Slammer's Lexus IS350 Going Active!

[Slammer]

And the front GFX lip was fairly easy but the rear was a pain. Whole rear end of the car had to come off for that one.

[Slammer]

Before mods pic.



And after.



Factory ratings for this car is 306hp and a 0-60 of 5.1 seconds. Quicker than that now for sure. Not a Corvette or a Porsche but pretty damn quick regardless. Worst part is I drive 30 miles each way to work and the wife drives about 5 miles. I dump all my time and money into this girl but rarely drive her. Worth it when I need to roll up at a meet though. She is my "labor of love" for sure.

[claydo]

Looks awesome Dean!

[TIMMAY!!!]

Looking real good so far. I like those cars a lot.

[chithead]

Can't wait to finally hear the IS one of these days! Wait, we have a challenge at the upcoming meet. Game ON!

[Slammer]

Can't wait to finally hear the IS one of these days! Wait, we have a challenge at the upcoming meet. Game ON!

Indeed we do sir. Can't wait to hear yours as well. Just noticed in your sig that you are as hooked on JL as I am on Hertz/Audison......... Gained a lot of respect for JL after hearing the Prelude at the Fall meet (Tim's car?). It was absolutely amazing and I soooooo envy his imaging!

[Notloudenuf]

I never realized the deck mount was all custom. Great work.

[Slammer]

Thanks Kendal. It was a pain but worth the effort. I would update this thread if I could keep myself out of the chat box. Gonna post more pics and info tomorrow though.

[Slammer]

Okay, picking up "about" where I left off..... I REALLY wanted to go active and simplify my system, and use "clean" equipment. Being happy with my HU, I focused my attention on the amp and drivers. I loved the HSKs that I had run before and had great luck with Hertz/Audison, so I decided to go with the next level for speaker replacement. For the amp, definitely wanted to consolidate and the AV5.1k provides the power that I needed and would allow me to cross the tweets over properly. My sub is a dual 2ohm wired at 1ohm and the Voce isn't 1ohm stable, so that was to be my single sacrifice. I have been looking for a dual 4ohm cartridge for a while, so that I can wire it at 2ohms. The amp is rated 600w @ 4ohms but an impressive 1,000w @ 2ohms. Sub stage is still decent the way it is but would be better with more power. I am running a smaller sealed enclosure with heavy bracing, so the extra power would be nice. If I can't find a cartridge, I may change the woofer eventually.

Okay, needed to upgrade my interconnects as well as my speaker wire. I was using Memphis 6ch interconnects before and didn't care for the connections. As for speaker wire, I was actually tapped into the factory speaker wire. Believe it or not, with all of the work I had done, I had never run dedicated speaker wire from the amp to the speakers. No time like the present!

Now for some pics! Here are my new Stinger 8000 series interconnects along with four runs of speaker wire. 16ga for the tweets and 12ga for the 6.5s.



All the new gear ready to go. I had always wanted to do a build with all of my new stuff lined up for a pic, because all my previous mods have been done one piece at a time.



Quick pic to show how large the Audison amp is. Nice to go from three amps to one, but this beast was gonna be tricky to mount........

[Slammer]

After the fall SQ meet, I understood that my stage was too low and that I had issues with my imaging. I played with the time alignment in my HU and made some solid improvements in both areas but still wasn't satisfied. When I had originally installed the HSK165s, I had used the OE mid mounts for the tweets. The angle they were aimed at may have been okay for a mid, but tragic for a tweet. They were aimed at my chest, at best. I talked with a good friend who has been in the car audio business his whole life and he gave me a great idea for building my tweeter mounts, for use in the same location but at a better angle. ABS plastic, a heat gun and a 2x4? Yeh, that's what I said..... Turns out he knew what he was talking about. The idea is to cut a hole in the 2x4 the size of the depression and use the heat gun to heat it up and then push the plastic into the shape desired. I used a hole saw to cut the appropriate diameter in the 2x4 (slightly larger than the tweet itself, compensating for the desired angle), and then found something slightly larger than the tweeter to push it into shape. Here is where pics come in handy............



Tape measure pictured was so that I could keep the center line of the hole. This was difficult to do otherwise with the plastic in place. I found that a can of PVC cement was the perfect size and used it to form the tweeter mount. Several passes with the heat gun and then a steady push with the PVC can. Repeat about 10 times and there you go!







The two mounts when I was "satisfied" with the angle. Notice the bangin Accord in the background? That's my daily driver while the wife is rolling around in the IS......



The tweeter mounts would require trimming, as well as some final angle adjustments ultimately but I will get to that later.