fastrat350

NO WAY the factory amp is tiny, i heard some made my amp fit in there and the only way I saw that possible was by cutting some of old amp brackets. I wanted to have my under the seat in order to adjust the settings quickly.

Yes I have heard of lizard skin before, great stuff.

arnis1968

Wow! Thats a hell of a build!

fastrat350

Alrite I was going to update every night but I ran into some tool problems on saturday night that frustated me, so I didn't get to build my box till today, but the rest of the system was placed in and I took pics along the way.

Ran completely new wiring for each speaker, for the front components, I had trouble find a good spot for the crossover networks, they were on the large side, so I took my old infinity amp, and removed its mounting bracket, and mounted my crossovers on there and now the crossovers are located under the steering column in the OEM Amplifier Location.






Also here are some shots of all the sound deadener and also the small amount of the luxury liner I put in the front floor pans, and my jeep is noticablely quieter now, after a drive today, i noticed less air noise and tire hum from under the front pans, I could feel it in my feet as welll. Though with sound deadener and the liner, the front carpet didn't fit snug like before, only noticable by the seat mounts. The luxury liner is thick, almost 1/2" inch thick.





Also mounted my Ipad dock inside a Radioshack project box and made holes to allow the Line-out cable to feed out and also a slot in order to connect the cablejive dock extender cable that connects to the Ipad. This is a temporary solution, later im going to remove this and use an External DAC from HRT called the iStreamer.





For today I got the subwoofer box built finally, the reason for the delay was that the brad nailer seized, then the regulator was malfunction after i got a replacement nail gun. But today I was able to put it together, and test it out. Damn it hits hard, but haven't gotten its full potential since I still need to tune my system.
Here is the box bare with the binding posts placed for the banana plugs, I terminated my wiring for the sub box with banana plugs, makes eash connecting and looks clean. The box will be coated in bedliner sometime this week.





Also today I was able to mount my amp under the passenger seat attached to the seat rails, one side of the rail has a flat edge while the other had an angled edge, for the angled edge in order to get the rail to be level with the other, I mounted my cut rail, bolted it down, and put my weight on it till it was flush across to the other bracket.





Here is the seat adjusted all the way back, its unnoticeable and hides nicely underneath, dont mind the wire, its just there to test the subwoofer.

It sounds great but he front to back balance's are off, so I need to tune it this week. But overall sounds awesome, the lights do dim alil bit even with the Diehard platinum but I'll address that later down the road with a second battery..........NO CAPACITOR FOR ME.

Adding this to the main thread aswell

NH-JK

Looks good. I like the amp placement.

mattymat04

Sweet good job wish I could hear that sub. Nice job on the amp also. I had to put my crossovers in the same place. Enjoy it

FowlerJE

Great job, would like to see some recent pictures and what not.

ABQ_Dave

How are you planning to run power to the amp? Are you going straight to the battery through the firewall? If so, where? Was the one big difference I found between my old TJ and the JK, far fewer big old rubber grommets in the JK than there were it he TJ.

fastrat350

Sorry for the no updates everyone, I do my sound system pretty much other than the box still in its bare form. I haven't had a chance to make a visit with a bedliner shop as for pricing, been busy with school. Since the front carpet is no sitting higher with the sound deadener and noise barrier, I had trouble installing the interior sill trim.

@ABQ_Dave
I ran my power thru the front cowl, there is portion that has the foam insulation, I ran my power wire thru there, but it was a PITA, because my 4awg wire was kicker's Z-Series, which had an additional layer of coating. But I was able to feed it through after much frustration. I dont see anything larger than 4awg fitting through that hole.

@Dutchboy101
Send me a PM with your info, I'll be off from work after wednesday till saturday incase your in the area.



I switched to a 3G Ipad 2 now, I had a reguler wifi Ipad, and found myself really missing the GPS, plus now I have a much more accurate speedometer in the dash.

I'll take some pics later this week.

4WHLN

Nice build.
Cant wait to see the finished product.

fastrat350

Project on a slight hiatus/halt

Well my JL volume control is no good, I had been having a problem for awhile where the left side audio would disappear, at first I would always blame the inline spring loaded fuse, last night I stopped at autozone, replaced the fuse holder for a blade style, boom back in business, audio all around, then I get for work the next day, audio only on the right again, my splices were good, no other idea so I said the hell with it I deal with after work, well I decided to check it after work before heading home, and found out that left channel signal was good from the ipad dock, but input/output of the jl unit was bad, the left channel on the jl unit would have a faint output, and the left channel was filled with harsh noise and scratching sound. I was planning on ditching the jl unit in favor of the Clarion EQS746, it has a volume feature built-in and has 7 volts of output. Im going to do one more trial and error test with the JL unit, the only other problem I think is that im splittng the remote/acc trigger for the Amp and JL unit, I highly doubt that is the problem but I'll see tomorrow, going to run a seperate quick alternate acc power to the JL volume control and see if that changes anything, the JL unit has its own ground,power and a trigger, so like I said doubt splitting the acc power would cause this. I diagnosed it by flipping my L/R channels on the JL unit, and I kept getting sound from only the Right channel input, even checked the output, and had the same dead left channel.

So I'll be replacing the JL volume control with something MUCH MUCH better, and will truly give me tuning ability on the Ipad, and also it will allow me to have an alternate source of audio. So im going to mount an aux jack somewhere for the EQ incase I need another source of audio? maybe a cheapo head unit or another mp3 player?

SO heres what I have to get now, for sure will be getting it soon, tomorrow I go price hunting locally, otherwise online order here I come, I was planning on ditching the JL unit for this EQ either way:


Thats Clarion EQS-746, from a couple friends and lots of great reviews, its really great little unit, with 7 volts of output, which will definately make my system bump harder, and also give me crisper clearer sound. I'll keep you all update when I get this in, the bedliner on the will have to wait now till next week or so, I have to get the audio working properly again, so first Im going to focus on getting the EQ in place first. As for mounting, dont ask me just yet, I got a couple ideas but wont know till I get it, its fairly compact, measuring at 7 inches wide, 4 inches deep, and 1 inch high. Thanks for props and good words everyone, i didn't plan this to happen like this, I was planning to just tighten up the project this week but now with volume control hitting the fan, I gotta fix that. I swear my Jeep is like an ongoing guinea pig experiment haha, oh and I got ipad 2 now, heres just a teaser of me recording myself inside, BTW before you flame me, I was at a stoplight and stopped looking at the Ipad when I started rolling:


OKay I gave up, dont know why my youtube links are being censored, just go to my channel, youtube.com/fastrat350