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

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Hi All,

Sorry for not getting all the updates up lately - it's been super busy here as we approach Christmas...so here's what's been happening!

-----------------------------------

Hi All,

OK first of all apologies for not posting anything overe the weekend, but hopefully when you see everything below you'll understand why we didn't have time...

So the last pictures we put up were from Wednesday night when we had the big storm. We admitted defeat that night around 2am then got back to work on Thursday night putting it all together and into the car and bolted the box half together and loaded up all the goodies we would need for the weekend.

Friday we worked all day at our normal jobs, then at 5:30pm we started on the Astra. Trav and I got started on finishing up all the bolts for the metal frames...I'm not sure WHY Trav has a hammer though?!?



Mick and Dave got stuck into connecting two of the Ti1500.1's together. They removed an end cap from each amp and then bolted them together from underneath to form one BIG amp. This saved us some valuable space on the amp rack!



Next up we started making all the jumper leads to connect up the Stinger SPV69 batteries.

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

While the main battery rack was being wired up the two hidden batteries in the wheelwell also got installed:



While that was going on we were unpacking and prepping the 18 Ti212d4's 12" subwoofers, they forced me to do the stupid pose, and as you can see I hated every moment of it!!!




While that was going on Fab and Brett were working on the vinyl work for the edge-lit plexiglass sign that would live at the back of the sub box:

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Random Action shot!!!



Another major task was mounting the subs into the box. To make things more interesting the top subs all had a pair of nutserts and M6 bolts in addition to the screws just incase!!!




The first sub installed!!!!



Top box done!

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Starting bottom box, it's been a looooooong night:







Our Foreman hard at work!

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Next challenge was to get the rear wall installed and mounted so we could put in the battery tray:




And a look at the inside of the box, with the rear wall installed and the edge-lit plexiglass sign lit up!




Starting to wire it up:

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Sexy yellow amp rack going in...




Setting in place the first amps!






All amps in place...DAYUM!!!

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

So basically this brings us up to about 2am Sunday morning. We had worked through from Friday, got a couple hours sleep Saturday monring then kept pushing through Sunday night.

Around this time most of the team had crashed out or bailed and I topped up on Coke (a Cola) and got back to work wiring. I was such a zombie that I never took any pictures I just kept working and working and working...

So around 7:30am Sunday morning I got the amplifers turned on and tested each pair of subs individually. In my sleep deprived state I did the best I could. We wired up 2 subs per amp with each sub having 2 voice coils, so a total of 36 voice coils. I quickly ran back and forthe testing each amp individually to make sure that the corresponding subs were working.

By this time Fab had woken up and Michael had arrived. It 'seemed' OK and so I wired up all the RCA's to all the amps and we gave it a test run.

DAMN!!! HOLY CRAP!!! OH MY GOD!!! and many other things were said...but then again we were all running on very little sleep.

At this point we decided that we would pack it all up and get on the road to the dB Drag event about 3hrs away.

Into the car and away we went to the show.






When we got to the show, that's when we noticed that we had 2 subs that had died It seems with my ultra careful wiring I got 1 voice coil out of phase which cooked the sub in the 3hr drive to the show, and once that sub let go it also took out the other sub wired to that amp. So for the show (and all the videos) we're running on 16 subs with 2 big passive radiators LOL!!!

Even with this problem the Astra is still a weapon!!!

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

OK so keep in mind THIS BUILD IS NOT FINISHED!!!

We still have to seal off the B-Pillars, swap out the two blown subs, gain-match the amps, play with port tuning and lots,lots more!!!

But even so it is LOUD!!! No meter until the whole thing is finished but it does hair tricks and flex already LOL!!!

Here s couple more videos, but check out our YouTube page under PhoenixGoldAus

Enjoy!!!






More videos on Facebook too, check out PhoenixGold-Oz Scott

Still more work and updates to come!!!

Cheers,

Scott

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Hi All,

Sorry for no updates lately...we have had birthdays, family colds and a few little shows here to take care of over the past 2 weeks. With that said, we have continued to plug away at some projects, including getting the B-Pillar sections bondo-ed and sanded and building the shelving for the front amplifiers and processors.

Here's some quick pics:








More 'WORK' this weekend!!!

Cheers,

Scott

[ttocs]

sub blew because you wired it out of phase?

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

sub blew because you wired it out of phase?

Nope...sub was not out of phase...1 voice coil on 1 sub was out of phase.

Keep in mind that these are dual voice coil subs so we had 1 voice coil trying to move forwards while the other voice coil was trying to move backwards, this meant there was essentially no cone movement, which meant we ended up with one smelly subwoofer. At this point the amplifier went into protection which shut off power to the other sub turning it into a giant passive radiator with 8 other subs pounding the heck out it essentially killing it as well...

[stipud]

Ho....ly....crap

Hey, 2 subs blown out of 18 ain't bad

This install is turning out amazing! Kudos! I can't believe the amount of flex you're getting on music! And with the low end extension of those subs, it probably sounds sweet right into the deepest depths of bass!!

[SilverGT]

loved this build from the begining. dang I think that winshield isnt going to last very long.

[ttocs]

oh yes that will cause some heat to build with little to no movement.....

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Ho....ly....crap

Hey, 2 subs blown out of 18 ain't bad

This install is turning out amazing! Kudos! I can't believe the amount of flex you're getting on music! And with the low end extension of those subs, it probably sounds sweet right into the deepest depths of bass!!

We prefer to thinking of it as wiring 35 out of 36 voice coils correctly LOL!!!

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

loved this build from the begining. dang I think that winshield isnt going to last very long.

We've only fired this car up for 2 events so far and the windshield is holding for the moment...

Funny thing is we are getting residential compliants from over a kilometre away at both events LOL!!!

We now have the car off the road until it is finished, so hopefully lots of progress pics as we finish it off. Then it's Video Time at the big SummerNats show in January!!!

[ttocs]

if you blew two subs wouldn't it be 34/36 correct?

[stipud]

if you blew two subs wouldn't it be 34/36 correct?

No?

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

if you blew two subs wouldn't it be 34/36 correct?

No?

LOL you're right...

One sub electrically blew (due to wiring one voice coil backwards). The other sub didn't 'BLOW' it was mechanically damaged by the other 8 subs in the enclosure trying to tear it apart....the voice coils still measured up completely fine!!!

[ttocs]

I am still confused how it didn't show up on the initial powering up and tuning when I thought you said that you ran them only in pairs?

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

I am still confused how it didn't show up on the initial powering up and tuning when I thought you said that you ran them only in pairs?

I can only put this down to only sleeping for 2 out of 48hrs and then testing each pair of subwoofers at low volume.

Basically I fired up each pair at low volume and listened to see if we had noise. Since the subs were not out of phase with each other, they sounded 'normal' even though it was essentially only one subwoofer playing. Also since these particular subs were at the very back corner of the box it made it hard to visually ensure that things were correct just by looking at the cone movement.

I would have to say that it was "Installer Error" :{P

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Hi All,

Well we were back into it this weekend. First of all we had to strip the B-Pillar section...AGAIN...

Hopefully this will be the last time we have to do this, as there are no more shows to attend until the big one (SummerNats) in January. So the plan is to not put this section back together again until it is for the final time!

So with that in mind we started making the trim panels for the front of the box. We started with the main panel that covers the entire front of the box. This 3mm MDF panel will be covered in vinyl and will fit in below the Speaker pod and behind the B-Pillars.

First we cut a panel to approximate size and sat it in place, putting the speaker pod on overtop so we could mark out our cuts...



Look at how nice those came out after marking and cutting



So now the next big problem was getting the cutout for the port opening in the exact right spot. Since the box in the Astra is PERFECTLY Square <cough> NOT <cough> we had to come up with some ideas since we couldn't rely on measurements alone. The decision was made to use a flush bit on the router and cut it inside the car! Yeah not the best option since we already have half the car built, but it was the most accurate way to do it...So the masking process began:




Then the moment of truth



and the aftermath:



A bit of vacuuming and we were back to a relatively clean car!

From there we could get the final positions for the speaker pod and B-Pillars, so we masked out the car and set everything in place doing a final bondo of the little gaps to try and get an airtight seal and a nice transition from speaker pod to B-Pillar on each side...still more work to do here, but it was dinner time so we called it a day:




More progress tomorrow.

Scott

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Hi All,

Believe it or not, we're STILL working on this build and Christmas is only around the corner!!!

We have been buttoning up the final details of the front cabin, making amplifier shelves, mounts for processors and doing the final fitment of B-Pillars and speaker pods.

We also made a start on the front door pods. The original idea was to have a flat inset panel that would have a big edge-lit plexigalss panel in it with the speakers mounted to the panel. However once Fab started cutting out the panel we found that the contours of the stock door panel would make this not only difficult to build, but it would just look Wrong in the door. So out came the good old circle jig and we routered up 3 6-1/2" rings...holding them up to the door we said DAMN we could fit another set of 6-1/2's in there now, so that what we're doing.







Since we were on trim ring duty we also started the 5-1/4" rings for the rear side windows...once again Fab took a look at the 3 speakers in the door and said "We can fit MORE" , so we did. We are not looking at 5x 5-1/4's per rear window.



LAst but certainly not least we made up th3e rings for the rear of the car on eitherside of the amp rack. This was meant to hold 2x 5-/4's, but Fab once again shouted for "MOAWR!!!" so now we will have 3x 5-1/4's per side.



So in total that brings us up to 30 speakers!!!
- 4x 6-1/2" splits per door (total of 8 speakers)
- 4x 5-1/4" coaxials in the roof mount speaker pods (total of 4 speakers)
- 5x 5-1/4's per rear door window (total of 10 speakers)
- 1x 6-1/2" coaxial in stock rear door location (total of 2 speakers)
- 3x 5-1/4" coaxials per side of rear amplifier rack (total of 6 speakers)

I know it's still not enough to keep up with the 18x 12" subwoofers, but it's a lot better than the original plan, and we may actually be able to hear the words to the song outside the vehicle now!!!

More progress on these next weekend.

[Phoenix Gold Oz]

Another project we made a start on was the cooling system for the rear amplifier rack.

It all started from the idea of tapping into thr floor vents under the driver's and passenger's seats and running some hose to the rear of the car. Well it sounded like a good plan so we decided to test it out, and I'll be damned if it doesn't work!

That's right we ran Garden Hose to the rear of the car...talk about PIMP!!!





So now we just need to silicone these up to prevent any leaks, and we also need to seal off the front floor vents so that we get a bit more pressure therough the rear ones.

Of course all of this will be hidden so that the Garden Hose isn't the standout install feature LOL!!!

OK more work to do during the week, then a BIG two day workfest this weekend.

Cheers,

Scott

[ttocs]

garden hose... Not sure I would brag about that really.

Curious, what happens when it gets cold and you turn the heat on the car?