DIYMobileAudio.com Car Stereo Forum banner

Lancer OZ install Log

44K views 155 replies 51 participants last post by  seabee 
#1 ·
Well, the time has come to stop gawking at everyone elses installations, and start one myself. Hopefully this install will help others with the same vehicle to obtain the info they need to do a quality install, learning from my mistakes:) I will try to map out a plan of attack, and a schedule to hopefully keep things steadily moving on track. I guess I will start off with a little about the vehicle for the install and some of my ideas. The car is a 2003 Mitsubishi Lancer OZ edition. The dash and footwells have about average space for speaker locations. The stock door locations have a plastic adapter, but can fit most 6.5" speakers with a baffle. The overall road noise and sound penetration in this vehicle I would say is a little more muted than the avergae compact car which is great. That being said, I'm going to dampen the rig anyway as its still not good enough for my liking.
Here are a few pics and measurements so that you can get a visual refernece point for what I'm working with. (Just ignore the dirty and tattered floormats, they will also be replaced shortly.













 
See less See more
7
#28 ·
Yeah, it was pretty nasty in there. Not only did I thoroughly clean the carpeting and seats, but I also wiped down and cleaned all of the interior plastic pieces/panels. I've kept it MUCH cleaner since then.
 
#31 ·
It was a LOOONG weekend.

To start off, I picked up the holesaw and went to town cutting holes to vent kickpanel enclusres into the framerails. I also Built the kickpods, which stil need some finishing work. I havent decided yet if Im going to keep the tweet down low, or just seal the baffle hole for the tweets and mount them on the A-pillars. I'll decide once I get some listening in.













 
#32 ·
Sharpie placed into the hole to give an idea of the space inside the framerail area. Theres plenty of airspace in there.

I also wanted to mount the new Peerless SLS 8"ers in the doors as well this week. I'm too poor to be able to afford L8's right now, but these look to be a HECK of a bargain. We'll know after I get some listening time in.

Cut baffles for the SLS8's and mounted them to the door. Sealed any gaps with foam and both edges and seams of the baffles with silicone sealant.

















What you dont see in these pics is that I added a couple more screws to really secure it to the door. Also, This was just the first baffle (3/4" Birch), I added a second to account for the depth. :p

Unfortunately, the door card would not fit back on with the newly upgraded hardware. I had to cut the door panel wide open to fit them. These things are straight up massive. They look closer to a 10" than an 8". Did some basic molding of the door panel and I will have to continue work on it to smooth it out, fill in gaps, and paint. Then I'll need to stretch some grill cloth over it or something.
 
#33 ·
Yeah, my baffles are ****ty...I know. :( But, they are functional so thats whats important.

Some more pics...













Heres where you can see I had to "modify" the lower dash. Thi sis the drivers side. I also had to do the passengers side. I'll pretty it up later, but for now the doors close, so thats a good thing LOL :roll:






I also ran out and picked up some contact cement so I'll be able to install my deflex pads when I go to do the work on the doors again. The deflex pads I got were from Madisound, and they are really beefy and heavy duty. Id say about 5/8" think and about 2+ lbs each...very nice quality.
 
#35 ·
They still need alot of smoothing and sanding before I can even think about texture coat/paint. Then I need to make a grill as well. Yeah, they look like **** right now, but hopefully they will turn out pretty good.
 
#37 ·
Thinking twice about subs? That would be great if you can pull it off. The baffles and the door hold up to all the low end music information?
 
#38 ·
Surprisingly, yes. And I still have to install the remaining deadening, ensolite, and the pair of deflex pads I have. These things rock.
 
#39 ·
Cool!! It is nice to see the capabilities of some of these drivers. Let us know how it goes after the deadening is done.
 
#43 ·
Strong work man. You are motivated!..Everything looks really good so far....I look forward to seeing more....
Thanks fellas. I'm hoping to get the HAT drivers in this weekend and the PPI amp hooked up to the SLS's. We'll see how it goes...:blush:
 
#45 ·
:p I didn't, yet. I'm actually working on that now. I cut out a circle close to the diameter of the baffles that were mounted to the door metal, so the panel now fits over the midbasses and attaches to the door properly. Then I used some fiberglass/mat to build up some structure around the baffles to connect to the door card. Then I strated using Bondo to fill in dips and gaps, however its not turning out too pretty just yet. I need to pick up a few putty knives to make applying the (****ty) Bondo a bit easier. Then I'll sand it down and use a glaze putty to fill in any holes and such. After that its more sanding and then finally, I'll have to decide if I want to stretch some vinyl or texture paint. Either way, I'll need to also make some sort of grill to cover the midbasses and I'll likely end up covering that in grill cloth.
I'll post up some pics of the progress so that you'll see how I'm doing it. This is my first attempt at doing a door panel, so I'm kind of winging it here.:rolleyes:
 
#46 ·
So today I focused on getting the L4/L1pro installed into the (sh*tty) kickpanel pods I made. I say (sh*tty) bacause I did a very poor job of aiming them before glassing them. Instead of pointing slightly forward and up, they are pointing slightly down. You'll probably be able to see what Im referring to in the pics. Because they will be located behind a (modified) factory panel, I didnt feel the need to "pretty" them up. I did wrap them though in something I thought would be both functional and clean- Ensolite foam. I figured a little extra damping couldn't hurt. You'll also notice some Great Stuff window and door foam on the inside of the enclosures. This should also give me a little more resistance to enclosure resonance. Keep in mind I still have to hack the factory kick panel and do alot of clean up, but you get the idea...






The surprising thing about my goof up with the aiming is the fact that with about 15 minutes worth of tuning from the controls of my DRZ-9255, these things still sound damn good.
Tonality is VERY good, and I must say that the L4's billing of being a wide-bandwidth midrange is absolutely not a hoax. Even when crossed as high as 10khz they still sounded quite good. :shock: I could certainly see these being used as a full range driver in a variety of applications. Well done Scott.

Here are a few pics of the door panels from better angles as promised. Hopefully I'll get to do some work on them over the next 2 days as you can clearly see theres alot of work to be done...










I also started making the cables to connect up the second amplifier. My main amp is an Arc Audio 4150-cxlr which is powering the L4/L1pro's with 80 watts per channel. The second amp I'm hooking up is a PPI PCX-480 which will be bridged down to 2 channels, providing 320 watts to each Peerless SLS 8" midbass (Im too poor for the L8's right now :( but these do seem to be a very good driver).

Cables, techflexed/heat shrink...you know the deal:


 
#48 ·
They actually sound quite good still. I'm surprised.
I do have a little tuning to do about the high range in female vocals. Im getting a bit of harshness there, but I think a little more crossover and level adjusting as well as a little EQ will go a long way toward making these Hybrids sing.
 
#49 ·
nice work so far...but one question.

Why are you using thin cloth and not chopped matt?

The chopped matt will build up much thicker and in the event that you do get an air pocket it's easier to repair my grinding it out.

It's much easier to stiple the air pockets out with your brush with the chopped matt.

When air pockets form in cloth the pieces ends up delaminating and it has to be completely torn out.

That just what I learned when I first start glassing audio panels and have stayed away from thin cloths....the type you have from Bondo sold in all the autoparts stores.
 
#50 ·
Mainly because I didnt know any better and thats all the stores I was looking in carried.
I have used the chopped mat before and it surely is better, you are correct.

I'll be trimming the excess and drilling holes all through the panel before I use the Rage Gold and filler putty.
 
#51 ·
Well...been a while. I've had alot going on and got caught up in learning to play the drums to jam with my buddies so the install has been in a lull.

Im basically at the same position with the doors. I need to find a way to make them presentable.

The drivers are mounted to rings which are secured to the metal door. The door card can slip over the midbasses & baffles and still attach properly to the metal door. The problem is in making a protective grill and smoothing out the door. I think due to the curves in portions of that door panel that doing vinyl may prove to be extremely tricky. Especially for someone who has never wrapped vinyl :lol:

Anyways, I'm trying to wrap my brain around it to figure out a solution. Right now I'm thinking about making a metal ring that goes around the baffle. I could then stretch some fabric from the ring over the door panel and fiberglass again to get a better result.
Perhaps some of you experienced guys can offer some input?

Take a look at the panels a few posts up. ( I do have a fresh set of door panels as well as a back up plan, fyi). Part of the problem is that I have limited clearance to "build up" the panel much more due to space where the door panel meets the dash when the door is closed.

Im also considering pulling out the kick panel enclosures and doing them over. I know I can do a much better job, and I think I can aim them properly to get better response from the mids. In fact, I may just end up doing the 4" mids in the kicks and move the tweeters up to the A-Pillars. Since I plan on running the mids up to between 6-8khz, the tweets will be used more for top end sparkle anyway. The a-pillars I feel much more comfortable about. They should be a pretty easy job. Its these doors that have me screwed right now.

Amps have been changed as well. I'll be using a pair of JL 300/4's to power the system now.
 
#53 ·
Best car I've owned in that reguard. I've got about 130K miles on this car (lots of work highway driving :( ) and the only thing I've had to replace outside of scheduled maintenance is one brake caliper. The clutch is still strong at 130K and she runs great. I think these were overbuilt because they are the platform that the EVO is based off of. They are fantastic cars. I'd take one over a similar Honda or Toyota every day of the week. And believe me, I wouldnt have said that before I had the experience with this one.

The OZ is a nice mix of a smooth ride with sporty handling. They dont have much in the way of power, but they are still fun to drive, and to look at. Very comfortable seats as well. When I get in my womans car (Mazda 3) my back aches after driving for 15 minutes. :rolleyes:


Thanks for following the build log, much appreciated. Good stuff to come in the near future...stay tuned :)
 
#54 ·
Well, I think (with some help from others) that I have an idea to try and get the doors banged out. Its going to take alot of work, but hopefully they'll come out ok.

My plan is to make rings to go around the baffles (speaker rings) I currently have mounted to the door. These will make a lip that I can use to stretch fabric over the space between the baffles and the door panels. With a little fiberglassing, drilling, filling and sanding, I think I may be able to get them to be presentable. Chances are that they wont be able to be vinyl stretched because of some of the difficult shapes in the door panel so unless some of the experts chime in otherwise, I'll likely do a textured paint.

Here are pics of the rings I did tonight. I've seen others do this with ABS or other plastics/materials, but I got this idea from one of Geo's threads (thanks dude !!)

I used the speaker grills that I will be using as a guide to shape the rings. I first wrapped one layer of dense volara foam (1/4") to allow myself a little wiggle room for the material.

PICS:








Where the cut was made at the end of the strip, I used some superglue on the seam to hold things together. I'm letting the rings sit on the speaker grills tonight just be sure they dont lose shape. After trimming and sanding the edges, I'll likely wipe the top and bottom with a little Titebond III to be sure I'll have no separation issues. Im not really worried to be honest as they will soak up some resin when the fabric gets stretched.
 
#55 ·
The product says it can be "ironed" on. Its basically a roll of real wood veneer. Easily bendable and it has a good adhesive already applied. All you need to do is heat it up to activate the glue. I chose to use the heat gun since it was just easier in this application.
This can be found at your local Lowes or **** Depot. Cost is about $6.50 a package. For reference, one package was enough to do both of the rings for the 8" drivers, and still have left over. In fact, its probably enough leftover for tweeter rings. 2 packs probably would have been enough to do all 6 drivers...looks like I'll have some extra ;)















 
#60 ·
Thanks bud :)

Working today on removing the fibeglass/bondo mess from the current panels, drilling small holes/scuffing and getting some fabric stretched over the rings and doors to ready for fiberglassing.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top