average listening, meaning that my 2200 amp gain has to be way up to compensate. I'll do some more tuning on the system to even it out soon.

4) My voltage seems about 0.5 volts better than it was before the extra run of 2/0, extra battery, and new underhood battery. Really disappointing considering the money and time that went into those upgrades, but it's still early in the testing process and I'll be more certain once I get both 18s and amps in here.

I'll hopefully be starting the box build tomorrow.

[RedFred]

The family has been busy lately, so I didn't get around to the box.

I did just have a guy drive 4 hours each way from Milwaukee, WI, to come buy those Xcon's though

And he knew of Terry Hazelton lol. Small, small world.

[RedFred]

Finally getting to the part of the build people actually care about - the box and finished product!

Went to Home Depot, got 2 sheets of MDF, and had them do most of the big cuts. Came home with this:

$66 of happiness. Still had half a sheet left from the last box, and an almost full jug of Titebond II.

I didn't take too many pictures because it's pretty much the same as the builds of SoCaLBaMF and Carnag3 (their builds are linked in my first post).

 

 

All that's left for tomorrow morning is to cut the baffles, add some bracing, put the baffles on, bedliner it, then install it all.

I made a somewhat large error in my calculations, so we'll see how it plays out. On my last box the width of the port was like 6.5" and I had 2.5" clearance from the bottom or something. Someone advised that I should always leave the port-width-distance from the end of the port, to the bottom.

So for this port it's 26" x 7.5", and when I did my calculations, I forgot that the 1.5" of the double baffle would extend into the port. So as a result, my internal volume will be smaller, my tuning will be lower, and I'll only have about 5" from the end of the port to the bottom.

Guess we'll see how it turns out.

[RedFred]

Everything is (tentatively) finished!

I was expecting to only have a few hours of work left today, like 3-4, but ended up working on it for almost 12 hours. Messing with wiring and painting the box took a ton of time....

Anyways, I didn't have bedliner on hand so I used this paint:

Since my goal was to get it in and running fast (I have class tomorrow at 1pm, and still have to drive 2 hours back to campus...and the roads are getting icy) I quickly ran the wires out of the port instead of doing something more neat:

Then we got to play my favorite game of "did I do my math right so the box will clear the battery?". It ended up being really tight, but we got it!

Then I had to route all these stupid wires through that little gap between the battery and box (3 RCAS, 3 sets of speaker wire, voltmeter wires, and gain knob wire):

After about 4 hours of various wire management crap, we had a finished result:

(The amps are all upside down because my 15' RCA's weren't long enough to reach if the amps were mounted normally).

Definitely not the best looking, but it's all done, and just in time for me to return to school. 

Since it was already 2am once we finished, I didn't get to play much, and didn't play very loud, but so far I'm impressed. The subs and this box kill the high notes. They really don't like lows from what I can tell, but I did try to tune around 36hz lol.

It looked as though my subs were out of phase with eachother, so I'll have to look into that. Hopefully I didn't wire them wrong inside the box, because it's like a 5 hour uninstall to get that box out. Or I have to try and reach up in there and do wiring without being able to see anything...

Anyways, I should have some videos and stuff coming up soon.

 

[Mr DeeBeez]

Lookin awesome man. You sure do work fast.

Ever plan on putting a set of super tweets in the back? or keeping just the mid?

 

[RedFred]

28 minutes ago, Mr DeeBeez said:

Lookin awesome man. You sure do work fast.

Ever plan on putting a set of super tweets in the back? or keeping just the mid?

It's nice and convenient that I had Christmas Break, and my parents are retired so I had their help 24/7 lol.

Honestly I don't really notice the 6.5"s in the back, so I think throwing tweeters back there would be money wasted.

I do have an extra channel on my Q4-90 though, since I wired my 2 current tweeters together....so maybe.

That would require me to wire through the door grommets and then undo my current wire situation...which is probably another 2 hours of work.

Currently I'm just waiting for a friend at college who isn't afraid of the system, then I can get some vids lol. I hope I can find someone around me with an SPL term lab too. Aiming for a 148.