hdrox88

I made a little bit of an impulse buy today. Found this trio on a local craigslist ad at a price too good to pass up.

I just used plasti-dip spray. I figure if it can hold up on wheels and direct sunlight, in the shade should be no problem. No salted roads here either so that's also less to worry about.

Made a little more progress today. This is how my rear grounding point looked, up until today. Pretty sad for a group 31 and a bc3500 but voltage didn't drop any lower than 13.4-13.5. Got to making some holes and running some wire. Hammering on some copper lugs. Cleaned the frame, bolted the ends on and sprayed some rubber coating. All back together. I ran two ground wires but am only using one at the moment. The second is for another battery in the future. Voltage holds 14+ pretty easily in the cooler weather right now. If I really beat on it I see 13.9 for a split second. Definitely time well spent.

The swap took twice as long as it should have because I had to make new charge wire from the alt to the little junction box bolted to the side of the bracket. The stud on the new alt wasn't in the same spot and the original wire was too short. Still a cake walk compared to some alternator jobs out there. As for future plans, I will be drilling some holes in the cargo floor somewhere so I can ground to the frame. The rear battery is currently grounded to the bolt that holds the factory sub and I only drop to 13.5v on heavy bass lines. I need a better ground as the bc3500 will be running at 1 ohm soon. I'll be building a new box and running a single 18. It's looking like another few weeks before the sub comes in so I should have time to get everything ready for it.

I had some time on my hands today and finally got the Singer in place.

this one's goin in a minivan. the next ones gonna be in the stang. it'll be a few years though, but I'm not goin anywhere, so stay tuned. Reading>ME. My bad, I got a little excited talking about cars.

I put about 16gb of only music on my 1tb drive. I tried with and without folders and I get "error 23" on the hu. Not sure if there might be more to do in order to get it to work, but my quick test didn't work at all.

Most external hard drives are actual HDD with moving parts that probably wont do well with vibration in a vehicle, let alone a high powered stereo.

I have a 80prs and a WD passport external hard drive. I'd be willing to give it a try to see if it worked and report back. Though, there are some pretty large capacity flash drives out there now. Can't imagine needing 500gb-1tb just for music.

I'll second hifonics as a good budget amp. My brz amp treated me right, and my roommate is now using it. Upgrading that 4ga run of wire to 1/0 would be a worthwhile investment as well depending how far past 1k watts you go.

Can't wait to see a build log. I've had a few stangs myself.

If budget is a concern, I'm surprised no one has suggested an icon and SCV 1500, then you would have money left to make sure your electrical is where it needs to be for the "let 'er rip" moments. If you are trying to run a 2000 watt amp, you need to be factoring in electrical upgrades to your budget. "A lot of watts even if I can't feed it properly" is a recipe for disaster. With that being said, the 4" coil probably isn't in your best interest at the moment. Sure it will take major abuse, but it will also take more power to get it moving. At the power level you are talking about here, a 3" coil will be just fine.

Could you clarify this? Is the amp on or off? Not playing it but you are listening to music?

28-40hz isn't a huge range. You should be able to get a pretty flat response in a standard ported enclosure with a xcon.

Sounds like a bad connection somewhere, Double check All connections. Power, ground and remote wires are where I would start.

I keep seeing these stained boxes, makes me want to do my next that way. What wood and what stain color is this? Great looking box!

Lots of extra attention for a temporary box. Looks great!

I didn't look since it takes forever to find shit like that on Pio's site. The crossovers listed were for driver protection onlyWow, just dug deeper. Preset tweeter crossover? Pretty lame if you ask me. I guess it allows anyone to go active without easily breaking things, although it defeats the purpose.To the OP, going active made a pretty big difference for me in my tahoe, vs passive in a sierra I had, and I'm no pro when it comes to tuning. It is definitely worth it if you are willing to take the time to learn and tune.

Are the pods you made sealed or ported? Or just IB right into the door? Depending on the answer here, that can have a big impact on the mid bass department. What are they attached to? And how? Maybe some photos of the install as well? Details on how your system is tuned might be helpful in determining what, if anything, can be improved in your current setup before just throwing money at it. I was ready to replace the tweeters in my setup at one point, come to find the problem was actually my mids. Played with tuning and it helped a ton. Having a plan of attack and figuring out exactly what the problem is in your current equipment or tuning might save you some money.

It's no 80prs, but that HU he has does have a 3 way network mode. I think he has it in standard mode right now so it is limited to the sub lpf and front/rear hpf.

Sounds like you put in some good amount of work on the doors. I'm not familiar with Mercury, but I run the same headunit. Great unit and if you decide to switch to an active setup it can do that as well. The eq in it is pretty good as it is. As for the "SQL" thing, I was just checking to see if you weren't going to go along the lines of, "I want SQ and still get loud."

What are you currently using? What equipment and how is it installed? Any sort of T/A or EQ? What are your tuning capabilities and experience? It sounds like you are running a passive 2way set. Making a -3db adjustment on a passive crossover isn't necessarily going to eliminate a harsh sound. It might not even be your tweeter, could be the mid. Made the mistake myself before. Do you know what "SQL" actually stands for? I don't mean that in a negative way, it's just that a lot of people use the term incorrectly on the internet as they have been misinformed in other places.

If you are going for loud, ported will be the way to go. What's wrong with your current setup? What about it don't you like? A good pair of 12" subs in an even better box can certainly shake things up.

It sounds like that unit is active capable. Run the extra wires while it is all apart. Set it up with the passive crossovers first and tune it as best you can. Then, if you want to try active it's just a matter of switching some wires and settings. That way you know what that particular set of drivers can sound like and have a base line to shoot for and improve upon while tuning. Just don't cross the tweeters too low and/or feed them too much power and you shouldn't blow anything.

Since you are using the supplied passive crossovers, keeping the tweet close to the mid will help keep tuning simple. I tested the a pillar location(two positions) and the factory door location in my tahoe. The a pillar location made it really easy to pull the sound stage up, while the door location made it easier to get the freq. response to my liking. Testing locations will tell you what you do and don't like. Lithium recommended duct seal to temporarily mount the tweeters in different locations. Worked great for me. I am also running an active set up so I had a little more tuning flexibility.