Progress thread: Frank's Insignia

[zzattack]

Been negligent in keeping this updated but here we go.

Main improvements:
* went balls deep on sound deadening
* wasn't happy with the sound yet and doubled down on the gear
* done some meticulous wiring for all the amps etc.

Here we go. Sound deadening; I applied CLD tiles on all large resonating surfaces and placed MLV backed by some foamy stuff throughout all of the interior. Took a really long weekend, looks kinda rad and surely improves the acoustics. But honestly, it probably isn't worth the hassle, cash, bloody fingers and weight increase (50kg).

Stripped the interior out:


Progress pic, cutting CCF and MLV to fit:


Seems I didn't make a 'completed' pic, must've been dark and tired by then..

Next day was the doors. Transfering the shape wasn't too bad but getting the panels to clip back on was quite hard. The added material really needs to align perfectly and cannot obstruct any part of the plastic or the clips just unpop by themselves.

So far so good:


Not so tight anymore, but the door cards stay on now..


Gotta say, slamming the doors has a really fulfilling sound to it now.


Wiring then; I'm not entirely sure what I did initially and when I started changing things. But the result is pretty sick in terms of specs if you ask me.
An improvement ofted called 'big 3 upgrade' on audio forums is to add thicker wiring between alternator, battery and chassis. This reduces resistance between these components and creates a more level ground, reducing dips in voltage when drawing more current. I.e. no dimming headlights when the bass drops, something like that. Now I don't personally play music at such volumes anyway, but I had all of the required thick (AWG0) the wire left anyway.

Extra wire from alternator to battery. Also replaced the negative pole clamp for one with accomodates AWG0 wire to the chassis.


Added a nice battery fuse + voltage level indicator. There's a switch so the display is off when the hood is closed. After the fuse comes a 1x4 distributor block splitting the AWG0 wire into 4x AWG6 which was easier to run to the trunk while still better (more squared area) than a single AWG0.


Since I'll be running the tweeters actively instead of using the passive crossovers I needed to wire thm up separately as well. The door connectors had enough free pins for this, so this to me is much nicer than butchering those expensive connectors by drilling holes into them.



Guess that leaves the trunk then. I thrashed the 10 year (10+, maybe?) old JBL amp and got some nice rockford fosgates 4-channels instead. They do 400W RMS each which is pretty crazy for amps with such small footprint. For the subwoofer I chose a nice Gladen which has excellent output even on 4 Ohm impedance.

Speaker of the subwoofer, I made an MDF box for it. Fits tightly in the spare-wheel well and doesn't cost me any boot space this way. The box is laid out specifically to match the subwoofer specific parameters. There's a whole bunch of math behind that which I didn't know of, so took quite a while to design on the computer.

Constructing it..


Tight fit!


On eBay I found a nice 10 Farad hybrid capacitor for a somewhat reasonable price. It was going to be a tight fit but it can also perfectly serve as a distribution point for the other components.

It's starting to come together now..


As I mentioned a little earlier, I wanted to actively drive the tweeters. Meaning I need to determine the crossover points before amplification. In other words, install a sound processor. I found this nice 8-input 10-output DM-810 by audiocontrol. Since I was really stretching the budget I held of the purchase for a while. When I found what seemed to be a great deal I purchased the device on amazon. Apparently the seller obtained it on auction from a store that went out of business. The unit however was only a demo model, there was no software on there. The seller instantly reassured me, told me this was very possible and immediately refunded the item. He also told me there would be no warranty on it so I needn't bother returning the item either.

Now I had some free and defective hardware. I saw no point in not opening it up, and seeing if there was any way to get software loaded on there. Since it was completely blank, running the regular firmware update process wasn't possible. The part of the firmware that allows the user to update the firmware itself wasn't there, but of course they have an alternative way to program them in the factory.
I went on to trace the PCB traces, identified the main chip and extracted the relevant binaries from the firmware update package. Figured out which parts of the firmware to upload where. Hooked it up to a DIY programmer I had build years before for a chip from a similar series and lo and behold, it actually took.


That was quite satisfying both from a technical as well as a financial standpoint

Anyway, I hooked it all up. This is the end result minus some slightly further tidying of the wiring in the top-right corner near the DSP.


The very last thing I did is make a custom cover incorporating a nice grill for the sub.



Next up will be replacing the horrible headunit with a pioneer.