# Fiesta install



## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

*Fiesta install (new photos)*

Hey guys I know this isn't exactly DIY components etc.. But all the work is my own. 
Components consist of:

Blaupunkt mp34 (CD7000 goes in thursday)
Front stage: DLS UR36s
Front amp: Audiosystem F2>500 2x230rms
Sub: IDQ 15 v1 svc 4ohm
Sub amp: Audiosystem F2>500 800rms bridged @ 4 ohm

Stinger cableing and fuses etc throughtout.

Oh the boot pics were taken early on before all the wiring was run and upgraded.


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

Some more pics.


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

and some more. As you can see the HU is the next item being attended to my GF has bought me a Eclipse CD7000 that is getting installed on thursday. Oh the Sub box is 38mm thick top and bottom baffles with the side walls 16mm heavily braced as you can see, and the sub see roughly 1.5 cu ft net.


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## trike (Sep 22, 2005)

great attention to detail. how long did the install take you?


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## edwelly (Mar 29, 2006)

Looks great. How does it sound?


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## MiniVanMan (Jun 28, 2005)

Luke352 said:


> Hey guys I know this isn't exactly DIY components etc.. But all the work is my own.


Great work, and this site is about bringing out the best you can in car audio, and we all agree that install is everything. So, as far as I'm concerned, with work like that, you're a DIYer, regardless of the equipment you use. 

Keep the pics coming.


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## vwtoby (Oct 28, 2005)

ahh..the good old fiesta....brings me back to my bournemouth days 

work looks good ...hows it sound?


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## bobditts (Jul 19, 2006)

I have an installer friend who put 8 12" MTX 7500s in the back of a fiesta. damn that ***** was loud!


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

Oh, forgot to add the A pillar trims arent finished yet there just painted in primer at the the moment, I'm getting them sprayed in the next few weeks.

Trike: I've done it over the last few months doing little bits and pieces but if I had everything there when I needed it I'm sure I couldve done it in about a week at my pace.

Edwelly: I wasnt to sure how I liked them to begin with but I have to say DLS is right about the run in time, as the more they get played the better there getting and I'm really starting to like how they sound. Deautifully detailed without being to harsh, but I'm a sucker for female vocals and they sound amazing on these.

MiniVanMan: Thanks for the nice comments, its always good to hear. 

vwtoby: haha.

Luke


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## Whiterabbit (May 26, 2006)

hows the staging with the mids so low? I'm also curious about any dashboard reflections youve experienced, and plans to counter any issues that have arizen for either?

or if none exist, the folks here should know that too, and file that knowledge away about the fiesta ;D


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## Soundsaround (Apr 22, 2006)

Looks great! I have a couple of questions:
Do you think the midbasses mounted up high in the doors have any advantages/disadvantages to the more common lower door area? I would imagine the path length differences are worse, but they're also that much closer to your mids. Perhaps it's a moot point for drivers handling just the lower frequency range?

Also, what materials did you use for your a-pillar install. Did you use just regular fabric + resin + bondo? Is there any fiberglass involved or body filler designed for pliable plastics?


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

So far I don't think I'm getting to many issues with reflection and the like for staging, they will need some decent TA though once the Eclipse HU goes in but if you place yourself in the middle of the car the staging is quite good considering its running of an el cheapo HU. One thing worth noting is the crossovers have two setting for tweeters and midrange so the tweeters are set on low and the midrange set on high as thats how I thought it sounded best to me. As for the midbasses being up high I don't think it's really an issue either way whether there higher or lower, some people are actually suggesting running mid and tweet up front and midbasses in the rear now claiming it helps stage height and ambience but I'm yet to hear a car thats done it to test the theory. Though the midbasses in this set have quite a weighty sound more so then punchy. But I will wait and hear as they are changing in sound more and more as they are running in. 

Yes the 'A' pillars are just a thick (for strength) stretchy material which was held in place with super glue, and then the whole lot had lots of resin applied, then a whole lot of sanding to smooth it off and then some body filler and more sanding and then primed but I have more filler to apply yet.

Luke


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## scott_fx (Mar 31, 2006)

that looks great, you have inspired me to try out some large driver (if i ever go fully active) tweets by the looks of your a pillars. very nice work!


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## drocpsu (May 3, 2005)

I'm envious of those A-Pillars. Those look great! How do you plan to finish them?


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## ocuriel (Oct 7, 2005)

Those are some killer pillars. Very nice!


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## Wild Child (Feb 16, 2006)

Lookin good, those amps are CLEAN. I had a hard time fitting 1" tweets in my a-pillars, lol, yours are huge.


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

drocpsu said:


> I'm envious of those A-Pillars. Those look great! How do you plan to finish them?


I went and spoke to the custom painters the other day and they will use a matt creamy color, 2 pack epoxy paint applied slightly drier which should give it a textured look or so they claim so it will basically match the factory pillar trims.


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## Whiterabbit (May 26, 2006)

2 part paint is the way to go. even with primer its like the difference between painting with chalk and a cohesive firm material. love the durability of 2 part paints. (is your paint epoxy or polyester? my primers are polyester....)


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

Well I'm not actually gonna do the final paint myself, because painting is about where my skill levels come to a complete stop LOL.

But I believe the guy said he would be using a epoxy based paint. But i'll find out for sure when I get it done.


Luke

p.s. Thanks for all the great comments guys!!!


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## drocpsu (May 3, 2005)

Wild Child said:


> Lookin good, those amps are CLEAN. I had a hard time fitting 1" tweets in my a-pillars, lol, yours are huge.


The tweeters themselves arent that huge, but getting the mids in there is!


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## Whiterabbit (May 26, 2006)

I agree with you on the paint thing. the clearcoat scares me a little, trying to get a perfect finish in an imperfect paint environment.

fortunately local bodyshops here are real nice about painting parts I bring them that are fully bodyworked, primered and ready to go. sounds like they are chill over there, too.


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

Here we go guys my new Headunit in (birthday present from the GF, thanks hunny) its a Eclipse CD7000 incase you couldnt tell and the shop made up the custom facia for me, I'm very happy with how it sounds and looks so far.


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

Just some finished photos off the A pillars, I decided to go with fabric over paint for the finish.


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## ocuriel (Oct 7, 2005)

Very nice finish.


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## NaamanF (Jan 18, 2006)

Looks great!


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## Wild Child (Feb 16, 2006)

dang, that turned out really sweet


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## slow2.2sonoma (Jul 9, 2006)

FIESTA its fun for a boy and a girl... i had to say it sorry.


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## evan (Dec 2, 2006)

The quality of that headunit install surprised me. You're girlfriend did a great job of finding an installer that actually cares.


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

Yeah luckily I live just around the corner from one of the best installers in Australia, they are probably the best of the top 3 in the state of Queensland remembering for reference that QLD is probably 1/5 the size of the whole US. I've put a post of some of his work in the install section do a search for hilux and you will find it.


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

So thought I'd update this with whats currently going on.

I'm currently in the process of making new A pilars because the extreme Off axis angle of the old ones was causing me to lose a lot of detail etc... 

On another note my CD7000 has gone off to the Doctor to have a low volume shhh noise fixed, my local shop owner was saying he is quite surprised because they have sold ****loads of CD7000/7100 and mine is the first one to have anything wrong with it.

If your looking at the pics and wondering how I've made them, it's Skewer sticks holding the rings in place with a hot glue gun, and then I wrapped a layer of fibreglass around that to strengthen it before getting the stretchy fabric and resin over the whole thing.

This is all I've done so far I'll update as I get more done.


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

Well guys I've been collecting a bunch of new/old gear for quite sometime now and have recently started redoing my install as everything bar the HU and front splits has been out of the car for a few months now since my car got hail damaged and I pulled all the gear out before it got repaired.

So first the gear I've collected.

Morel CW8's
These 8" midbasses are a few years old I'm guessing mid ninties, but they are BNIB. These are option one for midbass.



Option two for midbass is my Mpyre Audio 65M's, less cone area then the Morel's but probably twice the excursion, so I'll try both and see what I like.


Then I've got a Coustic DR505, and a 514. The 505 will be for tweeters 2 x 50rms, and the 514 I will bridge for 2 x 150ish rms for the midranges.



Next up is midranges, which will most likely be these Tang Band 3" widebanders, if you search Tang Band on ebay these will come up I picked them up when they were first listed for $30 USD delivered Buy It Now. If I don't like them I'll go back to my current DLS UR2.5 domes.






Next up is my JBL W15Gti, this has been in the car for a while and cone up unlike the pic, but using a spacer as it was too deep to fit originally. 






Next up my AC DQX which combined with my CD7000 (current install) will be used to control the whole setup. I'll probably use the CD7000 to control the sub and midbasses and then send the high output to the DQX to use for the midranges and tweeters.




Next is Tweeters, I'll probably stick to my DLS UR1's (current install) but I also have a set of Hybrid Audio L1's I can try, no pics as the UR1's are earlier in this thread and I'm sure we've all seen L1's before.


Now Midbass and Sub, as seen earlier in thread I'll be using my lovely AudioSystem F2>500's one for the midbass obviosly and the other for subbass. They do 2 x 230 rms @ 4 ohms, or 1 x 800rms @ 4 ohm, or 1 x 1250 rms @ 2 ohm. Incase you notice the different terminals, one is a series 2 the other a series 3. These are great amps lots of clean a/b class power and despite the fans they actually run very cool as the fans very rarely turn on and are actually speed controlled dependent on amp temperature. I really think they could have made them without the fans.


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

Now for the start of the install. 

The A pillars will be staying the same, but I might put some effort into finishing them off so they don't look half finished. 

Now midbass I haven't started these yet but they will be going into enclosures built into the front footwells, I should be able to manage 10-15litres which will raise my floor level about 2" towards the front and up to 4" towards the back in front of the seats which is roughly where the drivers will be located. I've seen a few cars using this location and it works well.

So with a small hatch, space is at a premium so two amps and the DQX are being sunken into the spare wheel well, and the other two are being mounted to the back of the folding seat, and the sub will be in a molded enclosure on one side of the boot.











Now you've probably looked at that thinking, "how is he going to access the DQX screen and controls" well the screen and controls will be removed and with the help of some ribbon cable remote mounted in the front of the car, in other words my very own DDC for the cost of a few metres of ribbon cable.










Now the amp mounting board which is attached to back of seat is located using some "U" bolts through some nicely located child seat attachment points, and using some new longer bolts for the hings bolts.

Now that's as far as I've gotten so far, I think next I'll do all the wiring, and then I'll concentrate on the floor enclosures for the midbasses.


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

Here are a couple pics of the small amount of work I managed to get done this weekend. Not much unfortunately.






Luke


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## BMWturbo (Apr 11, 2008)

Looks good Luke. I'm assuming you'll be aiming for completion by Rnd 1?


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

^^^^Yes and No, hoping to have the amps and wiring all sorted, and if all goes well the midbasses, but I may not have the midbasses in but I'll see how I go. As for the sub I'm not even thinking about that now, I'll worry about that later.


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

Well this install is going pretty slowly this time, but with my wife 28 weeks pregnant with our first child my weekends seem to disappear with working on the nursery room or other various related child tasks, plus I never work quickly lol.


Well here is the spare wheel well with the DQX wired up and the RCA's coiled up ready to be connected, the coiled up ribbon cable is for when I remote mount the DQX screen and buttons rather then fork out a heap of cash for a DDC controller I'll make my own.




The Coustic DR's and all there wiring finished.








I had one of the AudioSystem amps hooked up and when I connected the battery it went pop, must have been some damage caused from when it got wet in a hail storm last year after my back window got smashed in. It has only been run inside the house once of a tiny power supply so obviously couldn't pull enough current to pop, so I'm thinking when I hooked it up to the car battery something damaged inside has pulled a large current and caused it to blow what looks like a input transistor, but I get it back from repair in about another week, so I'll wait and see what the repair guy says.


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## KARPE (Nov 9, 2008)

Luke352 said:


>


this picture confuses me


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

^^^What's confusing about it?

The pic has been taken looking down on the spare wheel well, so the bottom of the pic is the back of the car, and that amp off to the side was just sitting there out of the way that is not it's permanent location.

Or are you talking about the different earth cable that are red? I had plenty of red cable so I used it, rather then spend $70 on black cable. That is why I have wrapped the ends with black electrical tape all the earths have black tape on them and all the positive's have red tape. The tape will probably be replaced with heat shrink once I have all the wiring sorted.


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## KARPE (Nov 9, 2008)

I figured you took advantage of extra Red Cabling. I saw power wire going into a distro and coming out negative lol.


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## 240sxguy (May 28, 2009)

Threads like these are lighting a fire under my ass to do something nice again. Its been years since I cared about nice installation and great sound in my car. 

Nice work man.


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

KARPE said:


> I figured you took advantage of extra Red Cabling. I saw power wire going into a distro and coming out negative lol.


Yeah, it's not the best and it's odd to look at even for me. But I figured if I'm aware of it and cable's are all terminated with black heatshrink it should be ok. Plus 0 gauge is expensive so figured if I could save some cash why not.



240sxguy said:


> Threads like these are lighting a fire under my ass to do something nice again. Its been years since I cared about nice installation and great sound in my car.
> 
> Nice work man.


Your not the only one, took a bit to motivate myself to start this install but it's progressing slowly and should be nice once it's finished.
Thanks for the compliment.


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

Well I started on the enclosure's for my floor mounted midbass's. I've done the basic mould for the passenger side so far. I did two layers of glass yesterday let it all dry then pulled them out this morning, now that they are out I've done a third layers and i'll probably do a 4th layer and after that I 'll check it and see if I think it will need anymore. If you are wondering what the large light areas are, that is planks of balsa sandwiched between the layers of glass, I did that on recommendation of the place I bought my supplies from, it adds alot more strengh and stiffness for little effort.

So first I got busy with the masking tape and covered the footwell with a couple of layers of tape, and then added some newspaper around the place to prevent any drips falling where I don't want it.

 

 

Then after getting the approval of the sidekick I started glassing.

 

 

 

So that was one layer down, balsa planks added then second layer and then left to dry overnight and the next day after pulling it out I'm left with this.

 

 

 

So it's down in the backyard now with the third layer drying, so I might go out and do my fourth layer now. But once that's done I then have to mark around the edge where I'm going to trim it down to and then add the top which will probably just be a flat piece of mdf which I'll fibreglass onto the floor mould. I've figured out that once I trim it to it's final depth of about 7cm or roughly 6 and 3/4" i'll end up with volume around 0.50 cu ft.


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

So I got a little bit of time today to do some more work on the car, so far I'm just aiming to get the passenger side footwell enclosure completed, and then I'll attack the drivers side since that wil be the hard one.

I did have intentions of making the top baffle plate removable and although I'd figured out how I was going to do it, I just don't have the time or patience to do it how I planned so I've stuck with a non removable top baffle which so I can attach it in place with the fibreglass cloth strip I've cut the bottom of the enclosure out which I'll fibreglass back in place latter, I've seen this method used by a few people and it doesn't seem to result in any weakness where the enclosure was cut.

So firstly I trimmed down the enclosure so it was level,


I cut my hole in my top baffle,


I cut the base out of the tub,


Positioned it over my baffle,


Got my Fibreglass cloth,


And started resining,





And that's it for now, it's sitting out in the backyard drying.


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## SkodaTeam (Feb 26, 2009)

The pillars look very good. Dont you loose some details with this direction of the midrange and tweeter?


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## circa40 (Jan 20, 2008)

whoa, that floor enclosure looks sick!


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

SkodaTeam said:


> The pillars look very good. Dont you loose some details with this direction of the midrange and tweeter?


In reference to the first "A" Pillars or the rev 2 ones, the first ones fired directly across at each other and had excellent image placement and focus, but the rev 2's which are almost On axis have excellant detail and tone but the image is no where near as solid and defined.

I prefer rev 2!


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

circa40 said:


> whoa, that floor enclosure looks sick!


Yeah it's coming along nicely, hopefully they come out as well as I hope!


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## SkodaTeam (Feb 26, 2009)

Luke352 said:


> In reference to the first "A" Pillars or the rev 2 ones, the first ones fired directly across at each other and had excellent image placement and focus, but the rev 2's which are almost On axis have excellant detail and tone but the image is no where near as solid and defined.
> 
> I prefer rev 2!


I have UR2.5 mids and Ir1 tweeter and my first pillars was directly across each other \same as yours\, good stage - bad detail, then a change the pillars like you did and i totaly agree with you. Rev 2 rulezzz


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## SpecV (Mar 26, 2009)

Man I do have to say I am envious of your gear. I love those Mpyre's but I have always been partial to CF. I cannot wait to see how that floor encosure comes out. If you end up using the Morels you could always send me those Mpyres


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## Luke352 (Jul 24, 2006)

Well as a whole not much is going right, both my Coustic DR's appear to have a noise problem and I've pinpointed it to the actual amps because they still make the noise out of car run off a power supply. So looks like they need whatever caps are for noise rejection replaced.

Also my DQX seems to have problems as well, the high output has the equalization overload light on even though there is no EQ applied, and because of that it appears to have cut the high output.

So what I've ended up with is the 3 way DLS's using there passive being powered by a little amp under the front seat and the one Morel HCW8 is being run by one channel off one of the AudioSystem F2>500's. I've set it up with a high pass applied to the DLS at 200hz 6db slope, and the single Morel is open on the bottom end with a 24db low pass @ 315hz, but that was just a quick and rough tune to get it running and is by no means anywhere close to final tune. But at this stage it sounds really good and the Morel has incredible impact and control. I can't wait to get the second one in.

In actual fact I quite like this setup as it means I don't need the DQX and I'll only need 3 vs 4 amps so in reality it's much more simpler then what I was planning. But I'll play with it some more and see how I go.





















The carpet is actually a better match then the photo shows.


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## BMWturbo (Apr 11, 2008)

Looks good Luke, Sorry to hear about the issues though, hopefully you'll get them sorted and I can't wait to hear it


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## goodstuff (Jan 9, 2008)

BUMP. What's going on with this Luke? Looks interesting.


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