2006 Accord build log - KISS?

[casey]

Another update! Mic came to a show here in Greensboro today and I met up with him to check out the sail pods. We compared my 06 Honda Accord sails to the modified ones for the TSX. They are the same physically but there are some minor differences on the inside. After looking at both, I am 99% sure it is something I can handle like a hack and make work lol. The snap tab is in the same spot which is the most important thing. I can work around everything else.

Appreciate the hook up on them Mic, they are definitely going to save me time and money! Also, I was able to briefly demo Mic's car while I was there and I have to say that it is the best system I have listened to without a dedicated midrange. The fullness of sound at eye level was very impressive and the clarity was great!

pic of sails:

The weather today is amazing compared to what it has been (we got 8" of snow this week) and tomorrow it is going to be 60* and sunny. I am going to start on treating the doors to prepare them for the tm65 mkII

 

[casey]

was able to put some time in this weekend to get the doors started. Decided to go with the passenger door first and was pretty happy with how easily the weather barrier came out and how cleanly the adhesive came off

I usually go fairly heavy on the CLD even though it may not be absolutely necessary.

good inside coverage as well

through some SDS butyl rope between outer skin and crash beams. I have had this roll about two years. It smells like raisins and was dry on the outside, but after rolling it around it got super stick again and worked great

door cards got tlc as well

removed oem padding and laid some cld. The red spots are double sided tape. Was going to attempt reusing the oem padding but it was a no go so I started laying some Raamat adhesive backed CCF

C

 

[casey]

and not to bore you but here is the drivers side

I need to order some more CCF and will probably end up doing a bit more work to them when the time comes.

My Blue Jean RCA cables arrived today as well. They were pretty reasonably priced and look extremely well built. Used my dads label maker to mark the mid bass and wide band. Decided to go with TW for wide band simply because MB and WB look too similar when youre in tight quarters lol.

I have kept my custom fabbed stuff from my 4 door civic and decided to see how the box fits in the trunk of the accord. Its not perfect but its pretty damn close. I think with a new face piece it will be great. Ive been planning a second mkIV anyway so this could work out very well.

And lastly, Ive decided on my plan for amps. Mike (Velozicty) posted his current amps for sale. I ended up picking up all three and they should be here later this week. 2 Zapco Studio ST-5X II and a ST-1350XM II

(his pic)

The plan is to use one 5ch per side for front stage. Will be bridging the "front" channels to give 300 wpc to each wide band and mid bass. Ill keep the 5th channel open, which also happens to be full range AB in case I decide to go with a tweeter, as it can provide 200 rms at 4 ohm. The sub amp will power 2 MkIV at 1ohm. It is D class and 85% efficient so that will work great. After talking with Mike, Im probably going to do Y splitters to feed signal on both RCA inputs for each channel. He was able to keep gains minimal. Should definitely help with a low noise floor

 

[BigAl205]

Nice progress

 

[chithead]

I heeeeaaaaard it through the grapevine, roll that butyl and it sticks fine... oooooooh

YOU got the Zapcos! Oh that is going to be so very very sweet.

 

[Truthunter]

Nice progress

I just installed a set of TM65mkII in my brother-in-laws Escape doors and he is very happy with them.

Question: Is there a reason behind removing the factory cotton batting insulation on the rear of the door panel and replacing it with ccf?

 

[Hic]

It's your call , if you are happy with the "sound" ? No need

 

[casey]

I heeeeaaaaard it through the grapevine, roll that butyl and it sticks fine... oooooooh

YOU got the Zapcos! Oh that is going to be so very very sweet.

dude I was about to drop big coin on some lx or ap but damn...im going to have 300wpc class ab on my mid bass, wide bands and 1350 watts class d on my subs for dirt cheap!! Cant be mad about it

Nice progress

I just installed a set of TM65mkII in my brother-in-laws Escape doors and he is very happy with them.

Question: Is there a reason behind removing the factory cotton batting insulation on the rear of the door panel and replacing it with ccf?

glad he is happy with them! I hooked one up and they blow on factory hu power which is expected lol. The only reason I removed the oem padding is it is melted or hot glued on stock. I needed to remove it to deaden the panels and when I tried to double sided tap the padding back down...it wasnt having it. It actually seems very nice as was effective (I have more buzzing now since I havent done enough ccf)

It's your call , if you are happy with the "sound" ? No need

i hope I will be...so enough

 

[casey]

A few more things arrived in the mail over the last few days. I put a WTB up for a second BM MKIV and ended up getting one from Mark at Melodic Acoustic for a good deal. I am 99% sure I can reuse the box I had made for my civic and it was an easy decision after test fitting it.

Knukonceptz delivery came. 4 awg power wire, some crimp terminals, mini inline fuse holder and karma ss 12 awg bi-wire. Plan on the bi wire is to run it to the front and use connectors before routing into the door. Drivers door has a molex plug and thing some smaller gauge will be easier to route and shouldnt affect much at a short length. The bi bi-wire is as big or slightly larger OD than the 4 awg power wire but only having to lay one run per side will be convenient.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4720/25086734197_e0c4493daa_k.jpg[/img]


Lastly, my amps arrived from Mike. They look great! pretty compact for full class AB and are going to give me more power and flexibility than Ill need.

hopefully I have some updates besides parts in the near future. I found a local fab guy that I most likely will use for a few things to make my life easier lolA few more things arrived in the mail over the last few days. I put a WTB up for a second BM MKIV and ended up getting one from Mark at Melodic Acoustic for a good deal. I am 99% sure I can reuse the box I had made for my civic and it was an easy decision after test fitting it.

Knukonceptz delivery came. 4 awg power wire, some crimp terminals, mini inline fuse holder and karma ss 12 awg bi-wire. Plan on the bi wire is to run it to the front and use connectors before routing into the door. Drivers door has a molex plug and thing some smaller gauge will be easier to route and shouldnt affect much at a short length. The bi bi-wire is as big or slightly larger OD than the 4 awg power wire but only having to lay one run per side will be convenient.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4720/25086734197_e0c4493daa_k.jpg[/img]


Lastly, my amps arrived from Mike. They look great! pretty compact for full class AB and are going to give me more power and flexibility than Ill need.

hopefully I have some updates besides parts in the near future. I found a local fab guy that I most likely will use for a few things to make my life easier lol

 

[casey]

My SDS and raamaudio orders both came in so I spent a little more time on the doors.

I had reordered the tesa tape and wrapped all harness wires on the doors in it. (no pics sorry). This stuff is nice! Easy to work with and definitely will add another barrier to prevent buzzes and rattles.

I cut the surrounding plastic away from the grills on the door cards so that there wont be any contact with the TM65 mkii. I ripped out the styrofoam pieces so that I could add more CLD and lay the Hydrophobic Melamine Foam (HMF). I ended up using a 4x4 sheet on each door card. Im hoping that I have enough room to put a layer of MLV in at some point as well. Also added CCF where I left off on the driver door. Used it in tight quarter where the door card almost rests against the metal and used the HMF where there was gaps/depth that needed to be filled.

 

[Truthunter]

Door panels look good. One little trick I learned is to remove the door clips from the card, put a single piece of tesa tape around the cradle that holds each clip, and them snap the clip back in place. Prevents the possibility of the clips rattling around in their cradles.

 

[casey]

been a few weeks since I have updated, but finally have some progress to post! I finally got some decent weather on a day I had off, so Saturday I started pulling the interior out to do MLV and wire runs. I managed to get everything out and start laying MLV on Saturday and had to wrap it up at sundown. I took today off from work to get it finished up. Was able to get the MLV down, run speaker wire runs (biwire knukoncepts), power wire, RCA, DSP power wire, high level input wire and remote. This car surprisingly has a lot of dense padding on the carpet and rear wheel wells but I was able to run everything fairly easily with no fitment issues. I didnt take a ton of pic because weve all gone through the joys of doing this part

trunk area

the biwire speaker wire with the outer protective sleeve is larger than the damn 4 gauge power wire. THe plan is to drop the wire size to run to the doors(will be paying someone to do this...lol)

good ole MLV

right rear of trunk where I will be mounting the amps

carpet back in, dsp will be tucked under the passenger seat.

I put close to 8 hours in on all of this. Glad it is out of the way. Hoping to have a few more things done soon.

Still waiting on the Helix stuff to arrive

I also decided to get new sails made since the TSX ones did not fit to my satisfaction. They are in process and I suspect theyll be done this week.

Once they are done I am having the fab guy do some glassed rings and mount my mids.

 

[casey]

Package arrived today! 2 Zapco ST-4x SQ and Audible Physics Ram 6A. Decided I wanted to give AP mids a shot with the matching wideband drivers. The amps will be bridged for 190x2 to drive the front stage. Hoping to get the door wire and rings done in the next week or two!

 

[Truthunter]

Whoa, more Zapcos... you gonna be using 5 Zapco amps? What's that... like 20ch of amplification?

Those Audible Physics drivers are quite the eye candy Hopefully I'll get to hear a set of these soon.

 

[casey]

Whoa, more Zapcos... you gonna be using 5 Zapco amps? What's that... like 20ch of amplification?

Those Audible Physics drivers are quite the eye candy Hopefully I'll get to hear a set of these soon.

LOL nah only 3 zapcos. I figured the 5ch per side were going to be overkill. I sold them for 350 for the pair and picked up two brand new 4ch SQ versions (better op amps and caps) for 300 shipped so no loss in $$, possibly (maybe???) better "SQ" and they are definitely smaller. Didnt see any downside to it honestly.

I agree that AP makes some great looking drivers. I have high expectations for these. I got FR graph on the mid bass with them and they look very promising.

 

[casey]

Finally!! Hoping it will be downhill on this install from here I dropped my car off on Tuesday at the shop that the fab guy I found works at. He has had my sails for a few weeks and I decided to go ahead and have him run two pairs of wire into my doors (as Ive said, this is absolutely my least favorite part of any install) and in addition, Ive never messed with running 4 wires through a molex plug (driver side has one).

What I did not expect was for him him to have my speaker rings done as well! They are MDF and have been sprayed and glassed so they wont rot. I almost didnt thing the door panels would fit with them, but they sure as hell do. They are 1" depth and he sanded them to match the uneven mounting surface of the door.

I took it a step further and used some SDS butyl rope around the interior of the ring to sheetmetal mounting to help seal it, decouple it, and it also covered any sharp edges of the cut door sheetmetal. All in all was worth the 5 minutes per door.

I ended up using about 3/4 of a tile of SDS CLD per ring. Just wanted to add additional mass to them and make them "one" with the sheet metal. After that, I applied RAAMat CCF to the back of the grill mounts that came with the AP RAM 6A mid bass. Its easy and it may help decouple, plus doing it on the grill ring keeps the driver looking better if its removed.

After this, I threw the door cards back on and confirmed they still fit perfect! I went to the hardware store and got some screws that would work well with the RAM 2A mounting to the sails. I soldered some wire to them (will need to get some connectors later) and put them in. The sails are between on axis and 15* which is great

I have a Helix DSP.2, HEC USB, and Director on the way. I am very hopeful that I should have this thing ready for the NCSQ spring meet!

sails before paint

mid bass ring for the door

installed

CCF on the back of the grill mounting ring and wiring hooked up on the mid bass

RAM 6A installed with the additional CLD

 

[casey]

the sails are open/vented so I put a small piece of SDS foam on the opening to try and help with backwaves

driver side from driving/listening position (finish is a little glossy buy an easy fix if it starts to bother me)

door open just showing the shape/contour of the sail build. dont mind my 25 year old show civic in the background lol

passenger side from listening position

all in all, very happy with how this has come out so far. Im going to make a rack for the amps just so I can get them in and set and will worry about making it and my sub box look good later.

 

[BigAl205]

Wow, those turned out great!

 

[casey]

thanks sir, very happy with them as well as what I paid

 

[casey]

Finally got the last few pieces to the puzzle! Hoping to throw it in this week or weekend and get at least a base tune on it