crazy4ozs

hey guys so sunday...all day...me and IONSQL worked on my kicks and tweeter pods...there was a tornado about half way throuhg ou proccess so were nto quite done but this is what we have so far... enjoy!


the speakers will be put in teh kick panels while just the tweeters will occups teh door panel portion...all glassed in




the stuff we worked with...



my door panel b4 the operation...



speaker ring...will be rescessed to give it that "different" look



after it got routered...is NOT sanded yet...



taping off teh door panel...the speaker grill was already cut out



first layer of resin on door panel...



first layer of resin on kicks...



glassing the kicks...(the door panels warped so we are goin to start those again later)



first layer of glass on, tape removed...fits like a glove!


well thats all for now...they are going to be finished next time i can get down there!



here is a pic of the sky on my ways back....SCAREY!

brentg07

I got those in my car, best 6.5's I have ever heard, keep us posted on the glassin

crazy4ozs

bump for 1st comment! wahoo!

BillAce

iTrader: (2)

Your plan and progress look good. I would only recommend that you do not run the kicks sealed. The enclosure is far too small for a driver designed for free air application and you will lose midbass and need to Eq out a bump in response due to the enclosure tuning. I suggest leaving the top of the kick (under the dash) open or using an aperiodic membrane to correct this. If you go with the AP setup, the membrane area should be half the area of the speaker at minimum. I ran a large sealed enclosure for my kicks by diong some cutting and welding. I am also using a custom spec'd speaker that is meant for that environment.

Bill

crazy4ozs

wow bill sounds like you know you stuff...i honestly have never hurd of people porting their midbass...r u sure a nice sub wont cover teh problem up? becasue when they were mounted in the doors i had the HPF tuned to 80 which eliminates almost all bass from your door speaks...ya no, the stuff that causes distortion ...but just for knoledge can u post sum pics of your set up adn teh way u did yours because i understand im just a little confused on teh membrane thing so please

zach

BillAce

iTrader: (2)

I'll dig up some pics tonight. Basically you do not want to port them, you want the enclosure larger. The speker moounted in the door will probably play down to 65Hz. Since most amps/head units. Xovers use 12bdb slopes you have to set the xover higher than that. The thing is your door is the environment the speaker was designed to play in and is probably 20x the volume of a kickpanel. You won't get much output below 200Hz for a few reasons. The enclosure will provide too much "air spring" and not allow the speaker to return completely on the negative stroke. This also means the speaker will likely have the suspension moved forward when mounted and limit it's excursion. This will effect the mid range audio quality a great deal, a 6.5" is already heavier and takes more effort to play higher frequencies. Your sub will need to play too high to pick up the slack and you will only get 3/4 of the volume potential till things get ugly.

You still need to isolate the rear wave of the speaker, but letting the top of the kick panel be open under the dash will prevent cancellation and make the enclosure larger. I've made hundreds of kicks and a few years ago I literally took a hole saw to a set of kicks in a car I was tuning to get it to sound right.

My setup is different as I have sealed enclosures. I cut into the kick panel area and down into the sill. My enclosure is the length of the wheelbase using the car chasis. It's good for about 1 cu ft per side. In that enclosure 6.5" speakers played lower (43hz is the xover point) than 8" drivers. I have just gone to extreme measures for SQ.

crazy4ozs

very intresting, well me adn my builder will definatly look into this, but one more question y couldnt we just use a small amount of poly fil in teh kicks...wouldnt that acomplish the same thing we are looking to do with the membrane?...to trick the speakers in thinking that their is more airspace than there actually is?

BillAce

iTrader: (2)

Poly fill will at best provide a 10% increase in volume to the speaker. That also comes along with increased voice coil temps. That is no where near enough, and the wavelength of frequencies the 6.5" will play are short enough to be effected by the kick panel enclosure size.

The membrane will allow a percentage of air pressure to pass making the enclosure "really" larger. Ideally this is tuned to get a flat impedance curve and the result is better output from the amp and smoother response from the speaker. I would just have the enclosure open to start, you can experiment with membranes pretty easily from that point.

crazy4ozs

so ive been doing quite a bit of research on this thing and it definatly looks like its somehting i could do...but id still like to see soem pics of yours..like up close pics of the membrane itsself....anyway jsut a quick question...where is the best place to buy these at...im sure, jsut like subs, u have you good brands and your "not so good" brands...lemme no, thanks

BillAce

iTrader: (2)

AP membranes are a fiberous panel. Dynaudio calls them vario vents and recommends them for their midbass drivers. Image dynamics did a lot of them for subs in the past. Just go open to start, that will likely give great results. I' took some quick pics last night and I'll dig up my install photos that show the work I did. My kicks have the speakers sitting behind the factory kick panel and I still have a dead pedal. The factory kcik panel tapers in and acts as a trim ring only the speaker is bolted to a steel ring that is welded in place.

DrifterStudios

iTrader: (1)

OK... I am a little lost here... first why did you leave the stock kick in place? you know your going to be losing a lot of free space doing that right... If you removed the panel mesured a small half moon and cut it out you could have angled the speaker ring to get better "line of sight" to your ears. Do that, take some DuraMix 4040 to hold the ring and glass the wholething... this will leave the top open for the driver as well...

Why are you leaving the tweet in the door? your going to lose imaging by creating different arival times between midbass and tweets.

Bill ace is giving the right advice, but don't create loaded air space like he has with his mids (where the compression is too narrow, this will back load the speaker and get reflective response during extention of the speaker). We tried this years ago with a pvc tube under the dash giving air to kick mids... didn't go too well...

BillAce

iTrader: (2)

Most car speakers are designed for off axis response (door mounting) and you will not need much of an angle. 12degrees was optimum in my car.

Arrival time is even more critical due to the use of a passive xover. Make sure to find the best phase setting.

The top of the kick needs to be open. Porting it with a tube wll definitely give poor results unless your goal is that "Bose sound". That is what they do, port a mid to extend low frequency response and end up with horrible midrange response.

My setup works due to the large sealed enclosure (> 1 cu ft) and a speaker that was specifically built for that environment. The fact is that the enclosure probably is large enough for off the shelf speakers and would give predictable response and may be easier to tune. I'll run some common door speakers through my enclosure analysis software when I get a chance and get some data on this.

crazy4ozs

the tweeters are not staying in the door...they are moving within inches of the midranges....they will occupy the area which the mids did b4 i moved them to teh kicks...

BillAce

iTrader: (2)

The tweeters do typically arrive earlier than the mid so ideally they would be farther. Playing with phase will help this.

Bill

Cowboyndjngl

I have done kick panels in the past. But on my current install in my 06 Frontier I skipped the whole fabrication thing and just put the tweeter in the kick panels. Nothing special, no fabrication, just a hole cut into the kicks and my Boston Acoustics SL-60 tweeter flush mounted. I was pleasantly suprised by the imaging. the woofers mids are mounted in the factory location low in the door and the tweets are within 12".
The only reason I ever did kicks before was because the factory locations were two small for a decent set of speakers. not much of a stage comes from 3.5 or 4's. Try it with some double sided tape before going through all the work.