Build thread. 08 CC install

[TimmyG]

Were did you run your power wire into the cab?

 

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[tazerbro]

Were did you run your power wire into the cab?

 

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Page 3. He took pictures too...

 

..."And I punched through the firewall just below the brake booster for the main line to the amp rack. I ran this in the convenient channel GM provides along the door. Except in the front as its occupied on the driver side."

[arctictwist]

Thanks for the assist there.

 

Sorry ive been MIA guys. Picked up another part time job. Had to give grad school a break for the summer. Ill go back in the fall. So now I help teach martial arts where i train. I do three classes, then take my own class and either train after for mma or help train one of the other fighters after. Then go home eat and get ready and head to my full time job for the night shift....Lots of work! Anyways, sunday i was able to get my back seat lifted and In finally. i used 3 inch c-channel. I cut it to 2.5 inch pieces and drilled 1/2 inch holes in it about 1.25 inches apart so that i moved the seat forward to make room for the amps in the back. NOT FUN. The holes were killer to drill, at its thickest the steel is .356 or something. Anyways, heres some pics.

 

Test fit.

 

Lift bracket

 

side view

 

 

seat and window view

 

 

 

Does anyone know what size the bolts actually are? I want to get some threaded rod couplings to use for lifting the seat belt brackets. Its just not worth cutting and drilling two more pieces for something thats not weight bearing.

[TimmyG]

A drill press and sharp drills go along way! As a machist i drill steel, 2 or 3 inch thick alot. Those holes shouldnt take more the 3 mins each. Just use some lube for the drill bit and stay away from cordless drills, they dont have the power u need

 

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[arctictwist]

I did use lube for the bulk of them and it made a huge difference. Also the turbomax bits made a big difference over the standard tipped bit. I do not have a drill press and the one i had available to use, the person was not available that day so i had to use my trusty corded drill. The big hassle is cutting the c-channel. MAN what a pain! even with the chop saw it took forever. I didnt spend 60$ on a diamond abrasive blade, just a regular abrasive.

[TimmyG]

Cutting it can take a bit, but the way you put it in the saw plays a big role also. Stand the channel so it larger face is on the saws fence. This allows the saw to have the least metal cutting at one time. I hope that make sence

 

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[arctictwist]

Yea it takes a bit, ruined the catch bag on my saw and melted the plastic that lines the slot in the base where the blade goes.

[Texas_Edition]

Hope you had a speedy, pain free recovery and back to 100%. I know all too well about surgery in that area. I have had several and I need another surgery which will be the most evasive and major surgery on my ankle. My accident was 5 1/2 years ago.

 

I just read up on your entire stereo build. You are doing a good job and doing it right. Doing similar things I am doing such as the Big 3, raising the rear seats 3", mounting the amps on the back wall, frustrated on running the wires through those dang rubber grommets, sound deadening, etc...

 

One thing I recommend if you want more mid bass out of your midrange speakers is to seal up the holes in the doors with some thin 1/8" wood. I did this on my rear doors and havent done it on my front's yet. It was a very noticeable difference. Im running Focal Utopia components in the front which back when they came out, were $1000. My rears are a step or two down from my Utopia's.. They are Focal K2p components. The rear speakers instantly had much more mid bass and even had more mid bass than my Utopia's. It's a pita to do this and can take some time. I deadened my doors over the holes and had it like this for 3 years until I a few months ago when I did a complete overhaul of my stereo. I replaced everything minus the front and rear components. I cut the pieces out, caulked it and then re applied my deadener, which was surprisingly reusable after 3 years and pealing it off. Posted a picture below.

 

I saw in one of your post that you were confused why one of the Class D amps put out twice as much power than the Class A/B amp or something to that effect. Am I right? If so, and you are still confused, I can explain to you the purpose and how the 2 different class of amps make their power. Class D is efficient, but has more distortion. Class A/B is meant for your speakers, not very efficient, but puts out clean power that has very little distortion.

 

I see that you did a seat raise. I had a problem with mounting my amps on my back wall once I lifted the rear seats 3". The 40 portion of the seat has that hinge system that the 60 portion of the seat doesnt have so when I lifted the seat up, it hit up against my Audiopipe AQX 360.4. So I had to relocate the 4 channel amp. Wouldnt fit on the passenger side either. I put my 30" long Audiopipe AP30001D 3000wrms amp, but with the seat raised, it still hit the 7" narrow wide amp, so I had to move it up a tad bit above my wood amp rack. I have now since then ordered two Audiopipe AP18001D's. I decided to ditch the 3000wrms amp and go with two amps that will do 3600wrms. Im able to upgrade my wattage which is great, especially for the custom built subs that have an extra spider an an SPL coil that bumps up the rms rating up quite a bit, but will also be able to mount the amps easier. The amps will be in on Friday, my new distribution blocks will be in Thursday. My Mechman 270a alternator will be in tomorrow also. I bought an Kinetic HC2000 deep cycle battery to replace my stock battery which will handle up to 2000watts. Plan was to put that battery there and get another HC2000, but I just did my measuring today and our Group 48 battery size is just a plain stupid design by GM. There aren't many batteries that fit these measurements. So I'm looking at getting two Stinger SPP1200's that will be able to handle 2400 watts each for a total of 4800 watts and a total amperage of 3200 peak amps and 2400cca's. Yeah, Im definately running a heck of an electrical system. I have to with a combined rms wattage of 4200 with all three amplifiers.

 

For my seat raise, I used T6-6061 aluminum square tubing. I think I went through 8 battery charges to drill out those holes. Unfortunately I don't know what size the bolt sizes are for our trucks. I would have used the same coupler idea, but I couldnt find the info, so I just bought heavy duty bolts and nuts from Lowes. They are stronger than the stock bolts.

 

You can see what I have been working on in the photobucket album below. FOUR Sundown Audio SA-8 V.2 Stock SPL 8" subwoofers in a 3 cu ft fiberglass/wood box tuned to 31hz, seat lift, sound deadening, box build, etc... Like I said, I lost most of my install pictures, which still upsets me.

 

Keep up the good work. Check out a portion of my pics of my build in my album below. Might help you out a little bit.

 

http://s20.photobuck...uild/?start=all

 

[arctictwist]

 

Hey man, I think i was talking to you on caraudio.com for a bit. I ended up makin my top holes in on the brackets about 1.25 inches forward from the bottom holes so that i didnt hit the amps. Otherwise i would have had the same problem. Sounds like your moving along on your upgrade. Im skipping the door sealing for now as i went with ccf and mlv from don at sounddeadenershowdown.com and it made a major difference.

[Texas_Edition]

Yeah, we were probably chatting it up on CA.com. I got banned from there because some dbag, TJ, bought my brand spanking new TC Sounds LMS-R 12's that had never been powered or installed. They come in two separate halves. Top section and the bottom magnet. He misaligned the motor with the VC and screwed it up because he had the bolts tightened down halfway, which many people, including myself, warned him and pointed it out. He got me band by saying I sold him blown subs. He sold them to someone and he fixed them, which I received a PM from the guy who bought them off of CACO, which proved he screwed them up by telling me what went wrong, how he fixed it, and what he did to them. I have sent numerous messages to the people of CA.com, but no response and the perma-ban hasnt been lifted. Looks like it wont be.

 

Anyway, that wasnt the reason why I wanted to reply to your thread. I know its been a month since you last posted. I was curious to how your build was coming along. I decided to sell my 3" T6-6061 .25 thickness aircraft grade block kit so I could move my seats forward 2". My front middle bracket is too deep and I cant fit it, so I had to use my dad's chop saw, which had an awful lot of play in it. I attempted to cut off just the plate of the rectangular tubing and then make another cut. My dad doesn't have aluminum wire, so I gave it to my friend to have his dad take it to work to weld it up.

 

Curious to how your C channels are holding up instead of using square/rectangular tubing. I know I wont be able to use C channel as there will be too much power distributed towards the front where I made the cut, but if your's is holding up, maybe I can just flip it to where there is minimal weight baring.

 

Also, I decided to ditch the HC2000. I traded it for a Kinetic HC16V. Has dual post, 12 volt and 16 volt, which both can be utilized. My Audiopipe AP sub amps can be ran at 16v, but I dont have a need for that. So Im selling it to a friend. I purchased a Group 34 battery which is the battery size for our trucks. Not sure why I said Group 48. So I bought an XS D3400 which was a perfect fit. Did alot of research and this battery was the best and the highest output battery for a Group 34. It packs a serious punch. Says it will handle a 4-5k stereo, so we will see. I also purchased the XS I-Bar 551 which is great so I can use the top and side GM post. My rear seats are ripped out as I am redoing my wiring, mounting my amps differently and awaiting on getting my middle front bracket to be welded. Plus I am waiting on my AP Amps to get sent to me as I had the wiring upgraded.

 

An install I did on April 1st on a friend's Ford Escape, didnt last long. He bought a new 2012 Ford F-150 so he is selling all of his car audio equipment. Although Im upset that I put in all of that time and effort, on my birthday weekend, I atleast get to buy back my Phoenix Gold Tantrum 500.2. I am also going to buy his new Focal Performance PS165 components that I am putting in my Q-Logic kick panels, which they should hopefully arrive by the end of the week. I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to run another set of components since his are Focal's also. So yeah, two sets of Focal components up front and a set of Focal Comps in the rear. Not sure if I want to take out my Focal K2p's from my rears and put them in the kicks and put the new Focal Performance comps in the rears or just put the Focal PS165's in the kicks. I think it will sound pretty great as I need some more mids and highs for my 4 SA-8 V.2 Stock SPL 8" subs ported @ 3cu ft net with a super long dual 4x4 slot port tuned to 31hz off of 3600wrms.

 

So it looks like I am going to need to run another run of power wire. I have some Cadence 1/0awg or I have his 4 gauge wire from his install. I'll be running 4200 wrms with 4 amps. Two amps for the comps and 2 amps for the 4 SA 8's.

 

Did you ever notice a good place to run your power wire through the firewall on the passenger side? I'm not sure if I have enough power wire from my Kicker 1/0awg to run across the engine under the brake booster like you did. I am already a bit short on the wire as it is. I had to get a voltage and amp reader to extend the wire to my distro blocks.

 

Sorry for the long write up.

 

But let me know how your stereo install ended up. Hopefully you are all healed up. I have been there numerous times. 28 surgeries and counting. Had an emergency surgery on my bowel in February.

[arctictwist]

Thats bunk about the ban! Wow lots of changes for you! Two inches forward will be ALOT for your seats. I only went 1.25 and it seems so cramped! mostly because not only is it forward an inch but 3 inches higher, so with the front seats normally on an angle, going up alone makes the seats closer. The C-channel is fine. BUT i got really thick stuff. its like .350, which was not fun to cut or drill. It was also a pain because the Top and Bottom of the C are tapered, so theres reinforcement at the angle, that made it tough to because the drill would break through on one half of the bit and not the other, it got caught many times and I had the bruises to prove it. If you can find it thick enough without that, i would go that route.

 

My build is still SLOW. i just started the box work last sunday and got a little more done today. I used a jasper jig and unfortunately the holes were about an 1/8 inch too small. So i had to sand it out, wasnt fun. everything else is up and running, just no sub yet. I also need to finish my sound deadening on the doors and roof. But thats it. lol. I cant believe ive been doing this for about 6 months. Just way too much working going on right now.

 

I have a group 34 yellow top, and it seems to be holding my voltage at about 14.2 or so. I did the big three and that made the difference. before that it was just like stock. Im also not running the 1200 sundown amp to my sub yet tho so well see. A second one may be in my future....which is ok because i wanted to tap it for some permanent mount jumper cables.

 

oh and no, the passenger side had way too much going on. I dont know if anyone else has done it there, but i wouldnt.

[arctictwist]

So I've got a bit more progress since the last update. The box is pretty far along.

 

This is after hours of sanding to get the hole wider and still round.

 

 

Here's a nice trick I was given somewhere along the way, either in a thread or just my research. If you don't have a nice square box, getting your volume can be difficult. Having the proper volume is pretty crucial. So you take a box the size of the volume you need, in my case 1.5 cu ft, with an extra .15 for the sub volume. So I dropped 1.65 cu ft of peanuts in and adjusted the end piece to the appropriate spot.

 

 

Heres a couple of the box without the foam and ur end piece in place.

 

 

And finally the test fit... Oops what happened?

 

 

It doesn't fit!

 

 

 

Haha just playin. I planned on making a cutout and raising the area over the magnet just a bit. Most of you will know the seat has give in the middle. I needed the height but can't do it at the edges of the seat. That's it for now. More to come.

[arctictwist]

Hopefully getting it in the truck tomorrow! Just sealed up the last bit!...Its very hard to silicone the top of the box through just the sub hole.... But its done. Wont carpet it till i know its good...and man do i hope its good. Lots of work!

[ddjozone]

Wow, impressive commitment. Can't wait to the end result. Kudos!

[arctictwist]

Well it went in on sunday and i need to tune it. Sometimes it sounds good an sometimes not depending on the type of music. I really hope thats it. Otherwise ill be building a new box and i dont want to lol