2008 Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder sound upgrade

Recently, I had a customer pop up at my current shop, whose car (a Green Viper coupe) I had done at the previous shop I worked at.
He has two cars he wants to upgrade. This Gallardo Spyder and a Ferrari F430. The shop I used to work at doesn't do car anymore,
and the shop he was dealing with had been pushing him off for about 2 years. I was excited, because I've been wanting to work on a
Lambo.


https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...06a4e819_z.jpg
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...8af06250_z.jpg

Basically he told me the car sounded like crap and he wanted something better. The stock system is unamplified, using Audi speakers and
HU. The car also has a rear camera, from the factory we integrated with.

The camera module is at the back of the center console. Basically, it's a composite signal coming from the camera, and gets converted to RGB
before it heads to the HU. I tapped in for signal, and left the module in to power the 6V camera.

We went with Hertz MLK1653 components. The stock speakers are attached to the doors with screws that threaded into plastic inserts in the doors.
On the driver's door, all the screws were loose. 1 of the screws on the passenger side was loose as well. I pulled them out, and replaced the inserts with rivnuts.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...57a370b3_z.jpg

I made speaker adapters from a base of 1/4" ABS and 3 layers of 1/2" expanded PVC. We added some MESA mat in the area of the speakers. (Not my first choice, but it's what we carry.)

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2kaH6N3]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...f9379620_z.jpg
[url=https://flic.kr/p/2kaCQZK]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...2340c9df_z.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...01ceff9c_z.jpg

Crossover mount is made of 1/8" ABS. It tucks in under the arm rest. Normally I'm not a fan of putting crossovers in doors, but this car doesn't see rain or snow, and has only been driven about 11000 miles since 2008. I had thought about running wires into the doors, but the door molex plugs were fully populated. I could have put the tweeters in front of the doors, but that would have required a lot more disassembly, and (originally) this was only going to be a 3 day project.

The stock midrange is about half blocked by the door. I opened it up as much as possible. Note stock tweeter location directly behind the door handle. :daniel:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...5c5378ca_z.jpg

For system power, we used an Arc Audio X2 600.4. It's running 150 to each door and 300 bridged to a Pioneer TS-Z10LS4 shallow mount subwoofer.

I mounted it up front where the original "CD changer" was. It was actually a unit that replaced a CD changer with a USB port. I trimmed it in with a simple cover.
My coworker liked it so much he volunteered to wrap it in Vinyl. Who am I to say "No?" lol

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...dd4b5d38_z.jpg

For a HU we went with Pioneer's new DMH-WT7600NEX 9" mechless. It did a great job filling all the space around the radio bezel. Great picture, and the camera came up very clear. We used a PAC C2R-AUDI for integration. Worked perfectly.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...149a83ce_z.jpg

I used a Pioneer double din cage (ADT-VA133) for mounting. I had to make some mounts to keep it from sliding into the dash, and some trim panels that fit behind the radio to hide bracketry, but it came out pretty nice.

The final piece was to add some bass. We were running out of time because the weather was supposed to go downhill, so there wasn't really time (nor was I really inclined) to move everything out of the way to do a footwell enclosure. I started building the enclosure at about 4:30 and by 6, I was cutting wood by flashlight in the dark. lol Ended up finishing it around 11pm on Friday, and he picked it up Saturday afternoon. Weather went to crap Sunday.

It didn't come out as nice as I wanted, we had some minor mishaps with a staple gun, and I can certainly see how I would do it differently in the future. I was, however impressed with the subwoofer. So, there's that. If I were to do it again, I'd probably stack fab it, and make the shape fit the car a little better. Would also make it easier to vinyl wrap. Overall the box was about 3.5" deep and probably around .5 cu ft. If you remove the carpet behind the passenger seat, you can gain about 1.5" of space below the rear panel. I would like a subwoofer with perimeter venting as I could probably make the box a little thinner, as the Pioneer subwoofer's pole vent is out through the magnet.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...c1e7f53f_z.jpg
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...e62b92b4_z.jpg

The box was lined with Soundskins sound deadener (please don't ban me, Nick, lol), mostly because I had some, and won't be using it on my car. Thought the foam might help in some regard. Build the box out of 1/2" MDF for maximum air space.

Quite honestly, I was very impressed with the MLK1653's even before I got the sub in. The relatively small amount of MESA met that I used seemed to do it's job and *did* make a noticeable difference in the stiffness of the door near the speaker. They played well below 60Hz and had plenty of impact. There was a noticeable difference in high frequency response with the windows up vs. the windows down. The sub had a good deal of impact for being in a small box with relatively low power.

All in all, I think I'd change the box design a little, possibly move the tweeter forward in front of the door, and add some sort of processing.

Thanks,

Jay

Very cool Jay! So fun and so nerve wracking I’m sure to work on that caliber of car. I bet the few minutes of sitting in it idling and revving made up for the eek-ness of working on it.

You did a great job with the time you had. I wonder if this will be a teaser that will cause him to go further with it or if he ends up mostly driving with the top down - listening to the engine. Will be interesting to see if he returns in the Spring/Summer.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

I think we're done with this one. He's bringing his Ferrari F430 in Spring, tho. Probably a very similar setup, except the sub. We found a company the makes pre-fab sub enclosures for the car already wrapped in OE leather. Seems like a time saver.

Jay