01 Explorer Tiny DD setup to (2) 18 AT Stratos in a 4th

[slammedincouch 10+ year member]

i picked up one of those 18s for shits and giggles. let me know how this goes so i know if its worth me building a box for. had mine wired at 4 ohm on a free air and i could still feel the car flex

Almost to the testing stage for me! Will definitely keep this updated on my impressions of them

 

[slammedincouch 10+ year member]

Almost finished with everything- tomorrow for sure. I'll be up at 8am finishing up what little is left. Today I got the top bracing finished off, 3 out of 4 of the 45s in, the front piece as well as the port:

Got a little saw trigger happy with the port on the front piece- need to fill in an eighth inch gap that I took out of it, on the bottom part

Forgot to take pictures of the second piece of wood cut out to cover the rear window for now and the holes for the bolts for wiring (two bolts per voice coil so I can change the ohm load without taking the subs out of the box to switch from .5 and 2). I'll get those for tomorrow

Tomorrow all I have to do is get the last 45 in, calk up the ported chamber, finish putting in a few screws here and there, toss a little paint in the port/ported chamber, toss on the top and wire up the subs

 

[slammedincouch 10+ year member]

Another small, but "filled" update. Just got started around an hour ago- I've been out of the garage all day. Got some paint on the box today- plasti dip on the front and a $2 can of spray paint on the side (you'll ever see the sides, so they can look like loose bhole for all I care. "

Had to fix the front peice a little where the port is from getting saw happy. Little bit of body filler here and there over some screws and also back tracing to some screws inside the box that i missed. I didn't bother to get the ones on the front piece, due to the fact that when I'm finished, you won't see them.

Also filled the 2x2- wasn't going to be a nice looking brace without it

Picked up some more supplies at the store today:

more silicone sealant for inside the box, some matte clear to test on the box when I'm finished and also found some

white plasti dip (awhh yeah) Gonna respray the port once I sand it a tad and respray the lower baffle (I love plasti dip, meh about regular spray on shiz)

Possible updated to follow tonight depending on how much I get done. Tomorrow I'll have a full day on it, so my ideas that I have rolling around should start coming together and the subs Will be in the box by tomorrow night.

 

[slammedincouch 10+ year member]

Hugeee day of working- I've been out there on and off for the past 14 hours working on cosmetics and I'm almost done, but I ran out of clear (fuuuu) so I won't finish until tomorrow when I can get to the store for more. Didn't take a whole lot of pictures today- mostly because I won't be showing the box until I finish it. Definitely will be an interesting cosmetic situation. Anywho, onto the pics:

Went back and reprimed the inside of the box

Finished up the body filler on the 2x2 support. Turned out decent- would have been better if I spent another half hour on it but meh just a 2x2

Kept going back and forth on port color for at least an hour today haha. Couldn't decide whether I wanted it black or white. Eventually I went with white, but decided it was too clashy with the interior colors. went back and decided a nice grey primer looked best (as shown above)

dipped most of the inside of the box, or at least what you'll be able to see if someone wants to peak into it for what ever reason...

Like I said above, i won't be showing any pictures of the fornt of the box until I finish it tomorrow, but I think it's turning out pretty great. Tomorrow I'm just going to clear, screw the top of the box on and wire up the subs. Getting pretty anxious and hopefully the weather will be nice enough to finish up the door panels (keep forgetting they need a few more coats of clear to finish up).

 

[DB-Audio 10+ year member]

Box Looks clean nice job

 

[slammedincouch 10+ year member]

THE BOX IS IN Sweet baby jeeeeesus it was not easy especially getting it in there alone...had to remove the rear plastic panels, the 2/3 part of the seating and all of the mats (got my weather tech underneath it woot) but yeah. It's in, but not playing yet. Tomorrow I'll get the subs in and the amp hooked up to test it out. Need to make an amp rack still and finish off the panel pieces. Any who, onto the pictures!

Started by clearing out all the equipment that used to be in the back...now jump ahead to after dinner. had to start by sliding the box in sideways, then pushing it forward, then removing all the the plastic paneling and then finally the seat. My garage is a heap of my interior currently.

box pushed forward with my battery chilling still hooked up- should have unhooked it (which I ended up doing later), but for now yolo

Still adjusting- tissue box is trying to help out

Pushing it forward some more to get the weather tech mat under it.

And finally, she is in. HUGE accomplishment and pumped to finally be almost finished. my only issue now is that the seats don't really lock into place anymore...seems like they still work though. And now for the revealing of the front- most people are either going to love it or hate it, but regardless, it's on plasti dip. i can remove it at any point to do something else:

 

[Bassman999 10+ year member]

Crazy to see that huge box in there!

Excited to see it with subs in and playing

 

[slammedincouch 10+ year member]

Sorry I haven't updated this in around a week- I've been super busy between maintenance work at the cottage, getting estimates on the cost of a new fence, helping my dad around the house with random projects, oversleeping in, desktop computer dying and the darn weather, I haven't had a lot of time to work on the explorer or get pics.

Got the subs in and the back piece screwed on, subs wired up and them playing, but haven't gotten a lot of time to start fine tuning. Set the gain, ssf, and lpf with some tones, then tested it on a couple songs. Keep in mind I have D2s (only thing left byt he time I decided to buy a pair), so my options are limited to 2 and .5 ohm on my M1c. I started off at 2 ohms and wasn't really impressed with the 700ish watts both subs were getting, so I decided to wire down to .5 and HOT DAMN they sounded a lot better. My only issue right now is that the gains were set on the powerful eq (anytime I reset the headunit from pulling the neg terms, the darn hu resets to the powerful eq). It's super annoying, and I'm OCD about having the hu eq on flat, so I'll be getting around to fixing that.

On that note however, I was monitoring the crap out of my voltage and amp at .5- amp seems to get a little warm for my liking (used to my warhorse running cold to touch), so I may switch to something that does power at 2ohms (hint someone give me a deal/trade offer on an ol skool mmats or rf amp that's rated for ~1200 2ohms) but I have No Voltage issues. I'm resting on half tilt at 13.7-13.4 and I haven't even upgraded my wire...btw got this in the mail at the beginning of last week:

As soon as I snag some wire loom, I'll be upgrading dat big 3 under the hood and also swapping the run of meh soundquest wire that's running through the vehicle to 1-2 runs (got it for free and budget was tight last december). I'm happy that without it right now, my voltage is fine, but if you know anything about me, I'm all about Overkill when it comes to electrical.

The other thing I still need to do is figure out my amp rack situation. Originally I was going to toss this together between the box and the tailgate:

But I don't feel like there's enough ventilation back there, especially after I seal it off. So stay tuned for another idea.

In the next few days, I should have the door panels back in, rear seats, and the whole thing playing finally. Will try to get videos up as soon as possible, but be prepared for kind of meh footage. Can't wait until I get some time to actually play with them! Overall, I've only had about 10 minutes of playtime total at half tilt to mess around with them, so stay tuned!

 

[67bass71]

Can you get any vids of it Playing?

 

[Staynlean 10+ year member]

Are you "aware" by any chance, the words you sometimes use leads me to believe...

Any who, nice build... I like

 

[Fattony911 10+ year member]

I like how the plexi window and port also doubles as a back up window. Great idea

 

[slammedincouch 10+ year member]

Let the build resume!

Picked this pretty piece up today. Probably won't have any updates for another week or so, but they'll get here. Didn't end up selling or trading the stratos also, so I'll hopefully do another build with them down the line

 

[slammedincouch 10+ year member]

Small update for the day...

Couldn't remember how to get that bad boy outta there...

Eventually though...

Should have a box design by Friday ready to go. Update on the Stratos: guy locally wants to check them out, but won't buy them without a box that will fit in his cargo area- the 4th is too tall, so I'm hoping to just get a cheap design thrown together for a 12ft^3 ported box to send the guy off with/I really want to see how they sound in another enclosure type.

 

[slammedincouch 10+ year member]

Small update for the day...

R.I.P. 4th order...we hardly knew yee...

Really sad to see it go, but happy to see my suspension back. Gonna probably try to salvage some of the pieces for beauty panels...think there's about 3 in there I can cut down and work with.

Truck is back together- all interior panels and seats have been reinstalled.

Box is getting there...that part should be finished up by tomorrow hopefully. The cargo area beauty panels and the sub baffle are probably going to take me around 1-2 weeks to do. i'm still playing around with some of the ideas I had for it and I want to make sure this setup suits me before I build it in all the way.

 

[04murdalanche]

nice, its coming along nicely.. looking forward to seeing a finished product bro.