the PG-GT now with build videos

[ttocs]

I pulled my stereo prematurely and have been listening to my mp3 player on my phone while driving for some time now. Not sure why knee deep in the stereo install I decided to do a head/cam/intake swap but I got stuck on a hunt for hp. Now I want to add some gauges to more closely monitor the motor, but at the same time do not want a bunch of them all over the place. I decided to go with plx designs multi-gauge so that the one display can show 4 different gauges but after buying the gauge could not find any gauge pods that I liked that also had a visor so the sun would not bleed out the organic led screen. They all looked like stuck-on after thoughts that were just lacking any style, so I made my own. Forgive the cell phone pics but I can't find my regular camera right now. I explain a little about how I made them here:

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2395420/1 ... -2d/page-5

[ttocs]

been doing more work on the 2nd gauge pod but was having issues getting them on my computer till tonight. I have it up to paint/clear now and updated on the page. I am going to wire the leds, need to mount some felt on the back and then install the gauges and the pod.

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2395420/1 ... -2d/page-5

[ttocs]

been for ever since I updated this page as the air-ride and radar took over and were not really part of the sound system but I have been doing some work on it. I have realized I have too much crap to install. I added a fuseblock to the dash so that I could cleanly fuse all the extra stuff added(3 gauge displays, 4 gauge modules, sirius, bluetooth, radar, and a couple other things. That fuseblock as well as my deck will be powered by the DD10 that is hooked up to switched power rather then remote power. This way I can ensure the deck is power/grounded from the same power source as the amps/processors to reduce noise.

The ride-tech cpu, sirius module as well as probably one other item will go on the floor/bottom. With as much stuff as I am putting in there I will need to stack them so I am making plexi shelfs. I would like to see the ride tech module but in reality it will probably be lost in the view. If you look at the mounting on the back wall you will see that I designed a small gap between the part that holds the plexi and the base so that I can insert 7 color led strips to edge-light the plexi.

The R-links go on top of that, the SDT displays are going to be mounted in the overhead consol.


Now finally the DD10, the RMD showing the dd10's voltage and a 1farad cap are on top. The cap is an extra part I had laying around and decided to use but in a non-traditional way. It will be hooked up to the power wires to the DD10, again which will power the deck and other accesories so its really just more of a filtering cap to keep the voltage at the deck solid/stable. I am actually going to try and hang the DD10 from the wall aginst the tranny hump and hide all the brackets so that it will look like its floating above it.


I will be building a hinged cover for this that I will smooth into the rear seat delete to allow of easy access to the dd10 as well as hide it all. Work came to a standstill today though as I have been waiting for a good deal on some seats and found that deal today. I am building
The cover so that it will still allow full movement of the seat to recline so I need the new seats to build around them.

[joerg]

Coming along nice and clean! Keep us posted ttocs

[ttocs]

trying to keep moving on it as I want to put my dash back together and need to finish the wiring to the DD10 to power it all. Been really humid here though so its taking for ever for the wood glue to dry.... REALLY want to take those new seats out and try them out. That also slowed things down a bit as just as I was ready to start finishing this piece I found a good deal on these corbeau GTii seats with the correct brackets already for my car. They were used for a 100 miles before he blew his motor so it save me nearly $500 off of retail. Super solid feeling seats!




This slowed me down because I was going to shape the front of this around the seats. Glad I waited as when I got these installed, they go back 4" further then the stock seats. So with some slight adjustments, shortened the 2nd layer a little but it looks like everything will still fit and still able to recline a good amount.



Now the framing will start to make the cover which will be fiberglassed to get the curves I want. I cut two strips out of the 1/4" 1/2" wide and glued them together to make what the hinges for the cover will mount too on the top. Then I cut 3 ribs out that are 1/4" wide in the shape I want to get in the end and glued them all in place. I used CA glue to temporarily hold them together and then wood glue and some paper strips to make a more perminant bond.



Waitin for the glue to dry now, looks like I might juuuuuuust have enough space for the cap and wiring to fit under the curve.



Gonna be tight need to let it dry and fit it all back in the car to be sure...

[ttocs]

did I mention it would be a tight fit?



real tight, you should see the DD10 in place as well...



in reality the cap will sit about 1/4" lower then it is here. I will also trim some of the wood out from that piece so that the cap will have enough space. I will need to modify the top mounting bracket to allow the wire to come in by trimming some away between the mounting points.



This brings me to a question I would like your opinion on. I will need to rotate the cap 90 degrees so that the wires can come in from the back, and then exit out to the right. To do this I will then move the caps PG logo away from where it can be seen. I have a bunch of old-school TEAM PG/no limits decals as well as just the written phoenix gold logo I could put on there. Not sure what else I would do with them and this seems like a good place for them? They are all white so they would show up really well on the cap, just not sure.

[ttocs]

ok then thanks for your opinions I will take them all into consideration(sarcasm).

I think too much I think(see what I mean?). Should just finish the final prep for glass and fling the resin on but I can't help but think that the cover closed will be a little boring. I would also like to have some kind of vent to allow for air to pass through in case the electronics needs it, so why not kill two birds with one stone? I looked at all those import-fender vents I could find and just didn't see anything I liked. So why not make my own right?! I started off by making a oval shaped ring out of 1/4" mdf because its easy to shape and I can use it on this cover. I Then made another ring to fit over that one nice and tight again out of 1/4". I used the router to transfer those shapes to 1/2" plywood so I can copy them later. I also cut a combination of the two rings out of 1/8" basswood plywood to use in this covers as well, as well as used the router to make the top/inside of the larger ring 1/16" wider, about 1/16" down which is why the there is a space between them.


I glued the basswood ply to the 1/4" mdf larger ring to make a mounting point for my grill to go inside of and mount too. That piece was then glued into the covers frame

The idea is to copy the smaller ring out of 1/8" aluminum, and then mount some grill material to that. I will make the aluminum ring a smooth round-over curve into the grill and polish it. I based the shape off of the PG surfboard so I could and may mount that in the middle but I might also just leave it alone with the grill material in the middle. I would ask what you think but.... The top of the aluminum should sit flush with the material and just look like an accent piece, but also be functional. Sounds cool right? Yea still wasn't enough for me so.......

Let there be light, or lightS - 19 blue ones. Ignore the bad cut on this plexi, it walked on me while in the router so I will recut another piece that will go below the aluminum and be edge lit between the aluminum and the grill material.

[LowandLoud]

Wow! Thats alot of detail for a component box that sits behind the seats. Looks great though. Im sure it will be killer when its all said and done. When building something for show, its all in the details.

LL

[Starunit10]

not sure about the cap sticker , but that lighted vent is gonna look sweet ! I like Lights

[ttocs]

thanks for the compliments and the suggestions. I appreciate them both. I am not sure about the sticker as well. Like I said I have a bunch of cherry old-school decals from the "Team PG" to the "No Limits" logos but they are mainly on white vinyl. Thinking about scanning them, printing on some clear printable vinyl and then putting that on it. It would also fix the delima I have about actually using the old decals as well as the white vinyl.

Been doing more work on it just have not updated it here. I tried a different way for laying up the glass in the hope of saving as much space as I could since as you can see its tighter then a prom-night virgin back there. Rather then stretch fleece over the frame and then build up from there, I wanted the glassed top to be no taller then the ribs/frame I made. So to do this I took a piece of standard posterboard cardboard and stapled/taped it to the back of the frame. I then took some tape, applied it to the top/shiney part of the posterboard were I was going to put the resin, and then just pulled the tape and the top layer of the carboard off. It exposed the looser fibers inside in hopes that the glass would soak in better. The idea is that the cardboard will be part of the form when its done.

Then I pre-cut some pieces of chopped matt to fit inside of the 3 seperate panels that the ribs made and wrapped everything I didn't want resin on with blue tape. I then poured the resin into the panels on top of this layer of matt, used a brush to make sure to work all the bubbles out and then put a 2nd layer of matt on top of that and again worked the air out. 3 seperate passes with 2 layers of matt each built it up to the thickness I needed.

so after resin I had this mess and the tools below it is how it was attacked.

First I started with the straigh necked angle grinder and some sanding disks/barrels to get all the really high points down. Then I moved down to my dremel to get the small areas, then moved to the cheese-grader/file finally starting with 60 gritt and working my way up in the grit to 400 with a block to sand it all smooth. After making ALOT of dust(notice the dust under the cover now as well as covering anything else in the shop in any pictures after this) and after some shaping got down to this point. Now you can start to see the final shape as I have rounded off the corners/edges and smoothed everything out that I could with the material already applied. Now I will add some filler to the low areas and start sanding all over again.



After alot more dust making(thank god I have and use a carbon filter resperator), some primer I ended up with this.

Now its all smoothed out and ready for paint/clear. I am painting it black and clearing it just so that any areas that are not covered in the end will not show as well as to give a nice strong/smooth area to apply it too. I am probably going to try to either match the new corbeau leather with some vinyl or possibly even bite the bullet and buy a hide and have an apolsterer double sew some seems to match. Not sure need to see what kind of price I can get...
With the tape taken off of the grill inserts base mount you can see the led mounting holes.

This is the insert that both the plexi and the aluminum will be cut to match. The plexi I will use a round-over bit on my router to make it so that the top of the ring will be flush with the material and then will have a gentle/smooth curve into the grill. The inside of the ring will end at the plexi's edge which when its off will just look like a white stripe but when the lights are on it should light up that inside edge super bright. Will probably put the sufboard logo in the middle of the grill and its a little thinner then the plexi so I think the edge-lighting on it will make a neat effect for the whole piece. If I do go leather and polish the ring as planned I think I can safely say(for the first time in my life) would look pretty pimp.....



I should post some pics of the decals and make a poll out of it or something. Hard to ask your opinion on something ya can't see huh?

[ttocs]

Here is what I have to choose from. Again your opinions on here are appreciated.

Also forgot tell about how the cardboard idea came out, better then I expected honestly. The tape all around the sides on the back actually kept all the resin inside the 3 panels where I was working. It did soak into the cardboard a littler further then some of the other areas that are still white but in general the entire piece feels like a solid piece of fiberglass. There was just enough of a bend to the shape that it gave it some support so that it didn't even sag inbetween the panels. I am just going to pull the staples out and then apply another slow-cure batch of resin to soak in from the back it will be ready to be covered with out sanding at all.

[LowandLoud]

Good idea with the poster board. I may have to use that in the future. I hate working with FG so anything to make it cleaner or easier is ok by me.

I swapped my truck from 5 spd. to auto (back probs) so I have a console out of a blazer that i have reconfigured to fit in my truck (smoothed over shifter and cup holders, added pockets for air gauges). It is sitting on my bench half done because i lost motivation on the FG work, lol. Now its freezing here so that doesnt help. No heat in my garage, Brrrr.

I would say if you want the leather, go for it. Theres no sense doing it twice or regretting it later. Looking good.

LL

[ttocs]

I am doing this project because its small and I can do it inside otherwise I am dying to finish the door enclosures for the 9's and the door panels.

[ttocs]

This has been a project that I have just been trying to shoe-horn in as much as I can both in gear as well as to make the display look cool. I have had to make some minor adjustments along the way really just hoping in the end that I will be able to do everything I would like too do to it and still have it fit. Seemed each time I made an adjustment it was because space was getting smaller and smaller..

Todays part of the project is to make the shelf/bracket that I will mount the DD10 too. I am trying to give it a "floating" illusion by hiding all the mounting brackets and wrapping the power wire around it.

I started off by making some aluminum L-brackets and I then cut some slits into the base, and slid them through and and mounted them to the ouside of the base. I drilled/tapped holes in the aluminum to mount a piece of plexi too using M3 machined fasteners, as well as to mount the dd10 to the plexi. I will cut the center out of the plexi and then put another 7-color led strip in it so that the edge of the plexi will light up, as well as everything under the DD10 to show those pieces as well.

The power wires for the cap/DD10 will enter the pod directly above/behind the cap. Then they will make a turn to the right and go above/behind the DD10, curve aroun/under it and then connect to the power terminals on the DD10. This will allow me to hid the mounting bracket on the top as well as add a little more to the "floating" illusion. All the rest of the accesory power wires going out will be tucked up under the plexi and not be seen.


I took this pic so you can see how close it will be to the cover, not much space there.....

Now these angles through the grill insert will show the how close the top is. Did I mention space was tight?


I had been debating between covering the bottom of the cover with(you would see it when its open) with either a felt or a microsuede like I did the headliner in. The felt is more forgiving ot work with but the suede is thinner. Looks like is the suede....

BUT IT LOOKS LIKE IT WILL ACTUALL WORK?!?!

[fullsteez]

This build must've taken alot of dedication. Very impressive! !

[ttocs]

I got into car audio installation because I enjoyed doing it on my own and friends cars as well. Of course once I was into it though it became a job and was not nearly as much fun as it use to be. Now that I am not doing it for a living it is again fun for me to see what I can do now after years of watching others build cool stuff. The higher-end custom shops I worked at I was generally the wiring guy as at that time I was just doing it part-time on the side from my regular job at intel. I got to sand more then a few projects and see how they were put together, but never really built all that many custom stereos and nothing as crazy as this one will end up being.

[ttocs]

Got the hinges installed. First I used a combination of the router/dremel/chizel to make some gaps in the places the panels will meet in order to allow materail to be wrapped around it.

Here with the lid open you can see the bottom finished and the hinges on top. Also between the hinges you will see some dowels that bridge the two pieces just to make it a little stronger if any weight gets put on it.

From there it was time to start on the aluminum ring for the grill insert. I have seen pics/instructions on this but never acually done it myself so it was a bit of a learning exp.

First I traces the shape out and the rough-cut it with a jigsaw. 3mm t6-6061 aluminum took 3 blades to do it.

From there I used some 3m double stick tape to tape a piece of plexi, and then the aluminum to the shape I was going to copy for the insert. After geting the general shape I put a round-over bit in and got the curve on the inside both for the aluminum and the plexi under it.

Then I started with 320 grit and worked my way up to 3k grit, finally finished with some metal polish and the buffing wheel and WOW came out just like I hoped!

The plexi gets dropped into place first.

And then the ring goes right on top(the polish is the blue bottle). The round-over bit worked really well as it thinned out the aluminum a little bit and the plexi actually hangs out under it a little more. When the leds are dropped in(next project) and lit up that plexi should light up SUPER bright!

Had to move the aluminum SUPER slow on the router. Never moved that slow with a power tool before but could not be anymore happy with the outcome.

[Drock]

Looks good.

[ttocs]

progress has been even slower then normal over the holidays.

[stipud]

Could you hide the hinges? They ruin the awesome flowy stock look.

[ttocs]

they will not stick up as much with the leather on it, as well as be painted black in black leather. I considered hiding them with a strip like I did on the bottom of the rear seat delete but with the slope of the curve to the lid, and the area before it, it would mean that the lid would not open very far or do damage to the hinge area. I considered using smaller hinges but was more concerned about the strength of the lid/cover. I know sooner or later I will need to lean on the top of the cover/hinge area either while tuning the system or later possibly while removing it. Because of this I wanted that area as strong as possible so the form followed the function in this case.

[Starunit10]

Looks really good ttocs, alot of dedication there! I have to agree about the hinges, they interupt the flow. As for the decals, you have such a large space use the big team gold right on the front. Bah Bam! B-)

[ttocs]

you guys are killin me... Yesterday as I was finishing up on my work my brother who is in town peeked into the workshop to see what I was doing. Asked a few questions finishing up with if I was going to put some kind of latch on it? I had considered it but obviously it isn't all that important unless I put the car on its lid, but the more I thought about it the more I thought that it would finish it off nicely. After some searching for one with a design I liked I was happy to find one that would work and look good, not happy that it was a marine grade cabinet latch which = $$$.

http://www.boatoutfitters.com/oval-push ... -pawl.html

So after ordering 2 of those, I went downstairs and flipped my bro off and told him why.

[Starunit10]

Got my package today, Thank you! good thing you double boxed it! Damn Canada post too rough with parcels.

The latches, I say ney. It looks good and clean now.

[ttocs]

anytime I ship I pack the box with the idea that it will survive a 6 ft drop. When I ship international, even just to canada I try to make it even thicker.... Sorry for the delay, hope it is what you wanted.

$54 worth of latches shipped this mornin. Plannin on putting them in the lower right hand corver of the top cover. Will flush mount them for a smooth look.

Thinkin about the hinges(insert middle finger smiley for you guys ) I have been considering getting the leather lightly padded and now think I will go through with it as it will also help the hinges to blend in. Just talking like some 1-2mm closed cell foam to add a little bit of give to it. I want to try and source some matching leather to go with the corbeau seats I got and get the covers stitched up to match with the double grey thread.

Still not sure what to do about the decal on the cap and today looking at it I might try to finish off the edge that would be facing the seat. I was going to leave it open but the more I look at it the more it bugs me. Waiting till tomorrow for it to warm up a bit and I will do the final trimming to get it to fit and see how it looks before I decide.