Kia Soul 2014 (many images)

[robbythedude]

Hey,

Last week was entirely spent ripping my car apart and upgrading all the audio tenfold with my father. A first ever father/son audio project. I was going to post a day-by-day sort of log, but instead I am going to log pictures into sections of relevance and how it was done. I was to lazy for a day-by-day log... As my first 18" project comes to an end, there will be much more for Soul in the future.

The build is completely SoundQubed equipment with a Pioneer headunit.

Subwoofer: HDC3.118 Copper Coil Subwoofer

Mids: QP-MR6.5

Tweeters: QP-TH25 "SuperTweeter"

4-Channel Amp: Q4-90

Monoblock Amp: Q1-2200D

Headunit: DEH-P980BT - Premier™

High Resolution Album: Soul 2014

Index

Doors (below)

Headunit

Wiring

Deadening

Amp Mounting

Box Build

Big Three

Misc

Doors

Speaker was mounted to the plastic...Ripped the speaker from the plastic, dremel the ****, and got new screws.

Mounting the new 6.5" to the OEM bracket. Finished speaker in back, no going back to OEM speakers.

Here you can see OEM sound deadening. Bottom right of panel you can see plastic speaker ring that presses into the foam of speaker bracket.

This is not necessary.....A huge pain in the *** this plastic piece was. The speaker mounted here, not a big deal. BUT, to deaden behind this on the sheet metal required the removal of the windows, door handles, plugs, etc...

Here you can see where the foam presses against the door frame plastic.

No different, but the speaker is removed.

It looked allot bigger on the outside, but this is all I have... Ended up pulling em out and putting the closure back together.

Big tweeter was not going to fit in that dinky OEM hole. So, one was made for them right above the 6.5" speaker

Looks really nice, I could not be happier with the outcome of this.

Click to read more...

 

[robbythedude]

Look at the freaking difference...

Finished driver and passenger door

Headunit

Was a bit of a pain..Clips were angled, made it hard for the tool to un-clip.

There was allot of wires!! It was such a pain in the ***.

lol...upside down zzz

Blue tooth speaker mounted in the extra cavity below the HU. Some dremel action allowed for the wires to pass through.

 

[robbythedude]

Wiring

Working with some tiny places for wires underneath the plastic...

Had some more room for wires in the rear, but as you can see.....The seat was removed.

Made wiring easier

Had to be done....Was able to lift the carpet and run wires under the carpet.

Lawn chairs are cheap

Only got butterflies in my stomach once while doing this, so I took a picture to ease my mind...

Underneath carpet and rear seat

All wires go somewhere

0AWG vs 4AWG

 

[robbythedude]

Deadening

Bare front door

Aimed for as much coverage as possible. Had plenty of deadening to go around.

Deadened rear door

Huge bare metal here. Really glad the pain to remove the back trim resulted in quality area.

Right to the outside sheet metal of the car.

My trunk does not rattle, so I think this paid off greatly. Only thing that rattles is the **** rear-windshield wiper.

None of is sheet bare sheet metal. The gas tank lead is in the way and makes the metal really sturdy in that area. Did what I thought sounded echo-ish.

I ripped that subwoofer plate out and was able to reach the outside sheet metal. Deadened it real good! Did some of the same deadening as the driver too.

Threw some deaden where your feet would rest as a back seat passenger. None under seat because there is a huge *** cushion.

 

[robbythedude]

Amp Mounting

Roughly where it will end up in the end

LISTEN, this was a mistake to do it this way... I now have a hiss because the RCAs are to close to the power wires.... I KNOW! Will fix later lol Plus you can see I laid down some deadening in the wheel well.

Box

Fits nicely. Was impressed with the first cut.

Allot of thinking went into this... Neither my dad or myself are carpenters.... Allot of time...

This is getting really tight fit.

I am scared it wont fit...

16.5" hole for an 18" woofer

Do not put the sides on at the same time, because than nothing fits after....We learned that a little to late.. lmao Luckily, everything still came together pretty well when forced.

Done box

Here it is, the big *** woofer with the big *** box in my small *** car. 2x 6" aero ports at 15.5" a piece at roughly 6.5 Cu.Ft. Box did not fit at first and allot of angry swear words were tossed around! Then, we turned it upside down and flipped it while inside the car hahah Fit like a glove

 

[robbythedude]

Big Three

0 AWG Ground - Battery to chassis

0AWG Ground - Engine to chassis

0AWG Power - Alternator to battery

Misc

Fuses mounted on top the fuse holder. Dad's idea, did not ask my approval! Turned out awesome though, and still functions great.

Find these in my center console, plus a volt meter that is not pictured. Looks really dope.

There was a few days where I bled allot....Proud of that.

Anyways..That is all the pictures I have for now!

Future plans to deaden the ceiling and anything else (still have good amount left), build some other boxes with other speakers, body work, and idk yet. some other stuff too, sure.

 

[adulbrich 5,000+ posts]

Nice build! Turned out great. There were lots of little things I saw that you took the time to do right.

 

[CSCStang]

Did you have to take the floor pan off to get to the alt+ for the big 3? Doing one next week and it looks pretty tight to get to from the top.

 

[mazdakid 5,000+ posts]

Are you going to have any airflow going to the amps?

I'd try to flip the box over and see how it sounds with sub up and ports back if it would fit.

 

[robbythedude]

Did you have to take the floor pan off to get to the alt+ for the big 3? Doing one next week and it looks pretty tight to get to from the top.

Nope, but it was a pain in the ***...I held the mirror and light while my dad screwed the bolt on lol

We did have to dremel the plastic piece that covers the alternator bolt to fit the 0AWG wire! Luckily it still fit really snug and clamped closed.

Are you going to have any airflow going to the amps?
I'd try to flip the box over and see how it sounds with sub up and ports back if it would fit.

Unfortunately that box cannot be placed any other way...That box has no wiggle room at all, zero. I was surprised we managed to get it to fit lol

There is airflow going to the amps though. Because the trunk is rounded and the box is square, there is many areas where air can fit under the box down into the well with the amps.

I put a temp gauge down there too, just in case.

 

[CSCStang]

Nope, but it was a pain in the ***...I held the mirror and light while my dad screwed the bolt on lol We did have to dremel the plastic piece that covers the alternator bolt to fit the 0AWG wire! Luckily it still fit really snug and clamped closed.

Unfortunately that box cannot be placed any other way...That box has no wiggle room at all, zero. I was surprised we managed to get it to fit lol

There is airflow going to the amps though. Because the trunk is rounded and the box is square, there is many areas where air can fit under the box down into the well with the amps.

I put a temp gauge down there too, just in case.

Thanks. I'll try to jack it up and go from underneath.

 

[Popwarhomie 5,000+ posts]

No extra battery or HO alt? I can't imagine that stock alt and battery being able to handle much.

 

[robbythedude]

No extra battery or HO alt? I can't imagine that stock alt and battery being able to handle much.

Surprisingly I have not dipped below 13.6 volts at the 2200.1 while in park. I don't think the speaker is as loud as possible either, but holy **** it is loud enough for me lol

While driving around, my volt meter never leaves 14.2

 

[keep_hope_alive Premium Member]

fun project. glad it was a nice bonding period.

I can't tell how the amps are mounted, just screwed to metal?

if you have hiss, it's not likely due to RCA routing. most hiss is due to noise from gain settings being too high and hot using enough HU volume range. some amps are noisier than others and some head units are also noisier than others. The hiss may be something you can resolve by turning down amp gains and using more HU volume or it may always be there based on the equipment used. the noise can also be because you screwed the amps to metal - which should be avoided. it can cause ground loops through the chassis. i secure amps to a board and then secure the board to the car. if you add silicone to the screw tips from underneath you can help mitigate rusting.

noise induced into RCA's by EMF is not a common problem in car audio where we deal in DC voltage. and any noise wouldn't be a hiss but a random sinusoidal signal. in home/pro audio it's a hum at 60Hz due to the AC voltage being at 60Hz.

 

[robbythedude]

fun project. glad it was a nice bonding period.
I can't tell how the amps are mounted, just screwed to metal?

if you have hiss, it's not likely due to RCA routing. most hiss is due to noise from gain settings being too high and hot using enough HU volume range. some amps are noisier than others and some head units are also noisier than others. The hiss may be something you can resolve by turning down amp gains and using more HU volume or it may always be there based on the equipment used. the noise can also be because you screwed the amps to metal - which should be avoided. it can cause ground loops through the chassis. i secure amps to a board and then secure the board to the car. if you add silicone to the screw tips from underneath you can help mitigate rusting.

noise induced into RCA's by EMF is not a common problem in car audio where we deal in DC voltage. and any noise wouldn't be a hiss but a random sinusoidal signal. in home/pro audio it's a hum at 60Hz due to the AC voltage being at 60Hz.

I followed the SoundQubed website tutorial on setting gains. Turned HU volume 75%, set bass knob at half, and just turned the gain till it clipped and adjusted downwards.

Though, I played it really safe and didn't even clip lol Was insanely loud so I just gave up on turning the gain up any further....

I did all the above before we ziptied the wires together.

I did notice that the hiss would be quieter if I adjusted the gain downwards, but the hiss did not exists until after we zip-tied all the wires together. The amps are mounted to the metal, but I didn't think that would cause an issue at all. The hiss rises/lowers in pitch with RPM of my car, would that happen if the amps are mounted to the metal?