Bought the Civic Hatch lease out, so rebooting the install thread

Some of you may have been following the unnecessarily detailed review process I've been going through, attempting to identify locations/alignments and speaker candidates for the actual car...

I've been rushing through, lately, thinking spring has sprung and it'll be warm enough to start enjoying some garage and driveway sessions and get this install going...
Attachment 15651
...well, I'm sure, soon. :banghead:

Man do I feel your pain.

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Originally Posted by Theslaking

Man do I feel your pain.

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Not too painful - it's been tons of fun playing with different speakers and alignments in the crazy basement faux dashboard rig.

Auditioned a bunch, ruled out a bunch of experimental alignments, got to 3D print some audio reflectors that I won't be using but did spark even more thinking and I think I've even found an alignment I can start installing that will let me keep experimenting.

I haven't put those notes up there yet, but probably tonight. :cool:

But I think I hear you-
Last blast of snow where you are too?

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Originally Posted by geolemon

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But I think I hear you-
Last blast of snow where you are too?

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South of Buffalo as well. We got 7" at my house.

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Originally Posted by Theslaking

South of Buffalo as well. We got 7" at my house.

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So where are you near?
Might be able to use an install helper [emoji38]

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Eden.

Nice - basically my old backyard.
I grew up in the village of Hamburg, now I'm on the near fringe of Orchard Park though.

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So glad I held into this piece for the past two decades.

It was unique back then, I thought SOMEONE would make something similar to this today, but I'm not seeing anything.

Basically this is a fused block with two 1/0 in, and four 4 gauge out. It's made for the special rectangular IXOS 1/0 cable they used to make - and fortunately I have a whole spool of that too - and a battery terminal or two for that cable too.

What I like about it is it uses standard mini blade fuses - if I need 120A on one output, I can install four 30A fuses on that leg. If I need 5A on another output, I can install one 5A fuse on another branch and be all good.https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...fda33c22eb.jpg

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Finally back to building!

I decided I'm ditching the spare tire. If you look at the pic with the tire, I split it into three planned areas-
The area to store a pump/slime/patch kit to replace my spare, the amp rack, and the sub box.

Today, I cut down the original base for the box for the planned expansion.
Then I made a panel for the bottom of the tire well that has a hole to utilize the spare tire mount. After sacrificing much cardboard for templating, I made walls for the lower portion of the sub box.

Nothing is screwed together in the pic, just set in place for today. They'll be screwed and glued tomorrow, then the first rounds of fiberglassing for the bottom can begin.

Actually first I may need to lay out the amp rack side before I commit to this height.

After buildup and final cure, I'll add a top to the lower section, add the baffle up top, then 'glass the front upright. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...930ae2d452.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...24d5baeb2a.jpg

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So for the "green" area, the amp rack - it's a little tighter than I was anticipating, but they'll just fit.

I'd love to have them horizontal so the badges are correctly oriented to the viewing position, but that's feeling too tight for comfort. If I do that, I would need to have 11 runs of RCA cables coming out of the miniDSP, and I don't think I have enough room before interference with the first CCi 44 is an issue:
Attachment 15856

I have just enough room if I orient them vertical, assuming I bundle all the RCA cables down the left side to the bottom of the image where the RCA inputs are on all the amps. In this case however, my power wiring needs to be pretty tightly managed if I don't want it to look all bunched up. [The lengths of the RCA ends (over 1" each) would make it difficult to do this but with the amps spun the other way, so the RCA's were up top and power down below]:
Attachment 15857
Note I also included the holes for my 60mm fans in that second image - that's where they'll need to be, I do have grilles/filters to cover them from the inside, and their orientation will be fine for airflow and yet also for keeping the actual intakes and outputs of the fans in "buried" areas that will help suppress any noise - but I did shop for silent fans and picked nearly the lowest dB available, that still have good ccf.

The thing is, I also have this little fun toy that I picked up specifically to run my two rear fill channels - it's definitely not an SQ amp... that's actually good for simulating some always-dirty reflections, and I'm only running it on a pair of widebands, so I certainly don't care if it plays anywhere near 20khz. It's ridiculously tiny, but even still - now I don't really have room to keep this inside the amp rack:
Attachment 15859
I do have room down below, and am planning to hinge the amp rack because I do have 3" of height available down there. I was planning on using a 1F cap I'm sitting on as I could fit it. I could fit the miniDSP down there as well since it's a pretty boring black box.
Or, I could fit the IXOS distribution/fuse block down there - it's just cool and rare and interesting and I feel like that's nicer to have on display - but on the other hand, if it's down below it would be easier to get to the fuses, since the upper amp rack is going to be truly under glass. I'd have to unscrew the whole glass cover, then remove the distro block cover, then I could get to the fuses...
Attachment 15860
Probably also makes sense to have this located right next to the cap, down below. I guess I might have to go with the more practical choice.

Somewhere I also had a linear actuator lying around that might be fun to use to tilt up the amp rack... probably in the storage unit. If not, I'll have to decide if I'm picking one up, or using struts. I always complain about vehicles with hatches that have actuators you have to wait for, rather than struts you can just slam the damn thing shut and get moving, so people might find it weird for me to have my hatch floor motorized, but it could be slick.

Back to the drawing board to swap in that Banda amp I suppose.