[Update 3/18] Another Boring Tahoe Build [SOLD]

[BP1Fanatic]

Very nice gain!

[YukonXL04]

That it a hell of a gain by moving them to the back. Did you try to down fire them in the front on the meter?

Can you not mount the amps under the 2nd row bench?

[RedFred]

7 hours ago, YukonXL04 said:

That it a hell of a gain by moving them to the back. Did you try to down fire them in the front on the meter?

Can you not mount the amps under the 2nd row bench?

I did not try downfiring. It would've required a little more modification than I wanted, and I knew I was going to move them out of the console because the big box started to irritate me.

I could mount amps under the 2nd row, but then the 2nd row will never fold down. 

I'm thinking I'll just make a little cubby hole for them and build some wood around it and carpet it so it matches the box, and just push them all the way to the backseat.

[YukonXL04]

1 hour ago, RedFred said:

I did not try downfiring. It would've required a little more modification than I wanted, and I knew I was going to move them out of the console because the big box started to irritate me.

I could mount amps under the 2nd row, but then the 2nd row will never fold down. 

I'm thinking I'll just make a little cubby hole for them and build some wood around it and carpet it so it matches the box, and just push them all the way to the backseat.

Hmm... that's a bummer. I have my Memphis pr1000.1 under my 2nd row. Folds fine but my amp isn't as big as yours.

 

Might be able to squeeze your amps behind the plastic on the drivers side where the stock sub is in the back.

[RedFred]

37 minutes ago, YukonXL04 said:

Hmm... that's a bummer. I have my Memphis pr1000.1 under my 2nd row. Folds fine but my amp isn't as big as yours.

Might be able to squeeze your amps behind the plastic on the drivers side where the stock sub is in the back.

Yeah my issue is just that these amps are such big beasts.

I've thought about looking into getting some Brazilians for the small form factor, because I can't really see downgrading any quieter than a 135dB setup.

[RedFred]

Quite a few updates lately.

First, my SoundQubed gain knob died on me. It's the second one in 6 months, so I decided to make a swap to the LC-1, since I don't particularly pay attention to clipping anyways. 

Gotta say I love this new knob. The fact that you can actually attenuate the bass to absolute 0, is amazing. Whereas with the SQ one, your subs were always on at some level.

Then I reinstalled my center console

I replaced the OEM Tape Casette player with a little pouch that can store my actual glasses.

Part - Metra 88-00-3302 GM Truck SUV OEM Replacement Pocket 95-01 - from Amazon for $13.99

Huge quality of life improvement. That casette player rattled a TON, and just took up space. Now I can just keep my glasses there instead of having to dig around in the console everytime.

Then initially when I was deadening the car and had the headliner pulled and everything, I cut all of the OnStar controls I could find. What I didn't know was that the OnStar controls also control your dome lights inside.

I refused to pull down the headliner again though, so we had a hell of a time replacing relays, fuses, and trying to re-splice wires to get it working.

In the end, there's a Pink wire behind the HU that needs to be attached to the HU remote wire, and then a few relays needed replaced and now I have dome lights, garage door (HomeLink) controls, and all my A/C controls.

I also ripped out the middle dome light thing, because usually I see SPL guys just have them fall out anyways. But now that I'm quiet again I wanted it back.

Without removing the headliner, we had to cut the plastic mount in half, slide it up in there, and then pop rivet it into place.

The pop rivets really stabilized it and now there aren't any rattles and it's super solid.

Still haven't figured out a suitable amp rack / hiding spot, but hit another PR with these little 10s the other day:

Not sure if they're breaking in more, or I'm just clipping them more with the new knob...

Crazy that these two 10s are louder in this Tahoe, than the 4 15s were on the same power in the Blazer. Just goes to show how important a proper box is.

 

[RedFred]

Lots of updates for this baby.

Finally bit the bullet and grabbed the SoundQubed voltmeter. I was initially opposed to it because I thought "man these guys just copied all of Stinger's technology, and changed the color".

Actually, the SQ meter is a LOT more responsive than the Stinger meter. I'll post a video in a few days hopefully.

From blue

to green

Another pro, is that the SQ meter is much less bright. The Stingers are so blinding, that I took apart some old polarized sunglasses and put the plastic over the meter, and it was still brighter than the SQ one.

I haven't done much testing yet, because I started working on mechanical mods.

Awhile back I posted in the performance forum asking what I could do to my 5.3L to beef it up a bit. The answers seemed to be CAI (cold air intake), exhaust, tune, and then cam/header.

So I went ahead and got the two cheapest ones done today.

Spectre 9900 Cold Air Intake ($163)

before

after

Then we went with the Flowmaster Delta 50 4320502 muffler ($112)

But before installing that, we HAD to hear what the Tahoe sounded like straight piped.

it was stupidly loud (not to mention illegal).

so in went the Flowmaster

I think the 50 is a little quiet, but my dad likes it, so I might buy a Flowmaster 40 to swap him.

[BP1Fanatic]

Man, I would have went with duals with that factory y pipe!

[RedFred]

12 hours ago, BP1Fanatic said:

Man, I would have went with duals with that factory y pipe!

From what I read, the duals seemed a bit more expensive, and harder to install.

Being that it was my first time messing with exhausts, I wanted it to be as "plug n play" as possible.

Plus I was going for more of a performance + decent sound, rather than looks. Personally I'm not a huge fan of duals.

But already, my dad and I didn't do a great job with it, because driving down the highway yesterday, the two outlet pipes disconnected. Man was it a headache driving 75 MPH with basically straight pipes. So obnoxious.

[Karkov]

Just not tight enough?  Easy enough to redo I hope