I had the honor of working on one of our own forum members, indierock's beautiful 350z coupe.

The goal was to create an excellent sounding system in a basic custom install.

Lets get started:

HU: alpine 9853. Its a nice HU, but i have to say, one of the most annoying HUs to use with out a manual. He supplied the HU but didnt have the manual and alpine tech center was down...hehe, took me FOREVER to figure it out. but just in a stock location install.



Since he had factory nav, i had to give him an audio output source. I didnt have a random speaker laying around so i took his factory door pseakres, custom made a grille for it, and secured it to the bottom fo the dash. it doesnt affect the clutch nor leg room, and gives pretty loud output for hte nav.



front stage: DEI studio 6.5" comp set, the midass went intot he stock door location, dampened, adn new wires were passed through the factory plugs int he door. the tweeters were flushed into the factory kick panel. Despite the off axis set up, this gives an amazingly high sound stage in the Z.

 

moving on to the back.

just a simple arch box with a single 12w3, i did a little simple raised graphics just for kicks. covering is factory matching vinyl.






now, you see the rack on the front of hte arch, and of course, thast for the amp. half way through theinstall, i decided that instead of simple flush mounted forward facing amp, i was going to do something different this time. it ate up about 2.5" of extra space, but it hinkt he effect is worth it.

note: this pic was taken with out hte top cover done and secured, so it may not look level and the vinyl may look a little ruff it is now secured via four screws

here you go:






the amp is in a drawer on heavy duty slides, and there are pop in stoppers on the back side so you basiclaly pull it up, push in the stoppers and it sits in this location. I wish i could have gone motorized, but that was not in the budget

anyway, personally i think it sounds great, i am sure indierock will chime in as well.

comments and questions welcome.

b

 

Looks Great! How does the amp rack rise up? is it powered by a switch?

 

Thats a WHOLE lot of amp...

 

why tweeters were flushed into the factory kick panel? how can you listen?

 

the amp is in a drawer on heavy duty slides,

Manual.

 

yup, heavy duty slides, mnaual power, i would hae done motorized if i had the budget

stop asking about kicks alex, come and listen to it and you will see what i mean, all the music sounds like its coming from the dash

b

 

hey..hey..i'm not an audio expert. so pleze excuse moiiiiiiiiiiiii... BTW, new year this week so i'll see you next week. hee hee

 

yup, cant wait, feastin time on saturday!!!

and the reason why i said stop asking was becuase i replied to your identical comment on another post before :P

b

 

i like the Amp idea. Weird ..but orginial..

 

I'm sorry...did you say 12w3? I wasn't aware a 12 would fit at a 90 degree angle to the strut tower like that. Very nice!

 

sorry! edit, 10w3

 

do you have any pics of the backside of that sliding amp tray and how the "pop-stoppers" work?

 

looks sweet.

 

Just an idea I did.....I used a black magic marker to cover up the cage you can see behind the trim ring.

I'm going to try your tweet kick idea once I choose some components though.

 

sure here is a pic of the back...not a very good one since i took it before thigns were done

the stoppers are little rods with rings at the end. the rods have a pop up ball in them so once i put them through the hole ,they dont come out easily.

when you lift up the amp rack to a certain point, you push in these stoppers and as the amp rack goes down, it sits on them. when you want to drop the rack, lift up slightly and pull on the hoops, they come out to the right lengths and stop, and the amp rack just slides back in



yeah magic marker is a friend of installers for usre

b