# Matts pontiac g8 final install...



## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)

dont have a bunch of time right now to go into detail but i will start it off.


this is how my idea started, off but things changed. no more batcap, different speakers, no scan speak d2004 3/4 illuminators, and unknown midbasses










a little bit of deadening









a parts express order list









some of my stuff









not done



















much more to come, i have tons of pictures and have done about 4 or 5 different setups in this car alone. i will get to some old pictures, too.

This setup was to be the final good sounding simple setup. with the most use of the trunk space, and everything bolted down so when i want to slide the car sideways, it wont go anywhere...


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## MTopper (Nov 4, 2009)

i assume its either a GT or a GXP right? beautiful car man


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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)

yeah, its a gt, i love the looks of the car, but i couldnt drive a v6 of it.

here are a few more


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## MTopper (Nov 4, 2009)

nice. gt can move very nicely. i like the rims and audio equipment looks like it will sound very nice


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## SB3BabyHuey (Jan 27, 2009)

Love those cars, shame pontiac went belly up. Least they went out with this though


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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)

i guess i will add some more pictures.

to give you all a back ground on the car, the climate controls are integrated into the stock radio. no aftermarket company makes a solution. a one guy company folcik engineering. designed the first production unit of the touch screen climate controler for the pontiac g8. it had to match vin, and convert to low speed gmlan serial data to control the climate controls. this gave me the ability to use an aftermarket head unit










stock cage, retrofit










using the iso bolt for extra stability.


















a very temp setup...


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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)

sorry for the iphone quality of the photo, the bitone controler is mounted better now









a few youtube videos







tq managment tuned down, 275 tires out back.


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## m R g S r (Oct 1, 2009)

Feelin the bezel. Is it wrapped in leather or painted? Can't tell from the pix (I'm on my phone)
Either way it looks good!


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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)

its wrapped in viynl. i felt it had to once i got the climate controller in, there was no real way to make it look right without doing that.


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## strong*I*bumpin (Oct 3, 2005)

sweet install & ride.any plans to drop it?


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## trojan fan (Nov 4, 2007)

strong*I*bumpin said:


> sweet install & ride.any plans to drop it?


Why drop it... already sits sweet... nice car


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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)

it is dropped. you should have seen it without springs, hahah. i might get coilovers in the future, but the front bumper already is pretty low.

the offset of the wheels are over and inch more then factory offset, that will make the car look bit taller then with stock wheels.

i have gxp struts, (fe3) and eibach springs (1.2" drop in the front and .8 in the rear.)

along with bmr trailing arms, toe rods, subframe insert bushings, strut tower brace, poly strut mount bushings, and bmr tunnel brace.


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## strong*I*bumpin (Oct 3, 2005)

matthewo said:


> it is dropped. you should have seen it without springs, hahah. i might get coilovers in the future, but the front bumper already is pretty low.
> 
> the offset of the wheels are over and inch more then factory offset, that will make the car look bit taller then with stock wheels.
> 
> ...


Guess I needed to see the b4's,sweet whip.


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## MTopper (Nov 4, 2009)

that is an amazing adaptation. really impressed by it. i always wondered when someone would man up and do the extra work. looks great


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## Cruzer (Jul 16, 2010)

not a fan of 4 doors, but that looks nice... the rims are perfect match for the color. also did the front Pontiac logo come black like that or did u do it? looks sick!

how did u get the tweets to stay, maybe i missed it if u said how


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## tusk (Feb 20, 2008)

Nice to see another Holden! Nice build.


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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)

Cruzer said:


> not a fan of 4 doors, but that looks nice... the rims are perfect match for the color. also did the front Pontiac logo come black like that or did u do it? looks sick!
> 
> how did u get the tweets to stay, maybe i missed it if u said how


i blacked out many things. the front grills, window trim, emblem, exhaust tips, door handle surround. front bumper lights, fog lights, rear markers and side fender lights.

basically everything that was chrome or yellow or clear is now dark or black, except my headlights and tail lights.

the tweeter pods are pvc end caps painted black, i cut a hole in the trim pannel and dropped them down a bit and at an angle.


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## doobious62 (Jun 17, 2011)

What did you do with the factory speakers. I have a friend that blew the mids in his 2006 G6.


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## nautic70 (Oct 20, 2010)

Do you have any more pics of the spare tire well sub box. I am wanting to do the same with my car but not wanting to mess with fiberglass or pay somebody to. It looks from your pics that you made your box to fit without glass. Thanks for any help.


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## cakman (Jun 20, 2010)

Man nice install and very nice gear. I bet that that system sounds very nice.


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## rsfaze (Sep 29, 2009)

How does it all sound?


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## decibelle (Feb 17, 2011)

Now that's a car. Sweet looking ride. I am a fan of your choice to black out the car. Also nice touch of vinyl.


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## chijioke penny (Mar 22, 2007)

this is the car i have been looking to purchase for the last several months... but , i've been worried about 1: not being able to use an aftermarket radio becuz of the a/c controls that runs through the factory unit and 2:the awful speaker location in the front doors!!!! But that LCD HVAC Controller just made one of my biggest concerns go away and i've been wanting to try a MTM setup in the a-pillars anyways!!!!! Nice work!!!


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## toylocost (Jul 4, 2011)

Clean car, damn clean install. Nice!


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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)

Sorry guys I will post more recent pictures soon.

I ended up doing a 3 way active front stage and added another amp and redid the amp rack.

I am finishing up the install

But a little over two months ago I was in a motorcycle accedent where a lady pulled out in front of me and I stuck her at about 45 mph and flew. Had to have a large spinal fusion surgery so it's put my system on hold a bit


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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)




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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)

here are a few of the pillars, now time to get to tuning


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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)

sorry here is a closer picture of what the actual system is now, but take out the srx amp and put in an audison lrx 2.4


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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)

a little sneak peak of other fun stuff to come


Long tubes, 3" dual catted x-pipe, all 304-SS. should bring me to 350WHP, then a maggie supercharger should put me right around 500WHP


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## blackknight87 (Jul 11, 2011)

Very cool! I loved the GT's i wish they were still around i would buy a new one.


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## screamatamonkey (May 15, 2009)

Choosing the right-angle RCAs for the bitone was a nice touch! BTW, how are you getting digital coax out of the Pioneer?


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## rhannahs (Mar 5, 2011)

nice install, and nice car!


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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)

screamatamonkey said:


> Choosing the right-angle RCAs for the bitone was a nice touch! BTW, how are you getting digital coax out of the Pioneer?


The pioneer has an 1/8" mono "headphone" style plug in the back. Use a 1/8" mono to RCA adapter found at radio shack. The run the output through a quality coax digital cable (rg6) into you processor. 

Thanks for the comments, just moved on to performance. The headers where installed the other day. The car is nice and quiet at normal driving and mean under throttle. I bet the supercharger whine will sound amazing with it.

I have a video of it


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## MTopper (Nov 4, 2009)

love the sound of that exhaust and god to i despise you for being able to chirp the tires into 3rd in an auto haha. great looking A pillars


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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)

MTopper said:


> love the sound of that exhaust and god to i despise you for being able to chirp the tires into 3rd in an auto haha. great looking A pillars


Ha, yeah it's all in the tune for the trans. I modified it with hp tuners a good bit. Stock tune the car will fall on it's face on the 1-2 and 2-3 shifts. It cuts timing and fuel using torque management and it feels like a very lazy automatic. With my tune under heavy throttle it will jerk shifts good, but under normal driving it's smooth shifts. The car put down 336whp and 346 lb feet of torque on a mustang dyno and 99 deg outside. That was untuned. Dyno tuning it now should pick up around 5-10 more hp.

But I'm really just wanting my blower then the car will really be fun, and a handful, no street tires will keep traction from a dig with this car and 500hp. I have 285s out back right now which is pretty big, and it can already spin all of first and into second from a dead stop.


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## jac09g8gt (Mar 7, 2011)

I like the install. I have a 09 G8 GT with premium and sport packages. I added a sub and that's it for the audio. I was more concerned with upgrading performance first. Looking at your install gives me ideas. If our cars had factory nav I would not want to change it. Good job and thanks for the audio ideas for the car.


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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)




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## MTopper (Nov 4, 2009)

car looks and sounds amazing man. love the choice in music haha. SQ for rap... sounds like my kind of install


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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)

thanks,

i dont know, for some reason i just like putting rap in videos, when i mix it all together.

also its somewhat pointless IMO to video a more SQ track because the mic of the camera doesnt pick up anything close to what it sounds like in real life anyways. now i must say i shot this with my nikon dslr and the mic did work a lot better, i actually put the mic on low sensitivity. so thats why it seems to sound a lot less loud when i walk away from the car.

also i do listen to a lot of music that sounds a lot better then rap, and i have a lot of higher quality music i took from 96khz 24 bit recordings and downgraded them to 48khz 24bit and put them in a dvd-a format, i like to use them when i demo the system to my friends. then use the digital output of the deck, and use the Bitone's DAC, it much improves even on my MP3 DVDs in 320khz to use the bitone's DAC. also when the bitone is using its digital input you cannot clip the input before the processor, and i have all my gains on the amp set at min. or very close to it. so i know anything before -3 db on digital input of the processor is good to go for a clean signal.


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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)

here are a few high res photos of the car, it now has coilovers, and is rather low, not speed bump friendly, and a little harsh, but it handles like a manic for a 4 door car, and eats bmws on mountain roads.


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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)

here is my other little trick to eat the bmws

cts-v brembos with 14" rotors up front.  size 11 shoes. they will be painted black, then a small silver brembo decal applied


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## trojan fan (Nov 4, 2007)

I really like what you have done with this car...the audio build turned out nice

My sister owns a g8 and I can't believe how roomy the back seat area is

It's too bad that Pontiac had to shut down


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## neuspeedescort (Feb 23, 2010)

f'n money! just did a g6 last month and thought it had room. you got way more.


NEUMAN


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## eviling (Apr 14, 2010)

hertz, scanspeak, focal, DD what an ecectic range of brands, very nice choices too. i bet it sounds very nice. I would love to see more about what you did with that amp rack, you were kind of rague with where your rca's are ran, did you jsut run them on top of the board and sandwitch them or did you run them on top of the deck ? probobloy easier to just run them on top of the board i guess but, id be worrioed about friction, that board would have to be really mounted solid to keep em from rubbing around.


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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)

the rcas are zip tied to the top of the board using the screw down zip ties. there is about 3/4" gap between the rear deck and the amp board to run wires.


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## blackknight87 (Jul 11, 2011)

sad these things aren't being made anymore. I love them!


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## SSSnake (Mar 8, 2007)

> they will be painted black, then a small silver brembo decal applied


As a CTS-V owner, I would suggest that you leave the V logo  I can gurantee it will be an upgrade in stopping power (a buddy here has a G8 and one of the things I have noticed in riding with him is the difference in stopping power/distance with the V and the G8).

Good looking install and car.


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## matthewo (Jan 31, 2008)

SSSnake said:


> As a CTS-V owner, I would suggest that you leave the V logo  I can gurantee it will be an upgrade in stopping power (a buddy here has a G8 and one of the things I have noticed in riding with him is the difference in stopping power/distance with the V and the G8).
> 
> Good looking install and car.


i would keep the cts-v logo, it does look very tasteful, a lot of people who do the swap do. but i have my car as blacked out as possible, except for the polished lip of the wheels, i will probably not even put a brembo logo on them and just paint them black. im going for the understated look.

yeah, i will not be doing the rear brakes right now at least. they require an adapter to be built and a special rotor if you want to keep the parking brake.

actually the front is a simple bolt on, no modification required. also the g8 does weigh a few hundred pounds less then the cts-v.

i really just want increased fade resistance. the gt brakes really are not bad, i think stock times are like 60-0 in 115 feet, which is actually very good, but i have felt fade pretty quickly while up in the mountains.


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## prettysweetsounds (Jul 26, 2011)

SSSnake said:


> As a CTS-V owner, I would suggest that you leave the V logo  I can gurantee it will be an upgrade in stopping power (a buddy here has a G8 and one of the things I have noticed in riding with him is the difference in stopping power/distance with the V and the G8).
> 
> Good looking install and car.


^^^I think we need to see a cts-v thread soon. Wicked, wicked car.


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## Tarheels1 (Jan 20, 2011)

I want a G8 6 speed!


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## EDDIEB33 (Oct 17, 2012)

Matt,

Would love to see your video or pics of your G8. I am a G8 owner myself. All your pics on this thread wont show and the videos were removed or say private?

Eddie


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