Project "SQL Monte Carlo v4" *Updated 1.26.12*

[SQMonte]

Wow, alot has changed since my last post in this thread......pretty much EVERYTHING has changed except for the under hood stuff. First change I made was installing some PPI 356CS 6.5" components up front. I got them from SonicElectronics when they had them on special for $129 shipped. These things sound good, better than my CDT's for sure.

When I went to install these initially, I was getting a bad crackling sound out of the driver side mid....the reason I bought these was because the same thing was happening on my CDT's and I thought they were on their way out. I wasn't happy at all. I was able to confirm it was my amp that was bad so I went ahead and took the new comps out, took the amp out and went back to the drawing board. What started out as a mids/highs amp upgrade turned in to damn near a fully system overhaul. I decided on the CDT SQ-4100 mids/highs amp....sold my AQ1200 to a friend who needed some power for his new setup, took out my ID12's and ended up going with Sundown Audio for my new substage, Sundown SAZ-1500D powering a pair of Sundown SA-12's. I ran it like this until July of last year. After getting everything installed I decided to clean up the wiring a little by getting some KnuKonceptz speaker wire jackets and banana plugs....one day I was on my way home from work when I noticed it sounded like one of my subs stopped working. When I got home I found that one of the banana plugs came out and was resting on the other. I fixed that and it was fine for a few days but then one sub stopped working again. I checked the banana plugs but they were fine, so when I got home I decided to do a little troubleshooting. I pulled the subs out, all wiring was fine, put them back in and made a bad choice next.....I decided to have the system playing while I would hot swap the speaker leads around to try to find out which sub would cut out and on which set of terminals it would do so. Everything was going fine until I accidentally touched the screwdriver against the case of the amp while it was touching the negative speaker terminal.....ended up blowing the pico fuse in my deck and that was all she wrote from that point on.

I pulled everything out and ended up losing any desire to get it up and running again. But around November the bug bit me again, but because Christmas was coming up I put my wants on hold and focused on Christmas instead. After getting all my Christmas stuff taken care of I found a member here was selling a BNIB DD 2512 for a very good price.....I wanted this sub when I ended up going with the Sundowns cause they were just too expensive so I bought the sub. Shortly after that I sold my deck.....I just recently ordered it's replacement, an Alpine CDA-117. It's not active like the P880 was, but if I never want to go back to active then I'll just add the Imprint and call it a day. Actually looking forward to not having to tweak on the deck so much when listening to music....gonna be running the passive xovers that came with the PPI's this time around. So now that my deck is on it's way it's time to get crackin' on the box build for the DD 2512!

[SQMonte]

Before I get started, this is my first ever custom box build.

Decaf helped steer me the right way with the box design (told me I should aim for 2.2cu.ft. and tuning between 34-36Hz) so that's exactly what I did. Using the Torres calculator I came up with these specs

Today I got started on the assembly...didn't start very good either. I went to Home Depot on Wednesday and bought a full sheet of 3/4" MDF, I had them do the cuts there and when it was all said and done I had a 1/4 sheet left. First thing I did today was mock it up to make sure all my panels were cut to the right size......not quite. Because of the way I designed the box, the side piece on the right is longer than the one on the left, I had them cut them the same exact size. And the 2nd baffle was cut too short.....so I took that 1/4 sheet and went back to Home Depot to see if they'd cut it for me, they didn't ask a single question, I got my cuts and went home to get building.

Port

I did the port first cause I wanted to give the glue time to cure before I removed the screws to do the roundover

The rest of the box

[SQMonte]

I messed up when I did the first side piece. I glued and screwed one side, didn't think about how I was going to get the other side glued and screwed too. So I predrilled the holes on the other side first, then took all the screws out, laid fresh glue then reinstalled the piece. Rookie move, I know.

And don't hate on my workbench!

Pulled another rookie move on that port.....I was so proud of the double roundover I did on the end of it that I forgot to roundover the corner of it (where the two pieces are joined) and ended up installing it like that. Making thigs worse is that I didn't realize it until 99vic asked me if I rounded that part over too. That was easily 30 minutes after I had already glued and screwed it in place. So I went back out (was done for the night until this) and took the port out, rounded that corner over and reinstalled it. This is where I left off for the day

[SQMonte]

Tomorrow i'm going to resin the port walls and then get the top of the box put on and resin the rest of it. Then I gotta get the baffle in place and the sub openings cut out. The fun part is going to be the 2nd baffle cause i'm gonna have to cut out the port opening and then use my flush trim bit to get it all flushed up with the port walls, should be fun. After I get that done I'm gonna do some resin 45's and call it a day. I doubt the box will be all done tomorrow since the resin 45's have to have time to harden, but that's fine cause my deck will be here Wednesday and I won't be able to finish up the install until Sunday so I have all week.

[Rose-Villian]

^^^^lol owell gotta learn sometime or.another looks good sofar...

[SQMonte]

^^^^lol owell gotta learn sometime or.another looks good sofar...

Thanks man

[SQMonte]

Man, I underestimated how much work it is to build a box. Still not done with this thing but I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'll post up some pics of todays progress shortly

[THEKINGsBACK]

looks good man... how do the pp components sound now?

[Ichigo]

Box looks like it is coming along nicely. By the way I love the work bench.

[SQMonte]

looks good man... how do the pp components sound now?

System has been down since July....I'll let you know when I get it fired up on Sunday.

Box looks like it is coming along nicely. By the way I love the work bench.

It's alot more work than I thought it would be, some of that is due to me not really knowing what i'm doing or how I should do it so I end up doing double the work, but other than that so far so good. Haha, how can you not love that workbench?! Gotta work with what you got, right?

Well I got started on the box today much earlier, and while it may seem like I didn't get that much done, just know that I got started on it at about 10am and called it a day at 9:30pm. Between then I took about a 2hr lunch break (had to run to Home Depot and ran some errands) and also went with my boy to pick up the subs for his new build, that was about an hour too. But beyond that me and my boy were in the garage doing work. Here's goes:

First thing we did was resin the inside of the box. It sucked getting the port walls done cause the port is only 2.5" wide, but we got it done.

Don't fret, before we glued and screwed the top part on to the box I sanded down the edges of the panels that got resin on them so they were nice and smooth.

After that I had to figure out how the heck I was going to cut out the sub opening on the baffles. All I had was a jigsaw.....didn't like that idea too much...I mean it would be fine for the first baffle since you wouldn't be able to see it anyway once the sub gets installed but the opening in the second baffle would be visible so it needed to be perfect. After tossing around some ideas off each other (some of which I'd be embarrassed to even repeat) I had an epiphany when I caught a glimpse of the extra stir stick I got from Home Depot that I used to mix up the resin. This is what I came up with......

So for $1.07 (the cost of the pack of nuts/bolts) I made a homemade Jasper jig for my router.....Jasper Jigs cost $35 and up. I countersunk the screws in the stir stick for the bolts that attach it to the router to ensure I wouldn't damage my box when cutting my circles. How's that for making something out of nothing?

Then I put the first baffle in place on the box, it was held in nice and tight just from the friction of the other panels, nice tight fit. I then laid the 2nd baffle on top of that and made sure it was in the exact spot it would be in permanently and I connected the two baffles together by putting in a couple screws to hold them in place together. I then laid out my reference points on the top baffle, found center and drilled my pilot hole through it and through both baffles to ensure that when I cut the sub opening in both baffles, the center point will be exactly the same. Then it was time to cut some holes.

First I had to measure the distance on my jig to ensure the opening would be the right size and drill a hole in it the same size as the pilot hole I drilled in the baffles. I found what the mounting diameter of my sub is, halved that and measured from the outer edge of the spiral upcut bit out towards the long end of the jig, marked my spot and drilled my hole. I took the drill bit I drilled the hole with and put it through the hole I just drilled in my jig, shank side first...I set the jig and router onto the baffle so the end of the drill bit was in the pilot hole I drilled earlier. I had loosened the collar on the router so I could raise the bit to allow me to set the router on the baffle without the bit touching it, the plan was to drop the bit down and through the panel once I turned it on.....what I didn't realize at the time was that by doing so, the cutting part of the bit would go all the way through the baffle and to the shaft. Since this was my first time using a sprial upcut bit I didn't know what to expect so when the bit went through the baffle and I could barely move the router/make my circle cut it didn't dawn on my something was wrong until I started smelling the burning wood. I turned the router off and set it aside and noticed a slight stream of smoke coming from the obviously burned hole in my baffle.....When I pulled the baffle off the box, this is what I was greeted with.....

A nice huge plume of smoke! The box was filled!!

I checked the bit on the router to see what happened and that's when I seen the burn marks around the shaft and realized what I had done. Didn't make that mistake again. So I set everything up and went at it again, this time setting the depth of the bit properly. What a difference! The bit cut the circle flawlessly and with ease. And once it was cutout I test fit the sub....fit like a glove :rkr

See the burn mark? Haha. I sanded it away so the circle is now nice and smooth, can't even tell what I had done.

Set that aside and moved on to the second baffle. This one I needed to cut the opening to the outside diameter of the sub so I can have that flush mounted look, and a baffle twice as strong. So again I measured from the outer edge of the bit towards the long end of the jig, marked and drilled the hole and cut the circle. This one went much smoother since I knew to adjust the bit depth properly. After I cut it out I test fit the sub.....didn't fit! Too small of an opening, by about an 1/8". :mad: The issue was the gasket around the mounting surface of the sub....the outside diameter measurement on DD's website did not include the thickness of that gasket. I figured that out when I removed it and test fit the opening and it fit like a glove. Not a happy camper! I had to spend the next hour to hour and a half sanding the opening with my palm sander very carfully to ensure I didn't end up with an oblong opening and ruin the look I was going for. It took some time but I got it done and like the first hole I cut out, it fit like a glove! I'd be surprised if I had an 1/8" wiggle room. This is what the box looks like with both baffles cut (except for the port opening on the 2nd baffle, gonna get that done tomorrow).

Note the 1/2" roundover I did on the second baffle's opening, with the sub in place you can't see the first baffle at all

So tomorrow I will be rough cutting the port opening on that second baffle, this cut will be just to get the majority of the opening cut out, I'll use my flush trim bit to cut away the rest of the material and ensure the opening is perfectly flush with the port walls.....but this will have to wait until later in the week to be done. After doing the rough cut I'll clean out the box, mix up some resin and pout it into the back corners of the port wall and the box at the back of the port and let that cure overnight. Then on Tuesday I'll tilt the box to the other corner and mix up some resin, pour it in that corner and let that cure overnight. Wednesday I'll paint the port red, glue and screw both baffles to the box and use the flush trim bit to finish off the port opening on the second baffle and at that point the box assembly will be complete. I'll double check all my edges and flush trim any that need it. Then I'll remove all the screws in the box, fill all the holes with wood filler and sand down the whole box nicely. Thursday I'll primer the box and let that cure overnight. Friday I'll paint the box black. I should be all finished with it Friday night. Saturday my son has a wrestling tournament out of town all day so won't be working on it that day. My deck will arrive Wednesday and Sunday I'll get it installed and get this box in the trunk and making some noise!

Thanks to my homie 99vic for coming by and helping me out with this, even if you were just good for wiping my forehead when I started sweating from doing all the damn work!

And I don't care what you say, the Home Depot stir stick jasper jig was all me son!