PG Astra Australia Demo Car - 2013 - 159.5dB @ 41Hz

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

That doesn't look heavy at all!

Installing truck springs in the back?

Well... on paper the system alone (not including the actual box) weighs around 700lbs...

That's one of the main reasons we went with Plywood Vs MDF, to try and save some weight. We're planning on taking a before and after run through the weigh bridge to see what the change in the gross weight of the vehicle becomes

As for suspension we currently have a lowered sports suspension on all four corners, but we are planning to swap the rear springs/shocks out to standard ride height, but heavy duty versions. We're getting custom springs made that 'should' take into account the specified weight. That way once they sag a bit under the weight we might be back to standard sports ride height? We'll have to see how it all works out.

Cheers,

Scott

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Hi All,

A quick mid-week update, got a bit of prep work done on some minor jobs on our list.

Grabbed some 3" PVC pipe and started chopping it up for the round over's on the port. Also laid down a quick layer of high fill on the baffle steps just incase you can see them through the edge-lit plexiglass pieces. Way easier to do it now then once it's in the car!

Tried a quick joke with these pics on Facebook, telling people this was the actual port diametre and length for all 18 of the 12's, sad thing is either no one got the joke, or worse, they believed me?!?




Quick jig to hold things sqaure through the tablesaw without loosing a finger



Halves...



Quaters...



Now we just need to mitre them intot he port frame once it's built

and the steps...




More later this week.

Cheers,

Scott

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Hi All,

Quick Sunday morning update...during the rest of the week we got the steps in the baffle sanded. After a quick final sand yesterday monring we gave them a quick primer coat of white paint. This way if you do end up seeing through the edge-lit plexiglass on the steps all you will see is the white background.

Saturday morning we got the garage all cleaned up and prepared for work. We pulled out the front seats, got the door sill panels remounted and taped up ready for fibreglass. We also got the headliner re-installed ready to mark out the areas that need to be cut out to allow the boxes to fit properly.

From there we started assembling the entire box (again) making sure to get it as square as possible, marking all sections for fit. Some minor tweaking was done to get it to sit nicely.

Next we worked on the front baffle and port. We did 3 layers that each have overlapping steps to follow the layers of the top and bottom boxes:




Then we jigsawed it to rough size and routered it to fit



Next it was time to start roughing out the port opening, test it for fit and then router it to exact size

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Finn still thinks this is his own personal Cubby House!



Next it was time to router in the recess for the removable port section and build the mounting flange and frame for the adjustable port lengths





By this time it was getting dark so a check of the 'To Do' List was in order...



So enough posting pics, time to get back to work!

Cheers,

Scott

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Hi All,

Well another fairly productive day...We got the boxes put into the car and squared up to the alignment marks we made when assembling it outside the car. So that was a BIG win that it goes together in the car exactly the same as sitting in the garage!!!

We also cut the headliner to allow the box to fit in properly, which took a few tries at lifting/Marking/Cutting and repeat...

Then it was back onto the front wall and port. Ran into a little problem that the damn front wall wouldn't actually fir into the car without removing the entire centre console. So after a little precision trimming, we got it in place.

From there it was onto making the longest port. We made the port flange into a female rabitted section so we can insert and bolt in various port lengths. The idea is that we can test a few lengths during tuning, and if we find one that's good for music and another for SPL, then we can fairly easily convert between the two tuning's depending on the event...

So here's the pics:

A look through the shortest port (3")





The 12" port section with a male rabbit to fit into the female flange section. Funny thing is this damn port is bigger and stronger than some subwoofer boxes I've built.





12" Port fully assembled

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

And the 12" port installed in the vehicle...




Keep in mind there will be plenty of lighting inside the box so it won't be a dark cavern, but even so the 12" port pretty much covers the entire front rows of subs...

IFFFFF this is the port length that we end up need ing to use, I have some ideas for a good cosmetic way to make things visible, but it could be $$$$

Only time will tell.

Got a lot of little jobs on our To Do List for at night during this week, so might put up some pics later.

Cheers,

Scott

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Hi All,

So I've been away sick most of last week and pretty much dragged my butt around most of the weekend. I hopped on to put up some pics of the progress the rest of the team made while I sat around and snoozed.

So here's what's gone on this past week.

Bec used some old Stinger RoadKill Spray-On Sound Deadener that we had at work to coat the rear door trims:





I sat on a stool and tried to give Glenn the idea for the rear battery/amp rack so he could rough it together. The plan is to have 2x Stinger SPV69 batteries down in the spare tire well, with another row of 6 across the rear floor. Add in the 1 under the hood and we have a total of 9, that's pretty much 775CCA and 69Ah per 1250w Monoblock. Of course we have a few 4channel amps (300w RMS ea - 4x 75w). That means a total of 621Ah and 6,975CCA in order to run 12,150w RMS or amplification.



Next we (and by we I mean Glenn) started working on the Amplifier rack. The idea here is to have 4 shelves with 2 amplifiers side-by-side per shelf. Then we will have a single amplifier at the top on display. So we took a tip from the boys at Phoenix Gold in the Philippines and removed one end cap from each amplifier and butted them together to save a bit of space.




Glenn also quickly knocked up some brackets that bolt into the stock seatbelt locations, the back of the box will bolt directly into the battery/amp rack which will then bolt into the chassis of the vehicle.

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

On Sunday I started feeling a little bit better, and got started on the B-Pillars. The original idea was to try and leave them with enough room to mount some speakers in firing backwards out of the rear doors, but with the door skin mounted up there just wasn't enough room. So then we just needed to shape them to follow the original B-Pillar shape while allowing the seats to sit all the way back against the box.





So since the speaker wouldn't fit in the B-Pillar we needed to look at our options for the rear doors. The original idea had a 20" PC Monitor mounted up in the rear window area and some amplifiers mounted below it. We wanted to have it so we could roll down the rear window and have both video and music coming out of the rear window. Now that we have to find a place for the speakers as well, we can't have both video and sound coming through the rear window. Here in Australia there are a fair few charity cruises and other car shows where a cruise aspect is involved -- So the question is, when cruising around at events is it more important to have SOUND or VIDEO???

Our current thought it to go towards sound when driving and add the video component when parked and doors are open, so we did all the test fitment for 3 speakers up top firing out of the window, with the PC Monitor mounted below it along with an amplifier added for good measure.



Like our official 3D rendering of the product placement?!? Opinions on this layout? It's definitely function over form in this case...

That's all for now, but more progress during the week!

Cheers,

Scott

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Hi All,

Well we got a few minor things accomplished during the week...

Made a quick start on the RCA splitter boxes. The plan is to have some hide-away boxes that handle the RCA distribution, so I ordered some mountable project boxes and a bunch of decent quality RCA ends and started knocking things together.

For the subwoofers we need 2 channels in (L&R) and 18 channels output (L&R) to provide signal for the 9 monoblocks. We could have used the RCA pass-thru on the amps, but then the RCA's would have started to get pretty messy in out amp rack. For the full-range amplifiers we needed 4 channels of input (Front L&R, and Rear L&R) and a total of 16 channels of output.

So here's the start:








Another BIG win this week was the arrival of the AudioControl EPIC-160 which will provide the processing and increased RCA voltage for the Subwoofer amplifiers. We'll be running the AudioControl MATRIX for the full range amplifiers once they arrive.

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

So today (Saturday) we did a BIG run to Bunnings (the Australian version of Home Depot) and got stocked up on supplies, then it was back home for toasted sandwiches then out to the garage.

Today we tackled the speaker pods for the top of the box. These serve to block off the gap at the top of the box up to the headliner, and also to house a couple pair of Ti5CX 5-1/4" coaxials just for a bit more uhmmmph up front...

After the standard carboard template we traced it out onto a piece of 1/2" ply and then made the central roof piece and worked out the angle follow the contour of the roof as it slopes down towards the front windshield.




From there it was time to thicken up the edges to make them blend into the B-Pillars a bit better, ended up being 4 layers of 1/2" to get it right...Gotta love the BIG flush bits for the router!!!





Once the thickness of the edges was sorted, it was time to blend them into the central section, with some nice flowinessness...

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Finally it was time to breakout the home-made perfect circle jig for the router and cut some trim rings for the speakers and start glueing them into position to make the look good and get some angles that will let us vinyl the pods easily afterwards...



I'm 5' 10" and there's no issues with clearance for 'headroom' so the final angles were set and glued and screwed



Triple check of speaker tolerances



Two Thumbs Up from our foreman!!!



Tomorrow it's some final flowinessness and blending into the B-Pillars, then time to stretch the fabric. Once that's done it's time to start on sealing off the bottom of the box and blending it into the B-Pillars. Hoping to create some cabinets down there to house 2 amplifiers and the processors...we'll see how we go!!

More tomorrow!

Cheers,

Scott

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Hi All,

Well Sunday saw some good progress being made on the B-Pillars. We had to mate them into the new roof mounted speaker pods to ensure we got a tight seal and that things looked right visually. We also did the final shaping of the roof mount speaker pod to give it a bit of much needed Swoopiness!

Not a lot to see visually, but some really good progress made on sealing off the cabin from the rear of the car, and trying to make it look decent too...

Pics:

B-Pillar frames in place with start of the material stretched




Final bracing on the Left, original temp bracing on the right:



Back of B-Pillar installed in car...still need to trim to size but that will happen when we finalise the layout for the rear doors



Getting dark but got the transition from the B-Pillar into the Speaker pod done, with material stretched, all ready for glass...




Hoping to get the RCA boxes done today, and Tuesday (tomorrow) is a holiday here, so I want to get the bottom section of the front wall done and dusted completely sealing off the cabin from the back of the car...

Anyway hope you're liking the progress so far...getting down to the point end of things now!!!

Cheers,

Scott

[ttocs]

what are you boosting the rca voltage up too before splitting it 18 ways?

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

what are you boosting the rca voltage up too before splitting it 18 ways?

9.5Vrms per channel, so really we're only splitting each channel 9 ways...

Gives us a clean 1Vrms per channel, should be PLENTY!!!

[ttocs]

would traditional series/parallel wiring be the same for a signal as it is with ac/dc? Assuming it is, if you wired them in parallel, the voltage would stay the same but the current would be split depending on resistance. I would have assumed you wired them parallel as that would make the most sence...

Not sure how this would all work as I have never known anyone to split a signal so many times.

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

would traditional series/parallel wiring be the same for a signal as it is with ac/dc? Assuming it is, if you wired them in parallel, the voltage would stay the same but the current would be split depending on resistance. I would have assumed you wired them parallel as that would make the most sence...

Not sure how this would all work as I have never known anyone to split a signal so many times.

Yes all the RCA's are wired in parallel, as for the final voltage at each of the RCA's I'm honestly not 100% sure, but I get your point about Voltage being the same in each RCA while the impedance drops for the total circuit. This is why we added a 470ohm resistor to each positive terminal to drive the resistance back up without losing voltage. On the test bench this works very well!!!

In some of the previous builds I've been involved with we have used traditional RCA-Splitters which do not have any built in resistance, and we have split the signal a huge number of times...the biggest issue with this has typically been turn on/off thump.

We'll see how we go soon when we begin wiring this thing up!

Scott

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Hi All,

Some updates from the last couple of days, we had a holiday here on Tuesday and got a bit of work done...

Found some 'quiet' jobs to do last night while Finn was sleeping.

Bec stretching the grille cloth over the roof mount speaker pod:




Starting to take shape:



We left the resin to goes off overnight, but it had pretty cold here at the lately:



After that was done we came back inside and found another 'quiet' job, wiring up the RCA distriution box. 1pr in and 9pr out. We also put a 470ohm resistor inline with each positive lead to help with the impedance drop as well as any turn on pop issues...Haven't tried this before but the boys from Phatt Audio Concepts told me to give it a try. Works great on the test bench, only time will tell what it does in the car. Hopefully the 9.5V rms coming from the EPIC-160 is enough to drive all 9 amps, don't think it should be a problem though!

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Hi All,

So our day off holiday was put to good use, OK maybe not, but we did get out in the garage and sign a few more items off our To Do List!!!

Thankfully the resin on the B-Pillars and Roof mount speaker pod hardened up nicely last night, so we trimmed out the speaker holes and mounted them back in the car. You can really start to see how things are going to look now...



Next project was to make some boxes to sit behind the seats, these will help to seal off the cabin as well as house some SD500.4 amplifers, the EPIC-160 and a few other goodies. We started with a Precision Engineered 'Cardboard' Template...then PRESTO we had boxes that fit (OK skipped a few of the boring and messy bits)




Next up was to start building the frame for the edge-lit plexiglass sign that will sit on the back wall of the enclosure. The thing about this enclosure is that we have used pretty much every last square inch of space in the car, so much so that the rear rows of subs are actually slightly indented into the rear wall. So to get an accurate measurement, Bec had to climb in and put a couple subs in place...Glad she's small!!!

Oh and to state the obvious, Bec wanted to let me know that mounting the subs in the roof is going to SUCK!!!





Once again I skipped a few of the boring and messy bits (yeah routering MDF pretty much sucks ass). This was also one of my first real projects using the Rabbit bit for the router, and gotta say I love it! Built up a 25mm frame with a 10mm rebate in the back to house the LED strips and the plexiglass.




Back to reality and work today, but we will try to get a bit more accomplished before the weekend!

Cheers,

Scott

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Hi All,

So we're trying to get the Astra to a stage where the box is both cosmetically and structurally complete, as well as get the battery/amplifier rack fully installed so that we can fire this thing up and hopefully make some noise at the upcoming dB Drag Finals here in Australia on November 12-13th.

So if you do the math it means we only have 8 days to get it happening. That means that all the metal bracing for the interior of the box, and the metal work for the battery/amplifier rack needs to be done and painted so we can put this beast together once and for all!!!

We were originally going to get the metal work powder coated, but as the plans for our final colour scheme and cosmetics have developed we wanted to have the metal work the same colour as the highlighted bits throughout the car, so trying to colour match, powder coating, vinyl and paint would be a nightmare, so we decided to paint everything.

That means that we needed to get the metal bracing and amp rack prepped and ready to go to the painter's by tomorrow afternoon.

So off to Glenn's house to get it happening.

First step was to put the rack in and double check that the hatch would close:




From there it was time to get the top amp to sit properly at an angle that would not hit the rear hatch. After a few tries we came up with this:






It all fits and looks pretty damn sexy too!!!

Glenn sure does some amazing metal work, it's going to look amazing once it's all painted up!

Cheers,

Scott

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Hi All,

Well we worked late into the night last night, so didn't have time to post our updates...so here they are!!!

Yesterday started with working out the bottoms of the B-Pillars to get them to seal off the floor and match up the the boxes that will house the amplifiers and processors.





While Bec was working on that Fab was soldering up the second RCA splitter box:



We also did some more precision bondo work to get the shape of the centre console, nothing a bit of sanding won't fix LOL:



From there it was time to remove everything from the Astra for what we hope is the "FINAL" time:

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Once everything was sitting in the garage it was time to start applying the laminate finish. It's a bit hard to see in these pics, but the laminate is a brushed aluminum, so it should really help reflect the LED's around the box and help light things up in there. And so Bec and Fab started getting high on contact cement fumes and got to work:







It ended up being a pretty late night, but we're almost back on schedule to get this thing making noice by the weekend...and even Finn was still happy to work late into the night!!!



Good thing he had a big Snooze in the afternoon!!!

Tonight it's suspension time, so more pics in about 10hrs LOL!!!

Cheers,

Scott

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Hi All,

Sorry for the delay in posting these updates, we've been super busy trying to get this thing making noise for this weekend!!!

OK so Monday night we got the new rear suspension put into the Astra. Thanks to Mick for organising and installing this, it should work perfectly!

We've swapped from a 2" lowered sports spring to a standard ride height Heavy Duty spring. Looking at them side-by-side out of the car there isn't a huge difference, but installed...




Compressing them down



Installed




New ride height (car empty) -- Just look at the gap!!!



Mick was so quick at swapping this over that I had time to get home and router the laminate for the subwoofer boxes too!



Ohhh yeahhhh a quick teaser from Vito our expert painter at Polo Bodyworks:

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

One other quick thing...we have been getting a lot of questions on Facebook about how the box all goes together and fits into the car. With that in mind we took a video of us removing the box for the 'final' time and Bec quickly put it together and up on YouTube...

Take a look!!!

http://youtu.be/S8X2LYCh2IQ

Sorry couldn't figure out how to embed the video?!?

Hope you enjoy the Special News Bulletin at the end!!!

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Hi All,

Continuing to push through the night and get things signed off our endless To Do List!!!

Last night we got the Plexiglass for the baffle steps cut and sanded, we also got the final fitment of the LED stips into the grooves which needed a final bit of loving to get them to fit nicely.

We thought of taking tons of pictures of us sanding, but decided to just give you one





Cheers,

Scott

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Hi All,

Well it's been a few late nights lately with an all-nighter planned for tonight...

Of course like anyone building a big system we were waaayyyy to optimistic with how long things would take us...we were hoping to have the box fully assembled back in the car on Wednesday night, but by 2am we had to admit defeat.

Add to that Wednesday night we had a MASSIVE Thunderstorm so couldn't open the garage door without flooding, we just worked on the cosmetic parts, like the edge-lit perspex signage for the rear wall:




Last night (Thursday) we got the box mocked up outside the car, marking and drilling all the holes to bolt the metal braces in place. It turns out that there are a LOT of BOLTS!!!





Since it was getting late Fab decided to bring his blankey and have a snooze LOL!!!



At the the end of the night we did get the box safely into the car and half assembled...so lots of work with the next day and a half.

Wish us Luck!!!

Scott