The Ghetto Hoopty Bucket's transmission gave out, so now (hopefully temporarily) I am smashing round in a redneck status Ford Exploder.......
Wasn't going to do anything with it at all considering its my sisters ride, but after rolling in it for two weeks and going insane when I get scholled by a wannabe basshead, the sis told me to do it so I am going crazy
Same old gear as before, plus a sexy new 1/0AWG Monster Cable kit from hell, so I am having fun putting it all together. Last night I put my Optima Redtop in, drilled a massive hole in my firewall for the 0 guage for the amps and the 8 guage for the deck and accessories.
I also built some plates to convert the stock 5x7 speaker mounting into a sweet place for my Infinity 5.25 components, holding the mid and tweet in the same place, so I dont have to whip out the hole saw on a door panel that may only hold them temporarily. They turned out great, and they are sitting in the paint booth of the install bay right now with a coat of black drying.
Lots of work left to do yet, gotta run all the cables, but I have everything I need and most of the hard stuff is done already. I guess we will find out if Old Man Audio is right and if the Exploder will make a better SPL/SQL purpose vehicle than the old Bucket did.
An added bonus, my stepdad's brother (stepuncle??) built an identical exploder for DBDrags and was hitting 160.3 on their meter, so I have a cool new source of advice for this install and into the competitions I have been wanting to enter for some time now....
We'll see how it pans out....
SQLThump
Replies (18)
swez on 11/1/2008 11:30:16
Hehe... Old Man Audio thinks you are on the right track here bud!
The cabin area is great for bass engines and often superior to a 4 door sedan unless one rips out the back seat for a more open trunk/cabin install.
As for the stock speakers, Ford uses 6x8" ovals in most stock installs. The MB and mids tend to be better than average while the upper highs and low bass are lacking at these areas. Swapping out to 5.25" rounds with decent tweeters and added power, will give much more accurate SQL performance. Adding a good bass engine will cap off the install with solid low-end performance you are sure to turn heads with.
Here's a perfect opportunity to prove our collective observations... "It not all about equipment used. The skill of the installer makes for most of the potential difference"! CLAP
Have at it,
Swez
SQLThump on 11/1/2008 19:28:23
C'mon Swez you know me, I totally ripped out the backseat of the old Bucket like 4 months ago in the name of schlumpage.....Bass over space and boom over room are two rules I stick to like JB weld to steel.....
The bucket was totally rattle prone, and the Exploder is much less rattley/ The bucket would rattle when the stereo was off.........
The plates were fun to make, even with the ghetto-style jigsaw and second use wood. I popped some infinity logos off some unused speaker grilles at work, and will glue them to the factory grilles for a showy-stockish look.
Going over the prevoius owners' hackjobs kind of sucks, but since i dont plan on using a millimeter of any of the stock wiring, speaker sizes or any of the like, it will turn out just fine.
By the way, still the same sick as hell bass engine being used in the Exploder as the Hoopty, a pair JBL GTO1214 in a slot ported box with an Alpine MRP M500 pushing em' decently hard. Was the loudest system in my city (even with that little power!) and I fell super sorry for the posers now. Especially now that I can roll all 4 windows down instead of only two out of 4 working!
On a more ****ed up note some bonehead broke a window out the poor transmissionless Bucket where it sits at my parent's secludes mountain crib. Looks like the sketchball neighbor who saw my system getting pulled out had to check if I was stupid enough to leave anything behind. I'm certainly not, but it sucks my poor Ghetto Hoopty Bucket has to pay the price. Hasn't the poor old girl been through enough?!?!?!
swez on 11/2/2008 04:40:26
Am spoofin with ya lad... we know you took out the back seat and look how much better the bass got? Well, the larger cf of air space in an Explorer is a big leap larger. So, da bass will be all that much larger as well.
As for the Bucket, sad that some peeps can't keep their hands in their own pockets and shoot some pocket pool or whatever. But, there's always that 2% element in any given society. Consider parting it out for cash, donate to charity and get a nice tax deduction or turn it into cash from a local boneyard. Few guys your age have the time and money to restore such a vehicle, so make it useful to others.
Topic change... How's the new job going these days? Hope you get a good spike in biz activity before Christmas. After that, you may see more activity in small items and remote car starters, but little action on the big ticket audio gear til spring. It all depends on the demographics of your area and available cash in folks pockets til the tax refund comes in.
Swez
SQLThump on 11/2/2008 06:44:37
Yeah, it definitly sucks about the ol Bucket. Didn't think of donating it, it would be nice to see somebody fix it, sell it, and maybe see her on the road again someday. I wish I had the time and money to restore it to brand new, but it just isn't realistic.
Looking foward to seeing how much lower the cabin gain corner frequency is. I am kind off worried the PTF may noght match up with the corner frequency as well as the Bucket's, but I am more than happy to sacrifice some raw SPL for an increase in the megadeep range.
Business is picking up a little, but we really wont get hit until the imfamous "Black Friday," which I am looking foward too. I had my first performance coaching today, and turns out most the things I thought I need to work on are fine, and need to work on other things. Both my managers concede that I know more about car audio than they do, but that means next to nothing to people who can sell a $5000 system without demoing a product.
Main thing I need to work on is closing sales, they say I do fine overcoming customer's obstacles and objections, but have a nasty tendancy to talk my customer into another set of obstacles. Main thing I need to work on is calming down, building my self confidence, knowing when to close the sale and knowing when to just shut up.
Looking foward to where the holidays are going to lead, and sure it will be a very merry christmas indeed.........
SQLThump on 11/14/2008 11:57:55
I got everything in now, It sounds great, and was funnest install I have done to date. There is a few problems though...
The enclosure does not match the Exploder quite as well as it did the Bucket for superdeep lows. It is louder and more accurate, but I miss the tonal balance of the trusty Bucket. Probably gonna have to build a new enclusure tuned lower than where it is at now..
Another MAJOR problem, voltage spikes. I have never dealt with this, but it seems that on lower volume transients that are not part of the deep boomy bassline, the voltage drops a little, and the alternator recovers a lot. On one paticular song, the baterry meter plummets to 9 and spikes to 18+, triggering the charge light and putting the amps into protect mode every time the voltage hits the high red zone. I cycles this about 6 times a second. This is the worst case, but some songs trigger this fairly often as well.
I have my Optima RedTop under the hood, and a stock alternator. My Big 3 has not been done yet. I am wondering the best situation to combat these voltage spikes, the drops really arent a problem.
Could perhap a (bleep starts) capacitor (bleep ends)help absorb the extra voltage, considering the drop isnt a problem too much, but the spike is? Or is it still a bandaid situation?
swez on 11/15/2008 08:48:29
Hum, it sounds like the Alt's "voltage regulator" is not doing the job well enough here.
The sampling rates are not high enough to bridge the gap between low and high wattage output demands. Would a Cap help? Hard to say.
Caps store energy and may smooth out the gaps as noted, enough to keep the system from "leaping"from low to high. There's only one way to find out... add a 5 Farad Cap and see what happens. Caps are fast acting and in this case, may be a good solution to investigate.
Comments?
Swez
PS As for bass fill, realize that the cabin you are working with now is much larger than a typical sedan. Make this additional "gain factor" work for you and not against.
SQLThump on 11/15/2008 13:54:03
I sure am not going to buy a cap, or permanently install one, but definitly want to check it out. Fortunatly, both my brother and my buddy have an extra Monster 1 farad lying, around, I think I may scope it.....
If its the voltage reg inside the alternator, then I will make my H/O Alt my first modification with extreme predjudice...
As for new enclosures, I assume I would want to tune lower for the cabin effect of a cabin with nearly twice the airspace. What I fail to understand is that I always thought that the larger the cabin you have, the lower your cabin gain effect kicks in, and the lower your corner frequency peak will be.
With this in mind, I always thought you would hit lower notes in this situation, which I am sure holds true for a sealed enclosure. But what I a thinking is that the PTF of my ported enclosure (which kind of sucks, and needs to go) matched up so perfectly with the Bucket's response curve produced the insane superlows that would make my cheeks move back and forth......Mind you the Ultralows still weren't all the way there, but far more present than in the Exploder......
Main thing I got to do now is pay off the car, then attack the charging system like a madman.........
kirchatndftbl on 11/15/2008 17:47:43
if the cap fixes the voltage spike i have a power acoustik 5 farad sittin in the garage at my house back home..
i bought it a wile back before when i didnt know much about car audio n its just been sittin there..
if u want it just let me know
swez on 11/16/2008 00:54:46
Surge Caps store energy and release it as needed, to the load they are connected too. They are quick to give up energy stored, but the charge they deliver is short in duration due to the size/rating of the cap and it's recovery time is based on the power supply that feeds it.
In your case, it seems there is a considerable lag in time before the ALT sees a major dip in voltage and responds with more juice. This could be partly the internal regulator in your present ALT, but also a design flaw in the truck's ECM. (Engine Control Module)
The ECM monitors many things, all in short sequences. One of its functions, is to regulate wattage output from the ALT to BAT and other linked devices it monitors as well. Since you have added a new set of loads that the ECM was not designed to monitor, that may well explain the lag. (The ECM does not see this load change fast enough and reacts too slowly when detected?)
In a nutshell, try the Cap idea and see if it helps. If it does, you're on the right track. If not, you may have to come up with a dedicated power source to feed your bass engine. (Bypass the ECM by running a 2nd ALT/BAT system that works w/o the ECM getting in the way)
Comments?
Swez
cplkittle on 11/18/2008 16:55:20
I read an article online not too long ago about caps screwing up the charging system. The article pointed out that the caps discharge at around 16v just a milisecond before the ECM sends a signal to the alternator to jump up the output. This cancels the initial signal and delays the alternator from kicking in by several seconds while the ECM reconfigures the problem. Not only does this make the initial problem worse, but it could damage the ECM in the long run.
Check around cautiously for local shops that rebuild alternators. I had one customer that got a 175A alternator with a variable voltage output. Most alternators work on a variable resistance trigger and output a variable voltage and amperage respectively, not just an on or off signal. This one came with a potentiometer that allowed us to adjust the output voltage from 13-17 volts. This was a much better find than any capacitor.
newB on 11/19/2008 01:10:12
GRIN
-Drew
SQLThump on 11/19/2008 16:49:09
Holy Crap! Kittle! What the hell is up dude! There is a name I've been wanting to see for sometime.....
Drew, the pics for this thread are as of yet worthless. The only super custom stuff is my 5x7 component plates, otherwise it looks like every other 94 Exploder with a system. Except maybe the huge wiring to tiny amps, and the RedTop battery under the hood. I haven't even done my Big 3 yet.........what is needed now is a video of the voltage gauge going haywire......I will take some pics to show what I'm working with...
The charging system has been doing better, I just don't crank the songs that trigger the problems very loud, (which kind of sucks, some of my favorite jams do this) and smash on the other ones.
I'm pretty stuck with not putting a cap in,I am with kittle in thinking that it would cause more harm than good. It would be waay too much effort to hook one up the way my wiring is ran, and with the under rear seats placement of my amps.
I'm thinkin a HO ALT needs to be the first issue I adress should the big 3 not fix it, which I have a big suspicion it will......
cplkittle on 11/20/2008 16:32:59
I was a little skeptical about the big 3 the first time I did it. I admit though, I was very surprised with the improvement. It is well worth the money.
SQLThump on 11/21/2008 18:01:49
I wasn't skeptical at all, when i did it to the Bucket it worked like a charm. Now I just need to do it to the Exploder....
So, to my thread has been declared worthless and all time to whip out the pics......seriously nothing as cool as the Bucket was, but cleaner, less ghetto, my favorite color scheme...and.......that's about it. One of two things could really help...1, if I gave a crap about off-roading.....or 2, it was sitting on 20's without rubber band tires....
Without any further ado........a F*** Exploder with a system in it........
http://s152.photobucket.com/albums/s191/GhettoHooptyBucket/Explodifier/
swez on 11/22/2008 04:16:50
Like the fabricated plate for your new 5.25" Comps. This should be a nice step up from factory and a modest outboard amp to power them will give you some nice punch as well.
As for the "Bass Engine", the electricals mentioned, need some help. For some reason, the electricals in this SUV are not keeping up with demand. A Big 3 upgrade would be high on the list of future projects and perhaps a H.O. ALT.
Am sure there are larger ALT's out there for trailer/hauling needs on this model, but the present ECM may not be up to snuff w/o modifications or a swap. This one seem too slow to react to voltage drops and then tell the ALT/Regulator system to kick up the power in a shorter time period.
BTW, have you had the charging system checked out to see that all is working properly? The ALT is a 3-phase, AC power source. The internal diode bridges convert the AC to DC and the regulator determines when voltage drops hit, to kick up the output.
If one leg of the ALT's system is dying/dead, (A diode bridge or rotor leg) that would explain the voltage drops and slow recovery times. Having it "Load tested" will tell is the ALT is up to snuff or not.
Comments?
Swez
SQLThump on 12/2/2008 04:03:59
Had to pop into the install bay last week when I realized we had a SPL meter/ RTA. Metering it was easy enough, now to find out how to work the RTA....meter is an AudioControl SA-3055
Victor on 12/2/2008 07:52:41
BIG 3 is necessary....
Apart from that....
How willing are you to experiment a bit with the enclosure ?
in that vehicle I feel you can definitely get a raise of another 3db's on that meter , with design and dimensions of the enclosure... and sound better too from the front listening positions....
http://www.box.net/shared/9hn6isdvop
Sub orientation and angulation, along with the port placement and direction will make a difference in the quality of bass perceived in a vehicle with such acoustics.....
as well as the basic...
those subs are 350wrms each , each getting almost 250wrms ( in reality something around 230wrms ) from that alpine amp... That enclosure you have does not seem more than 3 cu.ft internal.. JBL recommends a 1.75 cu.ft ported enclosure... meaning these subs are tightly held ...
two things are happening.. under powering and smaller enclosure...
meaning lower than expected excursion..meaning the subs cant perform to its mechanical potential..
with the new design. each sub will get around 1.8cu.ft ( excluding the port as well as the sub displacement ) volume to work around with, meaning better excursion and more air moving, meaning higher SPL ...
Hope this helps...
Victor...
swez on 12/2/2008 19:30:19
Nice ride there bro. It may not be the ride of your dreams, but it has a lot more potential as noted by Victor's comments.
The RTA is best used to take out peaks and find dips in the general system acoustics and flatten them as best one can. Here, test tones are used to find them and adjust as needed. However, when it comes to program music, your ears are the best judge for the desired outcome.
Swez
Wasn't going to do anything with it at all considering its my sisters ride, but after rolling in it for two weeks and going insane when I get scholled by a wannabe basshead, the sis told me to do it so I am going crazy
Same old gear as before, plus a sexy new 1/0AWG Monster Cable kit from hell, so I am having fun putting it all together. Last night I put my Optima Redtop in, drilled a massive hole in my firewall for the 0 guage for the amps and the 8 guage for the deck and accessories.
I also built some plates to convert the stock 5x7 speaker mounting into a sweet place for my Infinity 5.25 components, holding the mid and tweet in the same place, so I dont have to whip out the hole saw on a door panel that may only hold them temporarily. They turned out great, and they are sitting in the paint booth of the install bay right now with a coat of black drying.
Lots of work left to do yet, gotta run all the cables, but I have everything I need and most of the hard stuff is done already. I guess we will find out if Old Man Audio is right and if the Exploder will make a better SPL/SQL purpose vehicle than the old Bucket did.
An added bonus, my stepdad's brother (stepuncle??) built an identical exploder for DBDrags and was hitting 160.3 on their meter, so I have a cool new source of advice for this install and into the competitions I have been wanting to enter for some time now....
We'll see how it pans out....
SQLThump
Replies (18)
swez on 11/1/2008 11:30:16
Hehe... Old Man Audio thinks you are on the right track here bud!
The cabin area is great for bass engines and often superior to a 4 door sedan unless one rips out the back seat for a more open trunk/cabin install.
As for the stock speakers, Ford uses 6x8" ovals in most stock installs. The MB and mids tend to be better than average while the upper highs and low bass are lacking at these areas. Swapping out to 5.25" rounds with decent tweeters and added power, will give much more accurate SQL performance. Adding a good bass engine will cap off the install with solid low-end performance you are sure to turn heads with.
Here's a perfect opportunity to prove our collective observations... "It not all about equipment used. The skill of the installer makes for most of the potential difference"! CLAP
Have at it,
Swez
SQLThump on 11/1/2008 19:28:23
C'mon Swez you know me, I totally ripped out the backseat of the old Bucket like 4 months ago in the name of schlumpage.....Bass over space and boom over room are two rules I stick to like JB weld to steel.....
The bucket was totally rattle prone, and the Exploder is much less rattley/ The bucket would rattle when the stereo was off.........
The plates were fun to make, even with the ghetto-style jigsaw and second use wood. I popped some infinity logos off some unused speaker grilles at work, and will glue them to the factory grilles for a showy-stockish look.
Going over the prevoius owners' hackjobs kind of sucks, but since i dont plan on using a millimeter of any of the stock wiring, speaker sizes or any of the like, it will turn out just fine.
By the way, still the same sick as hell bass engine being used in the Exploder as the Hoopty, a pair JBL GTO1214 in a slot ported box with an Alpine MRP M500 pushing em' decently hard. Was the loudest system in my city (even with that little power!) and I fell super sorry for the posers now. Especially now that I can roll all 4 windows down instead of only two out of 4 working!
On a more ****ed up note some bonehead broke a window out the poor transmissionless Bucket where it sits at my parent's secludes mountain crib. Looks like the sketchball neighbor who saw my system getting pulled out had to check if I was stupid enough to leave anything behind. I'm certainly not, but it sucks my poor Ghetto Hoopty Bucket has to pay the price. Hasn't the poor old girl been through enough?!?!?!
swez on 11/2/2008 04:40:26
Am spoofin with ya lad... we know you took out the back seat and look how much better the bass got? Well, the larger cf of air space in an Explorer is a big leap larger. So, da bass will be all that much larger as well.
As for the Bucket, sad that some peeps can't keep their hands in their own pockets and shoot some pocket pool or whatever. But, there's always that 2% element in any given society. Consider parting it out for cash, donate to charity and get a nice tax deduction or turn it into cash from a local boneyard. Few guys your age have the time and money to restore such a vehicle, so make it useful to others.
Topic change... How's the new job going these days? Hope you get a good spike in biz activity before Christmas. After that, you may see more activity in small items and remote car starters, but little action on the big ticket audio gear til spring. It all depends on the demographics of your area and available cash in folks pockets til the tax refund comes in.
Swez
SQLThump on 11/2/2008 06:44:37
Yeah, it definitly sucks about the ol Bucket. Didn't think of donating it, it would be nice to see somebody fix it, sell it, and maybe see her on the road again someday. I wish I had the time and money to restore it to brand new, but it just isn't realistic.
Looking foward to seeing how much lower the cabin gain corner frequency is. I am kind off worried the PTF may noght match up with the corner frequency as well as the Bucket's, but I am more than happy to sacrifice some raw SPL for an increase in the megadeep range.
Business is picking up a little, but we really wont get hit until the imfamous "Black Friday," which I am looking foward too. I had my first performance coaching today, and turns out most the things I thought I need to work on are fine, and need to work on other things. Both my managers concede that I know more about car audio than they do, but that means next to nothing to people who can sell a $5000 system without demoing a product.
Main thing I need to work on is closing sales, they say I do fine overcoming customer's obstacles and objections, but have a nasty tendancy to talk my customer into another set of obstacles. Main thing I need to work on is calming down, building my self confidence, knowing when to close the sale and knowing when to just shut up.
Looking foward to where the holidays are going to lead, and sure it will be a very merry christmas indeed.........
SQLThump on 11/14/2008 11:57:55
I got everything in now, It sounds great, and was funnest install I have done to date. There is a few problems though...
The enclosure does not match the Exploder quite as well as it did the Bucket for superdeep lows. It is louder and more accurate, but I miss the tonal balance of the trusty Bucket. Probably gonna have to build a new enclusure tuned lower than where it is at now..
Another MAJOR problem, voltage spikes. I have never dealt with this, but it seems that on lower volume transients that are not part of the deep boomy bassline, the voltage drops a little, and the alternator recovers a lot. On one paticular song, the baterry meter plummets to 9 and spikes to 18+, triggering the charge light and putting the amps into protect mode every time the voltage hits the high red zone. I cycles this about 6 times a second. This is the worst case, but some songs trigger this fairly often as well.
I have my Optima RedTop under the hood, and a stock alternator. My Big 3 has not been done yet. I am wondering the best situation to combat these voltage spikes, the drops really arent a problem.
Could perhap a (bleep starts) capacitor (bleep ends)help absorb the extra voltage, considering the drop isnt a problem too much, but the spike is? Or is it still a bandaid situation?
swez on 11/15/2008 08:48:29
Hum, it sounds like the Alt's "voltage regulator" is not doing the job well enough here.
The sampling rates are not high enough to bridge the gap between low and high wattage output demands. Would a Cap help? Hard to say.
Caps store energy and may smooth out the gaps as noted, enough to keep the system from "leaping"from low to high. There's only one way to find out... add a 5 Farad Cap and see what happens. Caps are fast acting and in this case, may be a good solution to investigate.
Comments?
Swez
PS As for bass fill, realize that the cabin you are working with now is much larger than a typical sedan. Make this additional "gain factor" work for you and not against.
SQLThump on 11/15/2008 13:54:03
I sure am not going to buy a cap, or permanently install one, but definitly want to check it out. Fortunatly, both my brother and my buddy have an extra Monster 1 farad lying, around, I think I may scope it.....
If its the voltage reg inside the alternator, then I will make my H/O Alt my first modification with extreme predjudice...
As for new enclosures, I assume I would want to tune lower for the cabin effect of a cabin with nearly twice the airspace. What I fail to understand is that I always thought that the larger the cabin you have, the lower your cabin gain effect kicks in, and the lower your corner frequency peak will be.
With this in mind, I always thought you would hit lower notes in this situation, which I am sure holds true for a sealed enclosure. But what I a thinking is that the PTF of my ported enclosure (which kind of sucks, and needs to go) matched up so perfectly with the Bucket's response curve produced the insane superlows that would make my cheeks move back and forth......Mind you the Ultralows still weren't all the way there, but far more present than in the Exploder......
Main thing I got to do now is pay off the car, then attack the charging system like a madman.........
kirchatndftbl on 11/15/2008 17:47:43
if the cap fixes the voltage spike i have a power acoustik 5 farad sittin in the garage at my house back home..
i bought it a wile back before when i didnt know much about car audio n its just been sittin there..
if u want it just let me know
swez on 11/16/2008 00:54:46
Surge Caps store energy and release it as needed, to the load they are connected too. They are quick to give up energy stored, but the charge they deliver is short in duration due to the size/rating of the cap and it's recovery time is based on the power supply that feeds it.
In your case, it seems there is a considerable lag in time before the ALT sees a major dip in voltage and responds with more juice. This could be partly the internal regulator in your present ALT, but also a design flaw in the truck's ECM. (Engine Control Module)
The ECM monitors many things, all in short sequences. One of its functions, is to regulate wattage output from the ALT to BAT and other linked devices it monitors as well. Since you have added a new set of loads that the ECM was not designed to monitor, that may well explain the lag. (The ECM does not see this load change fast enough and reacts too slowly when detected?)
In a nutshell, try the Cap idea and see if it helps. If it does, you're on the right track. If not, you may have to come up with a dedicated power source to feed your bass engine. (Bypass the ECM by running a 2nd ALT/BAT system that works w/o the ECM getting in the way)
Comments?
Swez
cplkittle on 11/18/2008 16:55:20
I read an article online not too long ago about caps screwing up the charging system. The article pointed out that the caps discharge at around 16v just a milisecond before the ECM sends a signal to the alternator to jump up the output. This cancels the initial signal and delays the alternator from kicking in by several seconds while the ECM reconfigures the problem. Not only does this make the initial problem worse, but it could damage the ECM in the long run.
Check around cautiously for local shops that rebuild alternators. I had one customer that got a 175A alternator with a variable voltage output. Most alternators work on a variable resistance trigger and output a variable voltage and amperage respectively, not just an on or off signal. This one came with a potentiometer that allowed us to adjust the output voltage from 13-17 volts. This was a much better find than any capacitor.
newB on 11/19/2008 01:10:12
GRIN
-Drew
SQLThump on 11/19/2008 16:49:09
Holy Crap! Kittle! What the hell is up dude! There is a name I've been wanting to see for sometime.....
Drew, the pics for this thread are as of yet worthless. The only super custom stuff is my 5x7 component plates, otherwise it looks like every other 94 Exploder with a system. Except maybe the huge wiring to tiny amps, and the RedTop battery under the hood. I haven't even done my Big 3 yet.........what is needed now is a video of the voltage gauge going haywire......I will take some pics to show what I'm working with...
The charging system has been doing better, I just don't crank the songs that trigger the problems very loud, (which kind of sucks, some of my favorite jams do this) and smash on the other ones.
I'm pretty stuck with not putting a cap in,I am with kittle in thinking that it would cause more harm than good. It would be waay too much effort to hook one up the way my wiring is ran, and with the under rear seats placement of my amps.
I'm thinkin a HO ALT needs to be the first issue I adress should the big 3 not fix it, which I have a big suspicion it will......
cplkittle on 11/20/2008 16:32:59
I was a little skeptical about the big 3 the first time I did it. I admit though, I was very surprised with the improvement. It is well worth the money.
SQLThump on 11/21/2008 18:01:49
I wasn't skeptical at all, when i did it to the Bucket it worked like a charm. Now I just need to do it to the Exploder....
So, to my thread has been declared worthless and all time to whip out the pics......seriously nothing as cool as the Bucket was, but cleaner, less ghetto, my favorite color scheme...and.......that's about it. One of two things could really help...1, if I gave a crap about off-roading.....or 2, it was sitting on 20's without rubber band tires....
Without any further ado........a F*** Exploder with a system in it........
http://s152.photobucket.com/albums/s191/GhettoHooptyBucket/Explodifier/
swez on 11/22/2008 04:16:50
Like the fabricated plate for your new 5.25" Comps. This should be a nice step up from factory and a modest outboard amp to power them will give you some nice punch as well.
As for the "Bass Engine", the electricals mentioned, need some help. For some reason, the electricals in this SUV are not keeping up with demand. A Big 3 upgrade would be high on the list of future projects and perhaps a H.O. ALT.
Am sure there are larger ALT's out there for trailer/hauling needs on this model, but the present ECM may not be up to snuff w/o modifications or a swap. This one seem too slow to react to voltage drops and then tell the ALT/Regulator system to kick up the power in a shorter time period.
BTW, have you had the charging system checked out to see that all is working properly? The ALT is a 3-phase, AC power source. The internal diode bridges convert the AC to DC and the regulator determines when voltage drops hit, to kick up the output.
If one leg of the ALT's system is dying/dead, (A diode bridge or rotor leg) that would explain the voltage drops and slow recovery times. Having it "Load tested" will tell is the ALT is up to snuff or not.
Comments?
Swez
SQLThump on 12/2/2008 04:03:59
Had to pop into the install bay last week when I realized we had a SPL meter/ RTA. Metering it was easy enough, now to find out how to work the RTA....meter is an AudioControl SA-3055
Victor on 12/2/2008 07:52:41
BIG 3 is necessary....
Apart from that....
How willing are you to experiment a bit with the enclosure ?
in that vehicle I feel you can definitely get a raise of another 3db's on that meter , with design and dimensions of the enclosure... and sound better too from the front listening positions....
http://www.box.net/shared/9hn6isdvop
Sub orientation and angulation, along with the port placement and direction will make a difference in the quality of bass perceived in a vehicle with such acoustics.....
as well as the basic...
those subs are 350wrms each , each getting almost 250wrms ( in reality something around 230wrms ) from that alpine amp... That enclosure you have does not seem more than 3 cu.ft internal.. JBL recommends a 1.75 cu.ft ported enclosure... meaning these subs are tightly held ...
two things are happening.. under powering and smaller enclosure...
meaning lower than expected excursion..meaning the subs cant perform to its mechanical potential..
with the new design. each sub will get around 1.8cu.ft ( excluding the port as well as the sub displacement ) volume to work around with, meaning better excursion and more air moving, meaning higher SPL ...
Hope this helps...
Victor...
swez on 12/2/2008 19:30:19
Nice ride there bro. It may not be the ride of your dreams, but it has a lot more potential as noted by Victor's comments.
The RTA is best used to take out peaks and find dips in the general system acoustics and flatten them as best one can. Here, test tones are used to find them and adjust as needed. However, when it comes to program music, your ears are the best judge for the desired outcome.
Swez
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