A Pillar Build -with Accuton!

[captainobvious]

My client wanted to make a change to his a pillars so that he could further optimize the sound and give them a nice style in the process. He had seat rails installed for competition so this greatly changed the listening position and affected his near side hf response. After taking some time to test and listen to the drivers in various positions from the new listening position, I came up with a design that was modular and would allow us to get the tweeter positioned where it sounded best. I designed the 2 piece baffle and then used Apicella Autosound's new baffle laser cutting service to get my parts cut out.

The drivers. Accuton C30 and C168






2 piece baffle design





Some of the laser cut acrylic pieces ordered from Apicella Autosound for this project:






Masking and fiberglassing the molds (I did not build off of an existing plastic panel, I molded and created new ones from scratch).

[ballistic1350]

Sweet! I can't wait to hear your thoughts on how the sound once its wrapped up

[captainobvious]

Ensuring these have a solid, factory mounting point. (M6 bolt into a factory thread in solid metal).






After some more fiberlgass layup, then some reinforced filler and shaping.


With the 2 part baffle, the bottom baffle section is fiberglassed into the pillar, then the top section mounts to it. The baffles have 4 mounting points and the speaker mounting holes are also threaded in the acrylic through both baffles so technically 10 bolts securing the two baffles together.


This trim piece was designed to fit between the mid and tweeter and allows the outer edge of the trim to have a cleaner look since this piece can be colored black to "blend in"...seen here...

[captainobvious]

Masking and painting the trim bezels...I did 3 base coats of a white pearl with some metallic and 3 clear coats.









Wrapping

[captainobvious]

Installed!

[LBaudio]

Nice work Steve!, I see you tryed out alu tape as a base for further fabrication….final finish is perfect!
Any issues with tweeters on the side (horizontal setup)?

[captainobvious]

Nice work Steve!, I see you tryed out alu tape as a base for further fabrication….final finish is perfect!
Any issues with tweeters on the side (horizontal setup)?

Thanks, yeah I have been doing that for a couple years now on builds. Allows me to get a basic shape and build on top of it with a lot of strong fiberglass instead of trying to do it from the inside if I had used something like stretched grill cloth. Thanks for the compliment. It took a LOT of time on these to get them right. I had to repaint the top baffle bezel 3 times because of imperfections in the finish (bug landed in on twice)

[BigAl205]

That looks awesome, Steve!

Is that Bill's truck? He's the only person I know with midbass in the a-pillars

[dgage]

I would have never thought to put n 8” in the A-pillar. Lol! Looks great but I wouldn’t be able to see out the windshield of my car if I put those things in the A-pillar. Love it.

[erinh]

Great fab work here.