outhopu

Did you do the curve for strength or is it just for appearance? Everything is looking killer.

Thanks. I haven't had much time lately or good weather for that matter to get many pics. Here's a couple from a car show I went to a couple weekends ago. I still have a bit more work to do to get it lower in the rear and I still haven't had the time to finish doing the hardlines in the trunk.

I've always liked the Lupo. It's the closest you can get these days to a MkI Golf. I only wish that VW would have brought that to the states. Build is looking good, keep it up.

It has just enough room to be serviced. That is a big factor when I design the lay out of my hydraulic set ups. It's a real challenge to make something look super clean with hidden wires, connections, and hoses yet still be servicable. I'll get more pics when the weather starightens up. It's been raining like crazy the last few days.

Yes they are the hydraulic pumps and dumps that control the lift and lay. Thanks. The slowdowns I'm running are a new "reproduction" of an old school zig zag slow down. They aren't something you see in every install but most guys doing higher end installs have been using them more with them being more readily available. I wanted a certain look for the set up and running the Adex dumps and waterfaucet slow downs were a must. Thanks. I didn't get as many pics of the entire process as I usually do. I was very pressed for time on getting the hydraulics in so my usual step by step pics had to be sacrifed. Honestly though there is very little done to the chassis at this point to show any ways. This is a very basic system to lift and lower the car. No hopping or 3 wheel in this ride just keeping it simple and drivable. Just took it on a 3 hour round trip over the weekend on the highway with no major issues. I thought your user name looked familiar. The funny thing is I haven't even posted any of the hydraulic build on Layitlow yet. It's kind of nice posting in here under the radar.

Thanks. I'm glad I decided to do the lighting in the trunk. It's nice to be able to see everything clearly at night. My daughter loves helping me work on the rides. Hopefully she will stick with it. It's definetly a good time. It's amazing how far some people travel just to be a part of it. We did make it out there and my daughter had a blast. Thanks. I just hit the Harper cruise last night as well. Now, sorry guys for not posting more pics sooner but I've been on vaction and didn't get any real good pics yet. Heres a couple from tonight. It's not 100% done yet. I need to replace the pressure hoses with S/S hardline when I get time and hide the wiring better. Likely won't get to that until over the winter. I'll try to get some better pics when the suns out and show the new stance also.

It's been a while but I'm still trying to get this thing lifted before the summer is long gone. Trying to get the hydraulics in by Friday to be able to make it to the Woodward Dream Cruise. Got the rack built and welded in. Then added some blue leds to spice it up a bit. I also added a long strip of white leds to the trunk lid to give a proper trunk light that puts out enough light to be able to service the system at night if needed. The second pic was taken at night with no flash. I had to get my daughter involved some more on the build so I gave her a paint brush and put her to work. More to come over the next few days.

Whaaa?! You in a Vee-Dub? I would have never guessed it. What happened? Did the dark side start offering cookies? Just messing. I have to admit, lighter colors on Caddys are better. One thing is for sure you're gonna need to update that color on yours. As sweet as it is, every time I see it, the color makes me think Ford Crown Victoria. Ughh, makes me cringe. It's a sweet Caddy for sure. I'm a gear head. I like all kinds of different cars. I've owned about 5 various years and models of VW's and a long line of oldschool GM's. I drive a Scion XB for my daily even. If I had more time and money to throw around I'd have a couple hot rods and muscle cars too. Sometimes I wish I did only like one type of ride though. It would make it so much easier to stay focused and finish something. Thanks. I'm working on getting the parts for doing the hydraulics still. I just haven't had much spare time to devote to it lately so it's taking forever. I also need to find a higher output alternator asap to keep up with the sounds. It's struggling to keep above 11.5 volts now. So far so good. Hopefully I'll have some pics of some progress next weekend. Thanks guys.

Thanks guys. I'll keep posting as I make progress. I've just been slammed with work lately and haven't had much time to tinker with this. As for paint, I'd never go black on big car. I had a 86 VW GTI that was black and couldn't keep even that little car clean. Black is just a pain to keep looking super clean. I like the lighter colors on these Caddys personally.

I finally got around to getting some pics after the rearend was reinstalled. I have plenty of clearance on the 1/4 panel now to lay the ass end out. I've put a couple hundred miles on it with the new rearend and it drives great. Even ran it up to 90 mph to make sure it was stable at speed. I'm slowly getting the hydraulic parts and plumbing together so hopefully soon I'll have more interesting pics to share.

The wheels I'm using are a 7" with full reversed offset which pushes the wheels out alot. The tire/wheel will no longer clear the 1/4 panel and need so narrowing the rearend is needed to get the car to lay out nice. In a perfect world a jig and alignment bar should be used. I have all of that for doing 9" Ford housing but had to improvise on this GM 10 bolt. I prefer to use a jig but it can be done without one with enough measuring. I had a friend of mine do my last housing exactly how I did this one and never had any issues with bearing or axle failures. As for the other issues I'm not too worried. This car is a toy and only gets driven occasionally and will rarely see the highway. If it doesn't work I have a spare housing that I can get narrowed "properly" by a local shop.

I've been into working on cars for 20 years and have been heavy into welding and fab for the last 10. I've made the most improvements in my work within the last 5 years though. Thanks as always. Well after working a 12 hour day I came home to a much needed package. The axles! Here is a new one next to the original. Did a test fit and liked what I saw so went ahead and welded the one end up fully. Hopefully I can get started on the other side tomorrow. That's if I don't get stuck at work all day again.

Well I'm finally getting back to work on this. My custom axles should be here tomorrow so I got started on narrowing the rearend today. I pulled the axles a few weeks ago to get the measurements needed to place my axle order. You can see from the order form that there is a good bit of measuring involved. I waited to pull the rearend until today to keep the car from being torn apart for too long. Started the process of narrowing the housing by making a reference measurement and then just used a cut off wheel and followed the line. After that I marked the end for the amount I needed to remove. I had to come up with a way to mark it to insure a straight cut. Sometimes you have to get creative. After lots of measuring to make sure the end was square and true I tacked the end back on the housing. I want to test fit the new axles before full welding and moving on to the other side.

Thats crazy. There is zero sign there was ever threads there. Thats what confused me, I was looking at it saying to myself what the hell is going on here.

Is there usually a keyway on the shaft or is the pulley just a press fit?

I've never used bags on anything I've built. There just isn't anything cool about bags to me. I like the sound of a hydraulic pump spinning at 72-96 volts and the power/speed that comes with it. I just built it to the specs that Infinity provided with the sub. Here is a link that shows the specs and sound graph for it. You just need to scroll down to page 6 once you open the link. http://a248.e.akamai.net/pix.crutchfield.com/Manuals/108/108PER101.PDF

It's cool, I didn't take it the wrong way. Nobody is hard to find these days. Thats what I have the dog for. I'll keep posting updates as I move onto the rest of the build.

I have a bit of a set back to deal with on getting the hydraulics installed. I'm going to have to narrow the rearend which means lots more work for me to do still. Not to mention the down time waiting on a set of custom axles to be made.

I like the fish tank effect of clear glass, no tint for me. Tinted windows would take away from the classy looks of it.

The hydraulics do not get connected to the cars charging system at all so at least there will be no extra load added from them. I may swap a built up 350 w/700R4 into this over the winter so I'm not planning on any charging upgrades for the time being. As for the front speakers I'm pretty pleased with them. I did think they would get louder than they do but it's possible the amp isn't pushing the power it's claimed to do. I can't say that the imaging and all that technical stuff would please uptight purists but that wasn't my goal anyways. I'd guess if it was just the speakers in the kicks the SQ would be pretty dam good though. The speakers in the rear of the doors aren't even noticable up front but do a nice job for the rear seat passenger (I sat in back to hear for myself). I was also asked about the gauge pods visibility by onebadmonte I believe. It works great at night but I can't make them out during the day. Either I should have done lighter tint or added some lights in front of the gauges in addition to the lights inside them. Black faced gauges might allow lighter tint while still being hidden during the day. If I had it to do over I would opt for digital gauges since the digital volt gauge that I bought can be seen easily day or night, just need to mount it better since the bass already knocked it loose.

It's not in mint condition but then again I only paid $1,900 for it and it runs like a champ. For basically being entry level subs not geared for big SPL they get down nicely. I'm surprised that the factory alternator keeps up as well as it does also. If I'm idling the volts will drop as low as 11.8v but when driving it stays around 12.5-13.5v at full tilt.

It's not as nice as I'd like it to be, but does look decent. I'm having an issue with the clear soaking in and leaving the grain lines. I may throw some more clear on it when I pull it back out for doing the hydraulics. Here is a few videos and a few more pics of the ride. Top 3 pics should be videos just click on them. All cleaned up and ready for the first ride.

It's not as nice as I'd like it to be, but does look decent. I'm having an issue with the clear soaking in and leaving the grain lines. I may throw some more clear on it when I pull it back out for doing the hydraulics. Here is a few videos and a few more pics of the ride. Top 3 pics should be videos just click on them. All cleaned up and ready for the first ride.

I see a major issue. There have been way too many posts without the use of any riv-nuts. Lol. Seriously though it's all coming together real nice. This is a major build for sure.

I wanted to do a brown grill cloth on it but had the black left over from my Scion build so I just used what I had on hand. The purple wires are way over priced RCA cables. They were bought over 10 years ago and were in my audio collection so I put them to use again.