Volvo S60 build resurrected! Old School!

[americannight 10+ year member]

Body filler and rough sanding of the enclosure front is DONE! Next steps will be fiberglass chop mat on the top and sides, filling in small holes here and there with the body filler, and a final sanding with 120 grit. Once that's done, it will be time to give it a listen, experiment with the ports, different amounts of fiber fill, etc. It looks like an Alien right now, lol.

 

[americannight 10+ year member]

Tonight I used body filler to fill in some gaps on the top and side and then laid the chop mat over it. In a pinch, because my usual supplier was closed, I used the Bondo brand resin. Let me tell you guys something you probably already know. The bondo stuff is OK in a pinch but it definitely is not as easy to work with as the good stuff. It was a lot stickier than my usual brand (TAP plastics) and so it kept pulling up the chop mat when I dabbled it. I'm happy with the final result but it was not as effortless as the other product. I definitely have a bit more sanding and filling to do now than I would have had with my usual resin. But it did get the job done. Here's a shot of it drying under the heat lamp. I am glad to be done with this stage of the enclosure. This should be the final fiberglass work that I need to do on it. The next steps will be some body filler to smooth out the top and sides and then installing the ports and sanding a bit around the speaker holes to get the woofer to fit the way I want. Then I will be able to do the final fitment in the vehicle and the vinyl covering.

 

[americannight 10+ year member]

It may not look like it but I put a full day into the enclosure. This was spent filling in pits with body filler, sanding, more body filler, and sanding some more, finally with an extra fine sanding sponge. I also filled in the gap between the two chambers with great stuff foam. The gap was caused because the fleece around the speaker rings did not touch the center divider. I could use some advice here, having never used great stuff on a speaker enclosure before. My original idea was to use the great stuff to fill the gap and then paint over it with resin. Do you guys think the resin is necessary or is the great stuff by itself pretty air tight? The can says the stuff is air tight. Heck, it seems to have filled the gap really well. As you can see in this picture, I went a bit overboard. But if you guys think it's worth the extra effort, I'll paint it with resin to add more barrier.

I also have done a test fit with the woofers. This was to make extra sure they fit right before getting to the finishing stage. Once the back is on this enclosure it will be harder to make adjustments later. I also wanted to make sure the bolts threaded straight on to the T-nuts. This was a concern. With the baffle being 2" thick and I do not have a drill press. I had to do my best to make the holes perpendicular with the wood with just a hand drill. I burned about 2 hours today driving around to different hardware stores looking for 10-32 3" bolts. I thought 2" would do it but those would not make it all the way to the T nut threads by the time the thickness of the speaker gasket was factored in. 3" bolts with the fine thread were very hard to find but finally did locate them at Home Depot of all places. Struck out at Ace, Lowes, Fred Meyer, and finally hit pay dirt at Home Depot. Only two of the T nuts seemed a bit out of place but once I whacked on them with a hammer a couple times, I got them to marry with the bolt. Once all the bolts were lined up with the T nuts, I tightened them by hand to give the T nut a final sink into the wood so the bolts should go right on during the final assembly.

Lastly, I drew the cut holes for the precision ports. It's pretty neat they make these so the diameter of the inside flare serves as a template for the hole you need to cut for the outside flare. That makes it pretty idiot-proof. Once the holes are cut, I'm going to route around them about 1/8" deep so the outside flare will be countersunk and flush with the top of the enclosure. With the added thickness that the fiberglass added to the top of the box, it is now a very tight fit getting it into the trunk. Countersinking the port flange will ensure that it still fits through the trunk opening.

 

[americannight 10+ year member]

One step closer to THE BOOM.

 

[americannight 10+ year member]

Tonight I painted the expandable foam with fiberglass resin to create more of an air tight barrier and then used liquid nails around all of the inside corners of the box. I also had time to staple fiberfill to the inside walls of the enclosure. I got a good deal on a package of polyester "snow" at the craft shop after the holidays. Looks like it's going to be a very bass Christmas this year after all.

 

[T.I.K. 10+ year member]

This looks awesome. Why the polyfill? are you low on airspace, or do you just like the effect it has on sound?

 

[americannight 10+ year member]

Airspace is a little low. Plan is to give it a listen and tweak as needed.

 

[americannight 10+ year member]

Picked up an Interstate Megatron battery today. The stock battery triggers a low voltage warning after 15 minutes of listening and that's just with the one amp driving my fronts right now. Interstate has a warehouse store in Lynnwood/Everett area so made a treck up there to pick it up. I'll plan to install that during the final assembly of the system and will include some pics of the wiring then.

 

[americannight 10+ year member]

It was a long day today with the sub enclosure. Installed the terminal cup, wiring, and the ports. I've routed around the port flange so they should sit close to flush once the vinyl is on. This is definitely the experimentation phase of the sub enclosure build. I had time to listen to the woofers tonight hooked up to my garage stereo, ran a long wire to the box and tossed it into the trunk. Obviously under powered at this point but to my ears I think I will have a more musical sound with more fiberfill. Lots of bass, even with the low powered garage stereo pushing the woofers, but it seems really peaky around the tuned frequency of 32Hz and kind of muddy to my ears. There is about .5 lb of fiberfill in each chamber now. I think another pound might give me the sound I want. Trip to Jo-Anne is in the cards for tomorrow. If the fiberfill doesn't do it then I'll seal it all up and call it good. The sealed sound is not as peaky, tested this by stuffing the ports with fiberfill to simulate a sealed enclosure. Here's the box before the woofers got mounted in it:

 

[americannight 10+ year member]

Yep, the added fiberfill gave me the effect I was looking for. I put about another .50 to .75 lb of fiberfill in each chamber. That's basically completely stuffed. I'm sure I am giving up some SPL by doing this but the sound is a lot less peaky. This week I'm going to finish doing the vinyl on the second amp rack panel and then Saturday will be the big day to install all of this in the trunk. The sub enclosure will be the very last thing I will vinyl because I do want to hear how it sounds in the vehicle with the Zed amp on it. I'll play around with stuffing the ports to simulate a sealed box. If sealed sounds better then I will probably end up removing the ports and sealing it before doing the vinyl on the sub box. At this point I'm liking the ported, though. I believe there is about 1.55 cubic feet per chamber before stuffing. I tuned the box to 32Hz with the precision ports. I estimate by stuffing the box full of fiberfill it is effectively about 1.80 cubic feet per chamber so the effective tuning is now lower than the original 32Hz which is fine by me since that seems to provide better sound quality. But gloves are off once this is in the vehicle and I get cabin gain effects, etc. We'll see how that all pans out. The ported/sealed debate is not settled yet in my opinion.

 

[CurtisC]

Nice Work! It's really cool looking!

 

[americannight 10+ year member]

It was blood, sweat, and tears this weekend folks. Word to the wise, never strip wire with a straight razor! Bad idea. My build was suddenly put on hold Saturday afternoon when my hand slipped and the razor cut right across the tip of my index finger before continuing on to slice the top of my middle and ring fingers as well. After a trip to the ER, painful shots in the tip of my index finger and 8 stitches, I had to continue the build today with the use of only one hand. Typing's a biyatch tonight so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

 

[americannight 10+ year member]

Tonight was a monumental evening! I started out by completing the wiring on the subwoofer amp. It was half done from last Sunday night. All I needed to do tonight to complete the wiring was to hook up the turn on lead, power, and ground to the amp. Those wires were already run, just sitting behind the amp ready to be hooked up. I'm a bit disappointed with this 60 amp breaker I have on the bass amp. It's an "absolute" brand in-line breaker. What I don't like about it is that I had to strip the end of my 4 gauge wire down to about 8 gauge in order to fit in into the breaker. This thing was advertised online that it would accept either 4 or 8 gauge wire. If anyone has suggestions on good breakers to get, let me know. I want to use something better.

After completing the sub amp wiring, I ran the speaker wire to the sub enclosure still sitting on my bench to give it a listen. It was like night and day hearing this enclosure through the proper amp. The bass hits hard and low, just like I wanted it. The debate is settled. Ported enclosure it is. After hearing the box, I couldn't wait to get it in the trunk. But first I really needed to sand down around some of the edges. I got some 60 grit stuff at Fred Meyer and went at it. This box is a really tight fit but it does go in. It also fits nicely around the edges of the amp rack panels as I had hoped. Once it has vinyl on it, it should look pretty trick. Really happy with the way this bass sounds. It got late so I only had a bit of time to play with the gains and bass boost on the amp. Right now I'm not using any bass boost at all. I have the bass set flat on the head unit and the subwoofer level set to 0 on the head unit. The gain is set to around 1 or 2 O'Clock on the amp. I used my ear and set it really conservative at this point.

One cool thing with the Kenwood x994 head unit is that you can save a few favorite setups. So I can have a setting for SQ, boomin', rock, etc. Crossover points and slope are also adjustable. I have the fronts at 60Hz high pass with a 12db slope and the sub at 80Hz with a 24db slope. Again, this is all a really quick setting which I'll be tweaking over the next few days.

I'll post a video of this system in a few days, too. There are a number of items to complete first. I want to clean up my wiring a bit behind the sub amp, fashion some fasteners to hold the panels and sub box in place, and vinyl the sub box so it blends in with the panels.

Sound wise, though, I'm really impressed with this Zed Deuce/Image Dynamics sub combo. It feels like I am barely pushing these right now and the bass is really low, clean, and hits hard. It will be fun to see what kind of numbers I get out of this thing when I pull out all the stops. More to come!

 

[DB-Audio 10+ year member]

looks clean as hell man nice job

 

[husker77 10+ year member]

Man I missed the accident that *****. Your trunk is clean! Stinger makes circuit breakers that accept ring terminals, I found a 50 amp.

WoofersEtc.com - SGP9050 - Stinger 50 Amp Circuit Breaker