Little build in a '99 Chevy 1500 for a co-worker

[altoncustomtech 773]

This little build here is for a co-worker. He bought the old Hifonics equipment out of the van from me and plans on giving this truck to his son to drive in about a year or less. The system was designed on a fairly short budget, though he didn't want to cut many corners there's still almost $1,000 in it. Equipment consists of a Hifonics ZXi 6006 amp for the components, a Hifonics BXi2006D sub amp, a pair of 12" Hifonics Zeus subs, CDT COM-626 6.5" 2 way components and a JVC KD-HDR60 head unit. He purchased a "custom" enclosure from ebay for an easy fit under the rear seat. It's a sealed enclosure totaling 2.2cuft. net volume (according to the manufacturer) and he raised the rear seat himself ~3" and mounted the amps to the top of the enclosure. Before you ask, yes he understands the heat problem associated with doing this and will have the bottom of the seat raised when playing the system hard or when the temperatures require it. It has KNU 1/0 and 4 gauge CCA wire ran for the amps so there's room for future upgrades, the subs will be wired to 2 ohms on the 2006D and I'll be wiring the BIG 3 as well. While it's not a real bad-ass system or flashy by any means, it should be a great beginning setup for his son.

Forgive me on the number of pics for this build. It's been VERY hot and humid here (heat indexes >110F) everyday and so I've been trying to make the most out of the time I spend working on it and unfortunately not as worried about getting the pictures.

Here's a picture of the door panels off. I removed the factory mesh cover's and the factory tweeter plates from the door panels, removed the factory tweeter and cut holes for the CDT tweeters to mount into the plates.

Here's a shot of the box he bought with the amps mounted to it and one of the subs resting there on the center hump. I also added poly-fill to the enclosure.

Here's a general shot of the passenger side of the truck. You can see the RCA's coming out of the bottom of the dash, and the CDT woofer mounted there as well.

Here's a shot of the driver's door with the CDT woofer mounted in it. I just have the wires looped up there to keep them out of the way.

Quick shot of the JVC mounted in the dash.

Here's a shot of the back of the cab stripped down for wire running purposes. Not much left to do here.

Here's a shot of the finished doors. As you can see I kept as factory an appearance as possible there.

All that's left is to finish placing the wires where I want them to run, get things hooked up, install the wires for the BIG 3 and tune it.

[ssh 924]

I like that you didn't have to do any modifying to make anything work, at least no fiberglassing or adapters, just swap out speakers in factory location. I'm starting to think I should have used factory locations and not tried fitting bigger speakers in... Always wanted to hear some CDTs.

Lucky kid

[sefugi 166]

Looks great!!! Amazing how a small budget system when done right can still add up quickly!

[Ohjay 116]

Looks great, I'm sure he will be very pleased. These days, I think about a grand is a budget setup if you're redoing everything. Around here people want to spend 2-300 and expect to have a great system.

[altoncustomtech 773]

I like that you didn't have to do any modifying to make anything work, at least no fiberglassing or adapters, just swap out speakers in factory location. I'm starting to think I should have used factory locations and not tried fitting bigger speakers in... Always wanted to hear some CDTs.

Lucky kid

Yeah, I'd say lucky kid!! Took years before I could have anything near as nice as this. It should do him very well for awhile. Yeah, it's nice how well the factory setup allowed for the aftermarket installation.

Looks great!!! Amazing how a small budget system when done right can still add up quickly!

Thanks!! I sold him the Hifonics subs (w/ tube enclosures) and amps for $350, he's spent ~$650 for everything else. Really not too shabby considering all there is in it.

[altoncustomtech 773]

Looks great, I'm sure he will be very pleased. These days, I think about a grand is a budget setup if you're redoing everything. Around here people want to spend 2-300 and expect to have a great system.

Thanks! LOL, I know. There's no way to get great from ~$300, hell it's hard to get good from that. I was glad to see him willing to spend a few dollars to make sure it was done right, that's for sure. I only wish he would have been willing to spend some on sound deadening. Oh well, perhaps in the future.

[altoncustomtech 773]

Alright, got everything installed, hooked up and done last night. He and his son came to pick it up and were very happy with it. His son was very surprised with how clean it sounded. Apparently he has a cousin who's into car audio who's ride "sounds like a public pool full of fat girls farting in the water", those were his words verbatim, LOL!! So, they're happy it turned out pretty clean and the overall sound was enough to make them more than happy with it. My co-worker said his son spent around 2.5hrs playing with and listening to it last night after they got it home.

As before, the pics are pretty limited, but they tell the tale so here we go.

Can you believe the factory wire tracks had enough room in them to fit a run of Knukonceptz 1/0 AND 4 gauge CCA wire?

Here's a couple of pictures of the wires getting routed to their intended locations.

Got the rear driver's side trim panel and the back seat back in the truck.

Here's a couple of shots with everything wired up and ready to rumble.

Overall it didn't turn out too bad to me. The subs are horribly choked by the box configuration though and that really seemed to mess with some of the response and output but I don't believe anyone with less building, tuning and listening experience would ever notice without a side by side comparison. The CDT components were decent as well and showed the limitations I expected for their intended price point. First was the tweeters which were quite bright, almost to the point of annoyance on some songs. Even with some fine EQ tweaking they seemed had a tendency to want to shriek on some music. The other thing I noticed was the mid-bass's inability to handle almost any bass frequencies at all. CDT shows in their specs a power handling of 150wrms WITH a crossover point of 100hz. I have to say it seems as though the power handling drops off significantly with the crossover anywhere below 100hz which was a little disappointing. Luckily in the sealed enclosure the subs were up to the task of stretching that high with little localization to them, which was plenty good enough for the boy's first setup. Overall it should make him plenty happy until his craving for more bass starts to take over, at which time I believe we'll probably be removing the back seat all together and doing another build with different subs and components and a ported enclosure.

[ssh 924]

Alright, got everything installed, hooked up and done last night. He and his son came to pick it up and were very happy with it. His son was very surprised with how clean it sounded. Apparently he has a cousin who's into car audio who's ride "sounds like a public pool full of fat girls farting in the water", those were his words verbatim, LOL!! So, they're happy it turned out pretty clean and the overall sound was enough to make them more than happy with it. My co-worker said his son spent around 2.5hrs playing with and listening to it last night after they got it home.

That's awesome.

Everything came out super clean, this build is proof that you don't need to spend thousands and thousands to have a nice stereo in your car.

[altoncustomtech 773]

Yep, while spending thousands can yield a really awesome system, it doesn't necessarily take that much for most people. About $1k is enough to do it pretty decent and with the performance that can be gotten from today's equipment it can make the majority of people VERY happy. I've always liked doing budget builds myself. It's a fun challange to get all you can out of stuff you spent as little as possible on.

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

Looks good.

[Second Skin Rep Jon 17]

Dang that does look good.

And I agree, even if you could have talked him into spending just $50 bucks on some sound deadener it would make a noticeable difference. Eh, it'll give you guys something to do later down the road.

Still can't believe you were able to get 1/0 in the stock tracks... I had issue running 12 gauge in mine.

[altoncustomtech 773]

Looks good.

Thanks man!

Dang that does look good.

And I agree, even if you could have talked him into spending just $50 bucks on some sound deadener it would make a noticeable difference. Eh, it'll give you guys something to do later down the road.

Still can't believe you were able to get 1/0 in the stock tracks... I had issue running 12 gauge in mine.

Thank you sir, and you're right it can be done any time. When his son gets to driving it regularly I'm sure there will be much more work done.

I couldn't believe it fit either. Not only did it fit, but there's 1/0 AND 4awg stuffed in that one side. Although I did move the factory wires that ran through that side to the other side of the track, it still simply amazed me that it worked.