# 2000 Accord SQ install



## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Hey everyone! I've been slowly collecting equipment for my next installation and have gotten to the point where I can start showing off!

The car is a run-of-the-mil 2000 Honda Accord, but with only 45k original miles. I bought it off a friend who had garaged it (with a car cover) for a couple years and only drove it in the summer. When I got it it only had 25k miles on it! 

The equipment is a collection of stuff new and old. The amps I've had for a little while (with the exception of the GT-24 which I bought off this forum), the HU I've had in several cars and will use it until it completely goes TU. :laugh: Sound dampening, of course, is new, and more is planned/on the way.

Here's my current layout:

HU: Eclipse CD8443
Front Stage: H-Audio Trinity & Ebony and _maybe_ a tweeter.
Rears: H-Audio Trinity & Ebony
Sub: AE IB15 ** if it ever shows up 
Amps: 3x Boston GT-22's (need one more), 1x Boston GT-24

GT-22 --> bridged --> left front Ebony 
GT-22 --> bridged --> right front Ebony
GT-22 --> stereo --> left/right front Trinity
GT-22 (need) --> stereo --> left/right rear Trinity/Ebony pair w/ passive xover (also still need)
GT-24 --> bridged --> AE IB15 

Signals will be handled by my Eclipse CD player, perhaps an Alpine EX-10 iPod aux-in adapter too. RCA's to the JBL MS-8, and then off to the amps.

My goal for the install is to have it be close to stock looking. I doesn't need to be flashy, but I do want to incorporate just a enough to be fun. 

Stay tuned!


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

I had to track down a stupid security hex screw wrench to take off the covers of the amps  It seemed to work ok...

The amp boards seem to be nicely laid out and the red will look nice in the install I think. The heatsinking is a little different (the top piece of the sink was the top of the amp - the rest of the fins were hidden). I thinking about cutting off the top fin to make it flush with the other fins but keep the bottom sticking out like it is. I can use the bottom plate as a mounting device. The front of the amp will lose its 'feet' and probably be mounted with a piece of metal across the whole front. Its a little difficult to describe but you'll see what I mean 

Boston was also nice enough make the leads on the fan (which was tucked inside next to the heatsinks) long enough that I can put the fans almost anywhere I need.


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## evo9 (Jul 6, 2005)

It is a great car over all! Is it a V6/2 door? Weather 2 or 4 doors you will need to do some stiffning work to get the most from the door speakers. I had to plate my doors with 3/16" thick aluminium to stop the flexing of the panel. That was the only way I was able to get the speakers to perform.












.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Holy cow, nice door panels!! :surprised: 

It's a 4 door, 4 banger. How do you like the mids in the door? I'm thinking A-pillars for the widebanders and tweeters...


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## evo9 (Jul 6, 2005)

It's pretty good in the door for me. I dont like the drivers to be pointing at me. I actually prefer them in the kicks! This pic was the very 1st install I did in the car when I got it new. I later replaced the JL's to Dynaudio 3 way, which was a major step forward. Then craved more full frontal bass & made the move to the Morel 9. 















.


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## optimaprime (Aug 16, 2007)

more pics!!!!!


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## PottersField (Mar 18, 2011)

I'm gonna have to follow along on this one. From one Accord owner to another, I'm curious to see what you end up with!


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Well, I've run into what I think is a snag (but maybe not??)I was planning on using a GT22 bridged on each of the front midbasses. I knew that I could mono the amp, but then realized that it wouldn't be a left or right signal, just mono (as in summed, right?). 

How would I bridge the amp to create a true left amp and true right amp?
Or am I just having a brain fart?


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Oh, and more pics are coming


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## optimaprime (Aug 16, 2007)

if you are sending the signal split up like right side to a amp and the left signal to anther amp what would the amp care if its left or right ? how would it know that ? i truthfully dont know the answer i dont think the amp cares as long it gets a signal.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

optimaprime said:


> if you are sending the signal split up like right side to a amp and the left signal to anther amp what would the amp care if its left or right ? how would it know that ? i truthfully dont know the answer i dont think the amp cares as long it gets a signal.


Maybe I'm overthinking this... the Left Front from the MS8 goes to the Left amp -- if its bridged, it would need both Left and Right inputs, or just one? The amp has "Mono - L" as an input possibility -- does that mean I'm simply using the L input and sliding the switch to Mono on top? 

And that'll give me a true 'left' or 'right' amp?

The owners manual is not too helpful. I 'supose I could call Boston 

So maybe its:

MS8 Front Midbass output signal --> RCA --> Left amp 'mono' input -->spkr wire-->spkr

MS8 Front Midbass output signal --> RCA --> Right amp 'mono' input --> spkr wire-->spkr


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Some more pics as promised:

This is from my first 'real' system back in 2000. It was a 1997 Civic HB with Boston Pro's in front, Xtant 603 and an Xtant 12" fiberglassed into the spare tire well. The back lit up in red neon to match the car when you opened the hatch.

I also had a "custom" install on the HU where it sat in front of the stick shift down below (I think where the factory tape player went) and an XM radio module installed in the radio location with a custom "pleather" wrapped plate.

Note the Nokia hands-free kit installed where that useless little pocket used to be :laugh:


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## robert_wrath (Apr 24, 2011)

Trunk looks great!


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## madhouse12 (Oct 13, 2011)

you will need two Y splitters. for the right side mid bass, split the right side signal into two and feed the amp's left and right channel with it. same goes for the left side amp. the amp doesnt really care or know whether its two different signals or one signal split into two.


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## lashlee (Aug 16, 2007)

Here is a link to my site with a few pics of my 98 4 door. Let me know if you have any questions.

Have fun: http://www.cardomain.com/ride/3014926/1998-honda-accord


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## Pitmaster (Feb 16, 2010)

I also have an Accord, but '04 4door, Eclipse 8443 HU, and also awaiting AESBP15 subs :laugh: Running HAT L8SE in the doors, and HAT L4SE in the kicks.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Pitmaster said:


> I also have an Accord, but '04 4door, Eclipse 8443 HU, and also awaiting AESBP15 subs :laugh: Running HAT L8SE in the doors, and HAT L4SE in the kicks.


I see you and I are in the same boat.... John @ AE Speakers seems to have issue after issue. If he didn't have so many people praising his speakers, I would have tried to cancel my order awhile ago.

I put in my order for a IB15-4 in the middle of October  The last update I had to search around for was that he was waiting on top plates (that post was from October 31st: Acoustic Elegance • View topic - ** Weekly info for the week beginning 10/31/11 ** ). This link shows that he *might* be closer to shipping a sub: Acoustic Elegance • View topic - Update Dec 1, 2011

I've never orderd from AE before -- hopefully its worth the wait.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

madhouse12 said:


> you will need two Y splitters. for the right side mid bass, split the right side signal into two and feed the amp's left and right channel with it. same goes for the left side amp. the amp doesnt really care or know whether its two different signals or one signal split into two.


Indeed... I called Boston and confirmed that the Y-splitters are needed. It turns out that you can use the L 'mono' input, but it engages the LP filter, with noway of defeating it. It wouldn't be all that bad but I need the Ebony's to reach up to the Trinity xover point - which is the very upper limit of the amps lowpass (Mark advises 315 for the HP to the Trinity's vs 350 LP on the amp. I think I'll stick with the MS8 xovers to cut it up).


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## Pitmaster (Feb 16, 2010)

Ordered mine back on Aug 2, waiting on the end of year! From all I've read, it's well worth the wait! :thumbsup:


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

A few more pics...

Under the hood. I like to keep it pretty clean 

I'm using a Kinetik battery as my main starting battery. I'll be running 1/0 Stinger HPM wire to the back from here, into a fuse block. I've thought about adding a 'standard' battery in front and moving the Kinetik to the trunk. If I leave the Kinetik under the hood, I need to come up with some way of attaching the 1/0 to the battery terminal without adding height to the battery (which is pretty darn close to the hood).

ONe thing I did find was the Kinetik side post adapters - which I believe will add a side post option to my battery(??): WoofersEtc.com - KHC-SPA - Kinetik Side Post Adapters


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Made a little progress today... I decided to take on the sound dampening of the doors first. I started with the rear doors, not because I plan on installing speakers in them, mainly for practice :laugh:

I had forgot that Dynamat cuts your hands. That foil is sharp! Ugh. I also went out and bought some CCF from a local fabric store. They had a whole bunch of different CCF, I decided to get my feet wet by starting with the 1/8" behind the door panels. I figured if I could go thicker, maybe I could just glue on another layer. The door panels went back on fairly easily, so I'm guessing I could have gone thicker (and will in the front doors).

I wasn't sure on how to get the CCF to stick to the door. I used some foil tape to stick it on. I'm thinking that it should hold. What' s the "proper" way??I also took off the vapor barrier - should I replace it on between the CCF and the door panel?

Pics up in a few after I go pick up the kiddo from school


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

I found that there was only two screws to remove, one behind the door handle and one in the dooe recess (circled). You'll need a small flat blade screwdriver to remove the covers on each, and a Philips to pull the screws out.

The door panel is 'pinned' in several places around the perimeter towards the bottom. A quick tug on the bottom of the door panel and it came loose. The top of the door panel is wedged in betwen the door and the window, all I had to do was rotate the panel a little towards the back of the car and the panel was loose. 

There are two connectors to unplug, one is for the door light, the other is for the window. The window one (pic below) was a little harder to figure out, but once I pinched the connector it came out easily.

After the door panel was off, I cut off the vapor barrier to get it at the door itself. A sharp knife is all you'll need there. Once the vapor barrier was out of the way, I started to Dynamat. 2 layers on the inside of the door skin and smaller single layers on the outside.

The CCF was trimmed with scissors to shape. Before I taped up the CCF, I cut out another copy out of the rest of the foam for the other door. Some foil tape later, I had foam on the door.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

A little more progress... I took off the drivers door panel to see what what waiting for me. The previous owner had installed a pair of JBL Power series 6" and tweet - but it was the 6" and _how_ it was installed that suprised me. The actual speaker wasn't screwed into the plastic speaker adapter... the screws were on the outside of the speaker frame, and metal washers were used to hold the speaker in place. :laugh:


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

The Ebony midbasses were just a tad bigger than the plastic speaker adapter and the hole in the door so I had to make my own adapters. I've learned cruising through DIYMA that plastic cutting boards make for decent spacer materials - so it was off to Goodwill. I found a 3/8" cutting board for 3.99... good enough for me 

The board was pretty easy to cut, and soon after getting home I had two spacers in hand for a total of 3/4" (enough to space I hope). The two pcs are pretty thin width-wise in a few places, I used the factory plastic speaker adapter to trace onto the cutting board. Thinking about it now I probably could have made it a little wider and been fine - but for 3.99, its not a big deal. :laugh:

While I was waiting for the two spacers to dry (superglue seems to work pretty well for glueing cutting board material together) I tried fitting some 4 gauge power wire into my amp to see if it was truely 4 gauge on the input. For some reason I couldn't get it to fit in all the way, and as I started to curse about having to go to 8 gauge... I noticed something stuck in the connector. A bee! WTF?!?!?


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## PottersField (Mar 18, 2011)

Just when you think you've seen it all, somebody pulls a bee out of an amp's power terminal. Never saw that coming.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Got a little further on the car today. I decided to tackle the front doors... I took off the door panels again and installed the spacers for yesterdays work. I thought that super glue was the ticket to sticking those two cutting board spacers together -- not so much. The first screw through the pair into the door caused them to tear apart almost as fast as a Kardashian marriage.

The spacers worked great as the 3/4" was just the right amount. I used a bunch of sound dampener on the inside if the door and around the spacers and the spacers to the door in an effort to seal up the assembly. I left the factory vapor barrier in place (for now - I'll need to take it off to add more sound dampening to the door).

Fired up the Ebony mid basses (HU power for now). Holy cow batman, these things sound good! And that's with deck power! I also found rattles and buzzes... aargh... but no more bees.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Well, look what showed up in the mail!!

The snow and school have kept me from working on the car... but I have been enjoying the HAudio ebony mids. The bass output is pretty good considering it's deck power (for now).

I have put some sound dampening on the floor of the trunk in anticipation of getting to that end of the car first... no pics though.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Well guys, it's been too long since I've updated anything... two accounting classes and business calc at the same time keeps me busy 

I did get some work done, and by me I mean someone else . I've kept the idea to do a dash mounted wideband and tweeter combo, and asked a friend of mine to make some aluminum baffles on his laser cutter. He brought them over yesterday.

I've also been trying to decide on a way to mount the AE IB15 sub. There are plenty of examples of walls between the trunk and pass compartment just behind the back seat, but they all seem to say the same thing about how much of a pain in the butt sealing it off is.

My understanding of the IB design is that you need to seal the front wave off from the back wave...so I'm going to try something a little different. 

I'm planning on using the ski passthrough for the back of the woofers output. The design is to build the box through the hole and make it just big enough to fit the woofer... 

Thoughts? Pics when I get to school


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Well, here are those plates... made for a H-Audio Trinity mid and Diamond Audio D6 series silk tweeter. 

I'm shooting for the A-pillar, but since its so small, I might see what'll take to go in the kicks.

I'm having a plate made for the rear locations - 6"x9" to 6 1/2" for the H-Audio Ebony's (also installed in the front doors).


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Now that the sun is out (at least for the weekend), I started to play with speaker locations.

The subwoofer is goin' in the trunk for sure , but its the mid/tweet combo I'm playing with.

My idea is to mount the subwoofer with the cone facing the trunk, and the magnet/motor assembly backed up pretty close to the ski passthrough. Since its an IB design, all I should have to do is build a very small enclosure around the sub and make the backside of the box the ski passthrough. 

I'll be removing the plastic bezel and fold down door and building a new bezel in its place with MDF and matching carpet. 


I'm not entirely set, as far as the teardrop mid/tweet combo goes. I was shooting for the A-pillar, but they fit nicely in the kicks. Take a look at the pictures an let me know what you think!!


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## southpawskater (Feb 17, 2010)

Looking good, I like the looks of the sub magnet in the pass through, would you still be able to close it off as to not invite unwanted attention?

As far as your mids and tweets Id run wire up front for them and try them in both the pillar and kicks with some towels to kill the back wave. Use some cheap stick on Velcro to hold them in place and listen to a few tracks see what sounds best to you. Keep going its coming together nicely!


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

southpawskater said:


> Looking good, I like the looks of the sub magnet in the pass through, would you still be able to close it off as to not invite unwanted attention?
> 
> I plan on using a fabric wrapped grill that'll attach to the walls that come through the ski pass through.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Installation update! 
This summer has been chocked full of projects, unfortunately seriously working on the system hasn’t been one of them.

I have been able to build up the tear-dropped shaped pods for the A-pillars. These will include an H-Audio Trinity and a Diamond Audio M6 series Silk tweeter. The aluminum baffles were cut out by a friend of mine on a laser cutter, perfectly matching the outside of the Trinity on one side and the Diamond tweeter on the other. The two driver ‘rims’ just touch each other, which makes for the smallest pod possible.

The pods are being put together as a sandwich, with the aluminum plate on top, then an MDF plate. 1/8” CCF will separate the two plates, hopefully isolating one material from the other. The screws that hold in the Trinity driver should be enough to keep the two baffles together.

The grills frames will be ABS plastic (I did manage to make MDF frames, but decided to use them as support for under the main MDF baffles instead).


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## slowsedan01 (May 4, 2008)

adamand said:


> Installation update!
> This summer has been chocked full of projects, unfortunately seriously working on the system hasn’t been one of them.
> 
> I have been able to build up the tear-dropped shaped pods for the A-pillars. These will include an H-Audio Trinity and a Diamond Audio M6 series Silk tweeter. The aluminum baffles were cut out by a friend of mine on a laser cutter, perfectly matching the outside of the Trinity on one side and the Diamond tweeter on the other. The two driver ‘rims’ just touch each other, which makes for the smallest pod possible.
> ...


Did you find which mounting location was going to work best? Are you keeping them in the kicks?


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

slowsedan01 said:


> Did you find which mounting location was going to work best? Are you keeping them in the kicks?


Decided to stick with the A pillars... the kicks would probably work OK, but I like the idea of keeping less stuff out of the speaker's audio path. I haven't wired them up and listened to them in either location though.


I did pick up some thin plexi and glue to build the surround on the pods this morning - which will give me something to do this afternoon :laugh:


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Small update:

So… I’ve decided to scrap the A-pillar idea. Looking at the pod positioning on the A-pillar vs. in the kick’s, I think the kicks are a better option. If the car had bigger pillars, or this was a strict competition car, I’d go with the pillars… 

I purchased some thin plexi from Tap Plastics - although I was sure they would know what ‘low temp plastic was – the manager had no idea what I was asking for (??).

I had never bent plexi before, so it was kinda trial by fire (no pun intended). Getting the right amount of heat on the plastic was easier to figure out than I would have thought. When heating the plastic, you could kind of see it ‘move’ a little on its own, which I quickly figured out was the time to start bending it. It didn’t take long to get the plastic wrapped around the pod.

Once I got the shape I wanted, I glued the plastic to the pod shape. The glue the Tap Plastics guy sold me was E-6000 - and was STINKY and probably toxic. It seemed to work just fine, it glued the plexi to the MDF and 1/8” CCF just fine. I had to use all the clamps I owned to hold them together, but 24 hours later, it was holding just fine on its own.

I also decided to wrap the outside of the pods with some Alpha damp, cut into a long strip and wrapped it around the outside. Any small openings between the MDF/CCF pod and the plexi (around the edges) on top were sealed up with silicone. The bottom side was also sealed up with more of the E-6000 glue.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Pics of the process...

I figured out an easy way of determining the length of plexi I would need to wrap around the pod... I made a mark on the pod and a matching mark on the countertop, and then "rolled" the pod forward in a straight line until the mark I made on the pod made a whole rotation, and then marked the countertop again (which would be the entire length of the outside of the pod). Then by measuring the distance between the two marks, it gave me the length I needed for the plexi.  Seemed to work ok...

Unfortunately, I also found that if the plexi cools too much, and you try to bend it, it snaps. 

So... I had to add in some small pieces to fix it (which you can see in the pics). Overall, they came out alright. I stretched some fabric over the shapes and they seemed to look fine from the front side. I was a little worried about the added pcs of plexi might mess up the tear-dropped shape.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Making progress! Well, sort of… I had to dig up my sewer line and replace a section of pipe that had a bunch of roots growing into it – from a city owned tree. And no, they won’t cut it down; they won’t let me cut it down. 

I had some down time between the re-build of the sewer line and the inspection, so I built some kick pods for the car. The base of the pods are the factory plastic pieces that are just below the dash, in front of the door sill. Since there’s only a 3” and tweeter going in, I was able to build the whole pod onto the plastic piece, without cutting into the foot space. At 6’3”, I need all the room I can get down there.
I bought some stretchy fleece from the local Joanne fabric store and went to work. The material stretched pretty easily. I used a hot glue gun to attach the fabric on the back side of the plastic, which actually worked really well. 

The driver’s side panel had the hood release, but because it’s a cable connection, I took it out of the plastic housing and will reattach it to the outside of the new kick panel pod. I plan on using a ¾” block of wood on the backside of the pod to screw into… I imagine it’ll hold fine… and because of the hood release latch, the back side of the 3” will have some more breathing room. It is open on the top of the pod, so I’m not sure how exactly it’ll behave until it’s all wired up. On the passenger side, I simply cut out some plastic.

I plan on using some Audioquest 16/4 wire, so I’ll only have to pull one wire the each pod instead of two.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Small update:

Inbetween painting the house, garage and back shed, I managed to find some time to work on the car system. Kids go back to school next week so I'll have some more free time then. I head back to school the week after that, so I gotta get it done by then :laugh: Like that'll happen....










































So this is my first adventure into fiberglassing… I have a new found respect for those who do it as a profession!
After it dried and I sanded for what seems forever, the pod started to take shape. Well, it took a shape of the moon. I guess I was trying to create a Neil Armstrong memorial and didn’t even know it.
As I sanded more, the raised sections came down a bit, and with a little filler and some more sanding, I think I’ll be ready to finish them up. My plan is to use texture spray and matching tan paint.
Wire will be the previously mentioned 16/4 (16 gauge, 4 conductors) from the trunk to each pod. The tweeter amp is my newly discovered a/d/s PS5.2, the Trinity amp is still the Boston Acoustics GT-22.

You can see the hood latch switch and cable hanging out. My plan is to attach a block of wood to the backside of the pod and mount the latch with two machine screws and some hurricane nuts.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Now that the kids are back in school, I have some free time to work on the system. 

Thanks to DIYMA, I won a spool of the oversized 1/0 power cable (blue for me), which showed up yesterday! I'll do a review and post it in the appropriate sub- forum, but so far, it looks to be a very good value.

The pods for up front are really starting to take A shape, but not the shape I invisioned in my head  The drivers side pod cracked down where it meets the door sill trim and I'm trying to repair that now. I picked up some SEM spray paint to somewhat color match the trim in the car... but I was suprised that there wasn't a direct match. Maybe I missed something??

I first primed the pods with some high build primer and sanded it down. I still had some wavey-ness and small holes left over, so a little texture spray (makes the item look like 'granite') was used to make it look a little more uniform.

I then sanded the rough texture with some steel wool to knock it down a little.

Today I'll be running the DIYMA 1/0 cable to the trunk. Tomorrow I chould be able to carpet the amp rack... 



























More pictures later today...


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

More progess(!)

I started on the amp rack, taking the idea from Bing's designs 
(but none of his talent :laugh. It looks like I can fit one less amp in the rack than I designed the system for... so a little change up is needed.

Here are the pics from yesterday's work. The platform that the amps and processor will sit on will be flushed into the spare tire well. Each of them will be raised up on 1-1/2" risers to not only account for the wires radius turning into the amp connections (from the underside), allow for a little more cooling and raise them up to more closely match the height of the rest of the trunk. 

The platform will be carpeted in grey to match the rest of the trunk.

The rear speakers were also replaced. They were Pioneer 6x9's, which worked fine, but I wanted to match the front speakers tonally. These will be powered off the deck (rear outputs) when I need some rear fill and/or when the kids are in the car and Justin Beber isn't quite loud enough :laugh:


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Kick pods drying in the sun 










Start to the IB install










Test close of the back seat. The board is a sheet of ½”, about 20” x 36. It stretches almost from end to end… but didn’t allow the seat to latch closed. So I needed to trim it up a bit.









Here’s the ski pass through with the plastic housing removed. The sub (magnet facing forward towards the front of the car) will fire through the hole. 










You can sort of see the angles I cut out of the board so that it would fit in between the angled seat back braces (official name?). The lines drawn are the cut out for the sub opening.










And put in place


















My thought is that in most IB installs, the sub is mounted on a large baffle, increasing the amount of sealing required to separate the front wave from the back wave. In this design, the front wave is being ‘pushed’ (for a lack of a better term) through the ski pass through. I’ll be building a box around the sub, just big enough to house the IB15. The back of the box is the opening of the pass though, the front of the box will fire into the trunk… which should mean the separation is now the front of the backseat instead of the back. 
I do think the underside of the back deck will still be an issue -- I plan on using some CLD on the accessible spots.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Well, got most everything installed, minus the subwoofer.  In any case, I fired up the system today... no sound.

Is the MS-8 to blame??? I started another thread to see if someone has an idea as to what's going on: http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum/general-car-audio-discussion/136707-ms-8-all-installed-no-audio 

The MS8 powers up, I can get through the speaker setup and the calibration fine, but when I play a CD or radio, nothing.


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## honfatboy (Jul 4, 2005)

Any update on this? Fellow Accord owner here.


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## Fricasseekid (Apr 19, 2011)

Sub'd


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Hey everyone,

I'm back on the build! (jeez, took long enough....)

I've been working on the MS8 and getting it set up with my amps. The previous version had a Gt22 to the kickpod midranges, a Gt22 to the door midbasses and my Gt24 into a franken-bazooka tube woofer -- no laughing.

The new set up as of yesterday is chronicled in my t-shoot from yesterday and today, which seems to have been solved: http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum...-noise-ms-8-yes-im-late-game.html#post1920762

It seems like a Gt22 bridged into passive x-overs to the 3"/1" pair would be too much, but its working fine. No VC magic smoke yet. 

I'm currently working on the IB woofer install, an AE IB15 that I recieved several months ago.... during the school year I'm a fulltime student/dad/head dishwasher/mechanic/taxi driver, there's no time to work on the system. However, now that I'm out of school


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## a-minus (May 7, 2013)

Don't know how I missed this one..especially when you posted on my accord build. Same car and same old boston amps lol...I've got some extra gt amps laying around if you're short any btw.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

a-minus said:


> Don't know how I missed this one..especially when you posted on my accord build. Same car and same old boston amps lol...I've got some extra gt amps laying around if you're short any btw.


hmmmmm... tempting.  

more pics coming...


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Here are some of the system pics as it stands now:










NAKED! I know... I'm asking for trouble. After the sub is installed, I'm making an amp rack cover for the floor. I'll have some plexiglass windows for the purdy red amps and some ventilation for the heat. The GT amps have fans on them, so I'm not too worried about heating/cooling. I recently took a 12 hr road trip and even with the system going at decent volume the whole time, the amps got super hot to the touch but never shut down.

Next up... getting this stupid sub box put together all the way.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

As you can see, the sub enclosure is just big enough to fit around the sub itself. The back end the the box is open and will be mounted to the baffle board sandwiched in-between the back seat and the supports.











Today I'll be working on mounting the last amp onto the side of the sub box, installing said box in the car and screwing in the sub... but first, coffee.


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## honfatboy (Jul 4, 2005)

Any pics of the midbasses?


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Not at the moment... they're tucked away in the door right now. I'm planning on getting back in there to do some more buzz control


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Finally! B-b-b-b-b-bass!

I was able get some time together yesterday to get the sub enclosure installed. I was really apprehensive about going IB, but those thoughts have disappeared…. What a difference!

I only had about 5 minutes to listen to it, but what I did hear was quite good. I’ve had both ported and sealed boxes in various cars - both of my last systems were sealed (Xtant X1244, the other a pair of RF “The Audiophile” 12’s) – but this is something special.

The bass integration, even before eq’ing anything, blends very nicely with the front stage. I listened to a track that I used probably hundreds of times when I was selling home audio equipment and could tell right away that the sub was going to work just fine  (Track 7 of Brandie Carlie’s Live @ Easy Street Records). 

Another thing I immediately noticed was how mechanically quiet the IB15 is. I’ve found that many subs have a ‘sound’ to them, not the music itself, but what I would describe as a mechanical sound. For example, some subs I’ve heard that lack that sound are the high end Focal drivers, B&W bass drivers, Linn bass drivers, REL… this IB15, so far, seems to have joined that crowd.

The installation was pretty straight forward. I build the enclosure just big enough to fit around the sub (in height, the width is a few inches wider), gave myself plenty of mounting surface to screw into from inside the car. I doubled up on RV gasketing material on those surfaces and sandwiched the box to the baffle. 

I’ve noticed that most IB baffles (the board where that both separates the front wave from the rear and also holds the subs) are fairly thick, I think most installs here on DIYMA use 1.5” +… the baffle (facing the rear of the car, holding the sub) in this case is ¾”, with the board which the enclosure mounts to (shown in the pic of the back seat down) is ½”. The thought behind it was to use the back seat as the seal, and although I’ve read that it doesn’t work all that well, it seems to have in this case. The sub vents directly into the cabin through the ski pass through opening.
Here are a few shots of the progress:

Amp on the side of the box (give you an idea of how shallow the box is):


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

(continued)

The baffle before mounting the box:



The Parts Express terminals (only allows for ¾” MDF wall, approx. 12 gauge or less):



Back of the baffle pre-enclosure:



Enclosure up against the back seat baffle:



I used L-brackets to hold the enclosure in place while I attached it from the front:










Trunk shot:










Trunk shot 2:










And from the front seat with the ski pass through down (yes, it’s about ½ to the left)


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

As an aside... I was doing another audio project yesterday and thought I'd share how I put tech flex on wires -- I'm sure most of you already know how to do this :laugh:

I find it helpful to use electrical tape to hold the webbing in place before trying to cut it










Pull the webbing to the end of the wire:










Tightly wrap a few layers of electrical tape around where you want it; using a razor blade, carefully cut away the tech flex at the end of the electrical tape:










The tape will hold the tech flex in place and give you a nice edge to work with:










And the end product before shrink tubing:


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

There was an earlier request for pics of the midbasses in the doors… I finally got to them yesterday:


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

So a little update today. I took off the door panels in an effort to hunt down some buzzes. I used some Dynamat Tac-Mat I found in the garage (forgot I had it from years ago). Pink, but who’s gunna see it? :laugh:

While I had the door cards off, I wanted to do something with the black tweeters that were installed by the previous owner of the car. 

So I pop’d the tweeter out of the housing and removed the housing from the door card by cutting the hot glue that was used to hold it in place (the other side at least used the metal backstrap that usually comes with the component set










Picked up some speaker grill cloth that was a fairly close match to the vinyl color of the door










And pulled across the tweeter


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

As I mentioned earlier, the tweeter was black… and since the grill cloth is sort of see-through-able, I painted the tweeter with a few light coats of tan paint.

As an added bonus, the next owner can thank me for the unique resonance taming modifications 


















A quick spray of glue and a few min to tack up


























And re-installed:


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

I figured Honda probably addressed vibration issues of the door card to the metal of the door by adding padding to specific areas (doubtful it was for overall road noise reduction) so I doubled their efforts by adding some Tac Mat on top of the padding.

To get the approximate shape, I used a piece of cardboard and drew a mirrored image of the section, then laid that down on the Tac Mat and made my cuts


















I also added a different piece of CCF to the door lock mechanism by spraying adhesive on just the edge of the foam, let it tack up, and folded it over. I figured if it was loose enough, it wouldn’t affect the movement of the door mech. Seemed to work out ok… as an aside, it also made the door handle “feel” a little more damped when opening the door from the outside.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

I also added a bit of Tac Mat around the driver, the gasket that was installed previously installed. However, it turns out that the Tac Mat may be a little too thick. It seems to push out the grill on the door a bit, so I’ll have to come up with some other solution.










One of the more annoying buzzes in the door card came from the switch assembly. I tackled this area by trying to decouple the mounting of the metal support that supports that part of the door card:



























The other spot that seemed to buzz (and where I could feel air coming from!) was the inside door handle area. I used a small square of Tac Mat on the backside of that assembly. It needed to be trimmed down from the pic seen here, but once compressed and slid back into place, it seemed to do the trick:


















Did the same procedures the passenger side; here’s a shot of what the door looks like put back together:


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## Fricasseekid (Apr 19, 2011)

I find the only buzzes I have left in my 6th gen accord are from the flat part of the door panel in the front near the hinge. It's the part that is not hollow and gets squeezed in between inner door skin and the dash. 

Did your efforts take care of your issues?

Nice looking work btw.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Fricasseekid said:


> I find the only buzzes I have left in my 6th gen accord are from the flat part of the door panel in the front near the hinge. It's the part that is not hollow and gets squeezed in between inner door skin and the dash.
> 
> Did your efforts take care of your issues?
> 
> Nice looking work btw.


Thanks! 

The majority of the buzzes were taken care of... There's still one one the NW corner of the drivers midbass area -ish. It's difficult to tell where it's coming from right now, next step is to pull the panel again and play the same track and see of its either panel or spkr/door proper.

Didn't get back into it today though. Spent most of the afternoon at the Big Bertha launch pit in downtown Seattle. Bertha is the worlds largest tunneling machine of its kind... Something like 55' in diameter. I'll post a few pics


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## [email protected] (Aug 4, 2013)

VERY nice work! I have the same car but 2001 model. I am looking to do an IB setup and yours doesn't look overly complicated to do. How does it sound? About how many hours did it take you to complete the baffle and box?


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

[email protected] said:


> VERY nice work! I have the same car but 2001 model. I am looking to do an IB setup and yours doesn't look overly complicated to do. How does it sound? About how many hours did it take you to complete the baffle and box?


Hey, thanks man. It's been a labor of love so far... I love to work on it and would love to finish it. :laugh: The kids head back to school next week so I might have some time to finish up the back cover for the amps.

I do like the IB set-up, there's plenty of output for me. I won't win any SPL contests with it, but it does manage to excite plenty of parts of the car to drive me nuts with buzzes. I've been using an old Sony Xplod bass disc and having some fun with it. 

The sound quality is quite good. It's the best sounding woofer set-up I've owned in a car. SQ-wise its very 'quick' and responsive. I think its just as responsive as my home sub (REL Stadium III).

The baffle didn't take too long. Its quite unconventional in the sense that its only a 1/2" board. Most IB installs use 1-1/2" MDF and go through a long and complicated (and probably worth the extra work) process of attaching it to the car and sealing every hole. I didn't want to go through all of the work so I used a simpler build process.

Cutting the 1/2" board and carpeting it took a little time, mostly getting the board to fit. The bottom of the board fits down inbetween the back seat and the metal, sort of squeezed in there. The top is attached to the metal with 1-1/4" self-tapping sheet metal screws. Like I said, really easy 

The box is just big enough to fit around the sub.The "box" is 3/4" MDF with an extra 3/4" strips on the backside (the side that gets screwed to the baffle board) so there's something to screw into. I used the screws normally used on attaching backer board to the floor for tile work.

I though about making it for 2 15"s, but I only ordered one AE IB15-4 (my dumb mistake). At the end of the day, it worked out alright. If I do get it metered, I'll post the numbers.

I think I have more pics, I can send them to you if want. PM me your email.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

I AM SUCH AN IDIOT.

So... I decided to do another tune on the MS-8, did all 4 locations and saved the profile. But... instead of going back and unplugging the mic from the MS8/coiling it up/putting it away.... I drove a couple of blocks to a parking lot where I crank it up to check bass levels. With the headphones in tow.

I got to the parking lot and saw the trail of cord and about had a heart attack.  - I haven't checked it yet, hope it still works. Ugh.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Welp, the summer's just about over for me (back to school on Wednesday) but I was able to get a few more hours in. 

For a while now, I've been runing around without a cover on either the amplifiers or the sub - a recipe for disaster. I finally got some time to build covers for both.

Starting with the cover for the amp, I used some left over 3/4 BCX plywood to build the frame. I figured using plywood would be better than MDF because: 1. the plywood is lighter, 2. it wouldn't absorb (as much) water and fall apart like MDF and 3. I had it 

The width was determined by the spare tire well, being just wide enough to span the distance and give me some area to build up the height to clear everything. 



















I made sure to space out the cover so that if I upgrade the sub to something with a higher throw and/or increase the baffle thickness, I would have clearance without having to rebuild the cover:










The spacers on the bottom of the cover were made with two 3/4" strips glued and screwed to the bottom just like how you'd expect:


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Next I added some bits to the panel to "wrap" around the sub enclosure, which you will see, gives me something to attach the sub grill panel to:





































Using 1/2" BCX plywood, I built the subwoofer grill/cover assembly. Its nowhere close to a Bing install... but it should get the job done :laugh:

Not a lot of pics of this, mainly 'cause I wanted to get it done:











The cover panel/sub grill thingy is relatively shallow, about 6" deep. The quarter round cut-outs on the edges are for following the contour of the backseat-where-it-meets-the metal area (for the lack of a better, more technical term)

I then cut out a rounded section of the cover to make the grill area:










And installed:


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

I used a 4" sewer pipe to create the radius' on the sub grill cutout, so I used it again on the cutout of the amp/proc cover:










The cutout from the sub grill/cover will be re-used as a second grill. The plan is to paint it black and wrap it in black speaker grill cloth to cover the to-be-installed perforated metal, which will be going in both openings.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

It's been awhile since I've posted anything, school's got me bogged down. However, there has been some progress - just not a lot.  The panels I cut before are now carpeted; the opening in front of the sub will get a silver perf'd grill (attached from the backside of the cover), the amps will get the same grill but with a piece of lexan/plexi underneath it to keep stuff from dropping in.


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## fergsonfire (May 26, 2011)

did you spray glue your tweeters without taping over the center?!


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## stylngle2003 (Nov 2, 2012)

I think those are unused tweeters that the previous owner drilled holes in the door panels for.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

Hey everyone... I saw your question and thought I had replied to it, but apparently the post didn't take(?).

Indeed, the tweeters were painted over, but they weren't being used/sounded like butt so instead of trying to figure out how to patch the holes, I painted them so the black/silver wouldn't show through, wrapped them in speaker grill cloth and pop'd them back in place.


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## adamand (Apr 19, 2009)

** update **

I bought an older X603 Xtant amp a few weeks back and decided to finally install it today.

The old Boston amps, which I had one bridged for the left mid/tweet and another bridged for the right pair, were taken out and the X603 installed in its place. The 603 also has a subwoofer channel (the 3 designates 3 channel) so I was able to eliminate the dedicated bass amp from the install (although I left it in there, I may play with an upfront sub at some point in time).

The Xtant amp, unlike most amps, has jumpers instead of a gain pot to adjust for output - your choices are -20 db, -10bd, 0, +10 and +20db. I found on the mid/tweet output, I used the 0 setting, but on the sub, I used the +10. I think its because the AE sub is 4 ohms, and the amp is really designed for a 2 ohm (300w) load. So I bumped the jumper up on the sub out and it seemed to work out better.

So far, the amp is very clean, just as I remember it years ago. It is a little bright though. I'll have to let it play some more to see if that changes down the road.


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