Phoenix Gold Phorum

So something bit me early this month and I decided to gut the hell out of my Tc and redo the entire system, all the way down the distribution blocks and the speaker wiring. It feels like it's taking forever (when does it not?), but I seem to be making steady progress. Biggest pain in the arse so far was running out of sound deadening, ordering more, and then having the wrong stuff show up (.45mil instead of .65mil). I ended up using the wrong shipment though to deaden the hell out of my hatch area, so hopefully a certain company will be none the wiser when their "exchange" gets "lost in transit".

I'll add more pics as I make more progress. I'm hoping this weekend will show some real headway now that I've got all the materials, RCAs, etc. The first group of pics will mainly be the car gutted, and some amp rack build pics. All the really fun stuff will probably be posted in the next couple of weeks when my sealed enclosure from vitveet gets here. Enyoy!

More pics...

Looks good so far!!

Might sound a little odd, but I can see by the way you made those holes in that mdf plate, that you are going for QUALITY.
LOOKING GOOD indeed!!!

Thanks guys. I hope to have a bunch more pics up by the end of the weekend. I did the same kind of setup with my last amp rack, but that one looked like crap compared to the new one. With patience and about 4 beers, I was able to get this new one carpeted without any seams showing. Took forever...

Having a ton of spare time, I mocked up the amp rack dimensions in Illustrator, "placed" the amps on the mock up and then determined hole-size and placement. I've always been a fan of routing wires directly through the amp rack and down below the carpeting/trim panels.

I really wanted to do a countersunk rack to make the amps flush with the rack surface itself, but I don't have enough depth/angle clearance behind the rear seat to make that happen.

Just finished up deadening the entire car this weekend, and finished up the amp rack this morning. I had to mask off the ENTIRE thing to repaint the amp screws due to the fact the "Dura-Coat" matte black I painted them with chipped all to hell as soon as I put the screwdriver to them. Lame. Looks pretty good though now that it's finished and the screws match the Tantrum finish to a T.

Looks good man. Are you going to rap the rest of the rear panels in the same carpet?

I was considering it, especially since the rear panels are pretty thin and adding carpet to them shouldn't effect their fitment. It would look pretty nice to have everything upholstered in the same carpet. The only prob I have with the Parts Express enclosure carpeting though is that it tends to get fuzzed up pretty easily if you work with it too much. Usually, I don't mind fuzz, but in this case, less is more.

you want some of those M4 threaded inserts I have in the UK... and then M4 black anodized bolts

looking good.

Bret

Looks really good. This is very much like the amp rack I want to build... I should take some notes.

Man...What a day. Got all the interior panels into place, the kick panels into place, put in the Alpine CDA-9887 in with its new dash kit and routed wiring for the remote and ground. Also spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out a decent wire route for the amp rack and subs that'll eventually be in the rear. Came up with two finished off 2" holes that go directly to the sub-floor area in the trunk. Now I'll be able to run power/ground and signal as far away from one another as possible. I feel toasted after spending 10 hours today working on stuff, so here are some pics. And possibly a rabbit with a pancake on its head:

Very nice. Those holes look like they were meant to be there. Where's the HU? How do your tweets sound in the kicks like that?

are those holes from the rsd tweet mounting hardware?

that does look nice

Actually, I had some of those office desk wire routing things hanging around and they just happened to 2", the same as the cutout diameter for the tweeters. After a few beers the other day, I just kinda looked at them and was like, "Huh...I could use these things!" In my old setup, i had amp rack wiring stuffed in between those two panels and really wanted to clean it up this time around.

Stipud: the HU is underneath that panel on the dash (right above the clock) with the "scion" logo on it. Basically, you just push that guy in and it pops open to reveal the HU. I've been a big fan of that design since I bought the car. I'm really pleased with the tweeter location, especially since the last setup I had, they were in the factory locations and it seemed like I had zero soundstage. Once I get everything dialed in, it should be sounding pretty decent.

Got the sub enclosure hammered out over the last couple of days and will post a pic here. Sucker's got a 1.5" front baffle!

This box is a tank. Thanks to Vitveet.

Managed to get the amp rack in today and get all the wiring routed. Looks like I'll have to be adding a secondary pair of L-brackets to top-back of each side of the amp rack. It's pretty rock-solid, but I don't trust it without support way up towards the top. I should've bought a second pair. Oh well...Here's a pic of the amps on the rack, all installed and wired up:

HOT!

Probably would've looked even better if I remembered to fold the rear seats back up before snapping the pic hehe.

ill be looking for u down I-4

you'll probably hear me before you see me! it'd be cool to hang out sometime man, hopefully things will get better for you relatively quick and you can get back to enjoying the PG fanaticism we all share.

EXACTLY!!!

Does look nice.. reall good work.. keep it up!

As of May '09, the dual RSDc enclosure is out and in its place is a Fi Q 12" wired at 4 ohms to a bridged Tantrum 500.2

I'm really enjoyed the blended sound of A/B power on the sub, but I'm wishing I had a bit more power to drive the Fi Q. I think 800 watts RMS on it would sound insanely good, but that would require a whole new layout since I've always been adamant about matching amps.

Great looking install! I like the Fi Q....what do you think about it?!
I knew a guy that had two Q's....on 2000 watts. And it was pretty loud and pretty clean.

it gets really loud, but i think i'm still partial to the RSDc. Of course to be fair, i should really try running this thing off a 1000 watt amp and see if there's a difference. it just seems to lack emphasis on some of the lower notes at lower volumes.