Here comes the bad news, that looks just like a Cadillac grill. Lol
It looks awesome though!!
Here comes the bad news, that looks just like a Cadillac grill. Lol
It looks awesome though!!
Another project that has been going on for a few weeks has been new kick pods. The fabrication of these has been handled by James Davidson of Mobile Sound Systems in Arlington, TX. I had a couple of design goals for these. One, they had to be sealed. I am no longer in Modex class, so no venting and I can't cut up a bunch of metal to sink the drivers into the kick area. Two, I had to have a baffle setup that allowed me to swap drivers without rebuilding anything. Initially the Satori 5" will be used and was the standard I set for worse case size wise (depth and width).
Before I get on to the pics, I'm sure the question will come up, "Why not build them yourself?". Good question. I had no intention of having someone else do these. I spent a lot of time just sitting and thinking about what I was going to do for my kicks. After I pulled the 10's out of the car I had been using a simple baffle adapter on those to mount my other speakers before deciding what to do ultimately. So, my good friend Dan Merritt kept prodding me to have James build my kicks, pillars and a whole bunch of other stuff. James built Dan's car, which is a red Challenger that some may have seen at finals, college station, etc. Outstanding work. I had no concerns at all about James' work, it was more pride of doing it myself, time, distance (James' shop is 5 hours away) and a few other factors.
Howard (chefhow) asked me to come down and help judge a show he was hosting at Mobile Sound Systems and Dan took it upon himself to apply the pressure to get some work done on the car. They convinced me, we discussed what to do and set about it. Show was Saturday, so we stayed the night and went in Sunday morning and spent 10 hours or so there. Have to give my wife props because she sat in that shop the whole time without a single complaint
So, James and I talked about a design and went over the goals once again. I had started the week prior by laying down some fiberglass from which would be the base of the new pods:
MASQ partner and judge
MobileAudioSQ.com
From that, we talked about where the carpet level was going to be and decided to build up the floor of the enclosures a bit.
Now this is where James started taking a departure from what I had in my head. I kept quiet and watched however.
It is kind of hard to tell in this picture, but the sill plate is in place and there is orange tape on it. a couple pieces of 1/4" mdf were used to "wrap" the front of this piece. Although harder to tell, the same was done on the driver side:
I finally had to ask, and what he is going to do as part of the finishing process is blend the kick pod into the sill plate at these junctures. The sill will be wrapped and the two pieces will just flow together. I really liked it and had never thought of that myself.
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Once a base was established a baffle was cut.
The driver side here was marked up to make sure the parking brake lever wouldn't bind.
OK, I will admit, I wasn't entirely seeing the big picture yet here, but I knew he knew what he was doing so again, I watched. There was a bit more work done before I had to leave, but I didn't get pics of it. I left the enclosures with him while we went home. The plan was he was going to get as far as he could on them, ship them to me, then I was going to rebuild the floor area and carpet, then I would go back down there for the finishing work.
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MobileAudioSQ.com
over the next couple of weeks he would send some progress pics. This one shows how the speaker baffle is laid out, which honestly until I saw this I still didn't quite get.
we both agreed the triangle shapes portion of the base was unnecessary and he eventually cut those off. Which brings me to the odd looking rounded hump top of the enclosure. well, for one you can't see it in seating position (you'll see later. no pun intended). and it allowed some extra air space.
Test fit with the Satori in place
Now the baffle itself. It is a 1/4" aluminum plate. This piece will be removable and I can make another baffle for different drivers as I deem necessary.
with grill in place:
At this point the enclosures were filled with a mixture of resin and aluminum oxide (used in blasting, like sand blasting). This mixture was poured into the enclosures making them extremely solid and very dead. They weigh 14 pounds each.
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James then sent me the enclosures. He kept the grills and baffle as he still had some work to do on them. Here they are the day I received them:
first thing I did was a test fit
From seating position:
with them in place, I pulled out the oem carpet tub and went to work building up the floor with layers of foam topped off with a layer of luxury liner pro
Next I will use a piece of mlv and glue carpet to that. That piece will then lay on top of the LLP, and I'll finish up the area around the transmission tunnel and all that. When I go back to James, he is going to add a small lip onto the enclosure face that the carpet will then tuck under, giving it a nice finished look. Another idea that never occured to me, back will make the difference in the final appearance I believe.
That's where we are as of today. The goal is to have the carpeting done and enclosures wrapped before the big show in Georgia at the end of the month.
As a side note, James really wants to redo my pillars as well. We've discussed some ideas but haven't come to a final conclusion yet. I want to get the kicks done first as a priority then whatever else happens can take place between August 1st and finals. Having said that, I did order some new a-pillars so when we do tackle them, I'll have them ready.
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Mine is steel.
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MASQ partner and judge
MobileAudioSQ.com
That was for Erin.
I figured it was, I was just clarifying what was in mine
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MASQ partner and judge
MobileAudioSQ.com