2015 Volvo V60 T6 R-Design

[naiku]

It works. Gave me a bit of a headache, at first I tried splicing into the factory amp for power, but this was awkward due to needing the factory amp plugged in at the same time to copy the serial number over (I could not cut the factory amp power wire and t-taps were not getting through the insulation) . Couple attempts and failures at that, I decided to temporarily just run a wire direct to the battery to get the Helix powering on. Plugged in the MOST Y-cable, powered everything on and waited a few seconds until I figured it would have had long enough to copy the serial. Unplugged the factory amplifiers power and removed the MOST Y-cable, next I set the jumpers for the Volvo, but noticed the LED on the side blinking away indicating the jumper settings were wrong. There are actually 2 x V60 listed in the manual, tried the second one and the LED stayed constantly lit.

Opened up MiniDSP plug in, switched over to TOSLINK and it works. Now I just need to figure out a permanent mounting location for it and then onto the next step.

[Transitman]

Good to see you are up and running naiku I was feeling your pain with the problems this car was giving you onwards and upwards from here

It works. Gave me a bit of a headache, at first I tried splicing into the factory amp for power, but this was awkward due to needing the factory amp plugged in at the same time to copy the serial number over (I could not cut the factory amp power wire and t-taps were not getting through the insulation) . Couple attempts and failures at that, I decided to temporarily just run a wire direct to the battery to get the Helix powering on. Plugged in the MOST Y-cable, powered everything on and waited a few seconds until I figured it would have had long enough to copy the serial. Unplugged the factory amplifiers power and removed the MOST Y-cable, next I set the jumpers for the Volvo, but noticed the LED on the side blinking away indicating the jumper settings were wrong. There are actually 2 x V60 listed in the manual, tried the second one and the LED stayed constantly lit.

Opened up MiniDSP plug in, switched over to TOSLINK and it works. Now I just need to figure out a permanent mounting location for it and then onto the next step.

[agm]

Here "we" go! This is a great read and build! Looking forward to seeing this through!

"we" = I'm not doing anything to help but I appreciate the build...as I cheer from the sideline!

[naiku]

Update time... this arrived earlier today:







At the weekend I had started putting together a sealed enclosure for it, nothing fancy, just a simple sealed enclosure. I somehow (despite my awful carpentry skills) managed to put together an enclosure where per WinISD I get an alignment of 0.706. Not bad!! The rear seat in the Volvo folds in 3 sections and I wanted to still be able to fully use 2 of the sections, the enclosure lines up perfectly with the size of one of the seat pieces:





I did however have to remove the dog net from the back of the seat to get an extra inch of clearance, not a big deal since I had one in the Audi and never used it, I don't see myself using it in the Volvo either. Cut out the hole for the subwoofer on the baffle and then mounted it, I have carpet on order but it won't be here until Monday, did I want to wait until Monday to get the subwoofer installed?


Nope.





I noticed after screwing it down that it is upside down, oh well, it has to come out for the carpet to go on anyway. Wired up in the car and a quick demo, no tuning yet as I don't have time, so the tune is set for the 10" MB Quart I had temporarily running in there. All I can say is damn, I am looking forward to getting it dialed in properly. It's by far the largest sub I have owned, even with it just plopped in there with no tune it sounds incredible. Hopefully, either tomorrow or Saturday I can get a tune set fully now that I have everything where it is going to go. While I am doing that I also plan to bridge the PDX V9 channels to the TM65, they are currently spare and I am torn on whether to go to the trouble (even though I really like it) of fabricating something for rear speakers to make rear fill worthwhile. Instead, I may as well give the TM65 some additional power

[naiku]

Y-cables arrived today, so the TM65's are now bridged, so that gives them a nice bump in power. Carpet also arrived for the enclosure, the match is not perfect, the picture makes it look better than it actually is (I also only bothered to carpet the visible sides):





It tucks into the corner of the trunk pretty nicely, there's no way to really hide it, but I'm happy with it for now. Long term I would like to either essentially make the baffle span the trunk, but doing that means giving up a large amount of usable trunk space, so not sure yet, or do something a little more creative, à la a suitcase, at the moment I am not sure what though.


I called the Volvo dealership last week about getting the recall work completed on the doors, as expected, they are not even sure when they are getting parts due to the current global climate and said it will be at least June that they have any idea. So, sound deadening is still on hold, which is a little annoying, as there are some annoying rattles especially in the passenger door. I think I will spend some time tuning this week and then just enjoy it for a while.

[naiku]

Time for a small update, back when I had the Audi I always enjoyed the effect of rear fill, so once I got the front stage dialed in with the Volvo have started to think about the rear fill. Knowing that rear door locations don't typically work well I had to look further back and higher up. Unfortunately, there are no speakers in the D-pillars and none available from the factory either with speakers in them. Likely because the pillar is pretty small and the way the metal is shaped behind them there is not actually all that much room for speakers either.

Before tearing into things too much I wanted to temporarily mount some speakers in the rear to see if they would work out. Enter a spare set of Dayton RS75 I had (used to be in the kick panels in the Audi) and a pair of PVC cups.





Yes, the PVC cups look awful! I covered them in black electrical tape just to somewhat disguise them. Anyway, so they work as expected so the next step is to try and figure out a way to mount them. In that 3rd picture above, the red outline is about where I plan to mount them. However, as I previously wrote there is not much room at all behind the pillars. So, I am going to have to likely use some fiberglass to build them out, similar to A-pillars. I ordered a new pair of pillars last week, thankfully they are cheap, $12 each brand new. Even if I royally screw them up, it's not a bunch of money down the drain. In my head I want to make them appear as stock as possible so am somewhat hopeful to shape the baffle similar to this:



But make the grill flat, not with that step on it. There are a few problems with this approach....

1) I'm not that skilled.
2) I don't own a router.
3) I don't have anything I can press a grill with
4) My fiberglass skills extend to a single subwoofer enclosure, never attempted pillars.
5) Did I mention, I'm not that skilled?

Ultimately, this could end in disaster. But we'll see.

I'm also trying to figure out how to run the rear fill through Dirac. With Dirac 3.0 I can assign speakers to zones, but what I cannot yet find out is that can I assign the front stage and sub to zone 1, then assign that Dirac calibration to preset 1 on the DSP, then assign the rears to zone 2, run calibration on that and also assign it to preset 1, but without the zone 2 calibration messing up the zone 1 calibration. Running them all on the same zone, Dirac basically lowered the output of the front stage to match the rears which just caused me to lose a ton of output.


Edit: Dang, just got an email that one of the D-pillars is on nationwide back order with Volvo. That throws a spanner in the works. If I remove my current ones and screw them up, I am stuck with no d-pillar for who knows how long.

[nadams5755]

I just used some 3” eBay grills, but JT did the hard work though:

[naiku]

Nice, using grills like that are a possibility, certainly for simplicity sake. I just need to locate a pair of spare pillars before cutting mine up, the trim piece that runs along the roof above the D-pillars already broke 2 clips (not the small replaceable clips, but pieces of the actual trim) while trying to remove it. So, I don't want to try removing the D-pillars without a spare set in case clips do break and I can't put them back in.

[nadams5755]

Spares only matter when you’re going back to stock. Gogogogo

[nadams5755]

My C pillars are held in place by a screw under an AIRBAG logo. You might be able to do something similar with a bracket from inside the speaker opening as well.