Captains Log -2013 Mazdaspeed3

[captainobvious]

Very nice.From what I`m seeing here it looks like you hot glued everything together,then polyester resin(?),then bondo?I envy your skills.

Good eye

Yep, I drilled the panels out and then sanded with 80 grit to give a good bonding surface for the material to adhere (lessons learned from previous builds) to and then aimed and secured the mounting baffle with hot glue and pieces of 3/8" wooden dowel rod. Using thick rod like this certainly helps with stability for the piece. Once I get them hot glued in place, I hit the dowels and the surface with resin to soak them and bond them to the piece. Then, I started in with the chopped matt and resin, followed with Rage Gold filler. And lots of sanding....

[captainobvious]

Capn'! So the neo10s are a go after all? I thought you had to drop back and punt that idea?

Not exactly... The neo10's are out and the neo8"S" version are in
They were just too large and would have pushed these out too far. The only other mounting option I considered (outside of pillars which would have been rough at their size) was to mount these dipole hanging directly in front of the 8" midbass. I'm not sure how that would pan out though...

[claydo]

Oh, ok. Hope to hear it in a few weeks.

[captainobvious]

A small update for today. I cut the hole for the passenger side venting to outside and then fabricated up the screens. They are made from concrete lathing mesh and covered with thick grill cloth that has been treated with Scotchguard.


Up first though, I decided to wrap the mid/tweet enclosures in black carpet to better match the interior materials down there and make them less noticeable.

[captainobvious]

The old grill making technique...










These are the covers for the holes venting to the outside.

[captainobvious]

I sprayed undercoating on the cutout areas for protection.








The screens were screwed into the metal, then all seames were covered with aluminum tape, then followed up with rubber undercoating for extra protection.

[claydo]

Wow looking good capn!

[captainobvious]

Thanks Clay!

Once I drill the mounting holes in for each piece, get the wires pulled through and into these pieces, I can mount them up and secure them to the body metal. I'm almost done with these kicks...

Then I can turn my attention to the trunk

[claydo]

Yes sir time for the b-b-bass!

[chad]

I may be a moron here but is that big planar not capable of doing HF duty?

Because a lot of much larger planars are.....