Stock Looking, low powered, simple SQ setup in a 2007 Acura TL-S

[simplicityinsound]

hey guys, just finished an install in a 2007 acura TL type S. this is for a good freind of mine's car and is somewhat unique for me in a few ways.

for one, we wanted to keep the car completely stock looking after its done. by this i dont mean building something that simply looks stock, but rather, have everything hidden beneath stock material so when closed up, there is no sign of a system anywhere.

secondly, due to budget constraints, we decided on a design that is lower powered than ANY of my previous SQ setups. the entire car have 480 watts RMS on it my freind mainly listens to jazz and other relatively soft music, so we felt this was adequate and focus on tonality than outright headroom and impact.

and finally, the car features a set of speakeres i have never used before. a 6.5" two way component set from Sonic Expressions. you may not have heard of this company, but its run by my freind and fellow SQ competitor Greg. As a passion, he has been doing this little brand name for quite sometime, using it in his own Mustang to compete in the expert class over the past coupla years. For more info on the line:
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after seeing his car improve and hearing the potential in these drivers, coupled with the fact that Greg is always an extremely nice guy, i decided to give his top of hte line SE-6 Elite set a try in this vehicle.

so lets get started, the goals are pretty much as before, do a low powered set up that is enjoyable to listen to, while maintaining a completely stock look.

so...onto the pics.

the first pic is a shot of the interior, which looks exactly like stock...but thats not really too hard to do



becuase the system features zapco tuning, a laptop is used to tweak the system from the front seat as usual:



behind the factory door panels are the sonic expressions 6.5" midbass. first, the stock opening on the metal was enlarged to house a proper sized driver. then a MDF baffle ring was secured to the metal. around the edges of the ring, i stuffed a bit of modeling clay to fill the voids and give it a bit of resonance killing ability. the ring is coated in truck bedliner, speaker wires are also run:



now lets take a quick look at the SE 6.5" midbass, overall impression that its a pretty solidly built unit with good QC:





then, the entire door was sound proofed wtih a combination of foam and damping. and the speaker is wired up and installed:



a closer look at the driver:

[simplicityinsound]

the same of course, goes for the passenger side door:







onto the tweeters. first again, a quick gander at the SE tweeter:





i massaged these into the stock tweeter mount. didnt get to take too many pics, but basically, what i did was, removed the stock tweeter from the mounting grille, trimmed it out a bit, removed the SE tweeter from its cup, carefully trimmed off the protective grille over the dome. what ends up happening is the SE tweeter then is secured to the stock tweeter grille, and lines up almost perfectly with the factory opening. the top of hte dome sits about 1/8" below the plastic grille.

so here are the finished products, wires sodered and ready to snap back into the car:

[simplicityinsound]

now a few quick shots of the wiring running from the front to the back of the car, and into the trunk:













to tap into the stock signal, three modules were used. a Pac-audio TR4 trigger module converts the low voltage stock turn on to one usable by aftermarket components, a David Navone 4 channel LOC taps into the stock signal prior to the factory amplifier, and a zapco TP4 module boosts the signal voltage and converts it to simblink.

here you see these three modules, from left to right, tucked away behind the glovebox.

[simplicityinsound]

so thats it for the interior. so far its relatively easy, the real challenge i guess for me, was to keep the trunk looking totally stock.

The TL doesnt exactly have a deep, wide, or regularly shaped wheel well. plus the floor itself is not flat, but rather oriented at three slightly different angles.

using a bit of expereince from my past installs on TLs and civics, i came up wtih a plan, and here is the end result.

here is the normal view, and as you can see, it is 100 percent factory looking, nothing was changed, moved, or raised:



flip up the factory spare tire well cover ,and here is hwat you see.

a new fake floor has been built across the stock spare tire well opening. the top panel is trimmed in black CF vinyl. upfront, are two image dynamics ID8 subs, and in the back, peering through its own cutout, is a single zapco DC reference 650.6 that powers the entire system. the subwoofer is trimmed in white to match the exterior of the car. the 650.6 sends 50 watts to each tweeter, 100 watts to each midbass, and 180 watts bridged to the two subs.

[simplicityinsound]

so a few quick build pics:

here is the wires ran down, routed, and the amp rack mounted and the amp wired up. two of the amp's feet is secured via screws, and there is a long strip of HD velcro across the bottom of the amp that holds it tightly to the amp rack. it literally was too tight for me to extend the amp rack further out for the other two feet.



next comes the subbox, whcih is about .85 cub feet in internal volume. its mostly fiberglass except the top baffle. basically, the bottom mold was taken, and the top wood baffle, after a lot of measuring and postioning, was secured to the mold via strips of MDF at the proper height and angle. and then fleece was pulled across to form the side walls.

once that was cured, the box was strengthend from the inside with more glass. and here is the finished result:





note the slight rabet on the openingto sink the sub down a tiny bit. i wanted to get as much distance between the factory floor cover and the sub, so every little bit helps.

next, white vinyl was applied to the top of the box:



next the subbox was installed into the spare tire well:



the key piece to the entire install is acutally the top baffle. what it is, is a composite of three separate pieces of wood. the top main section is out of 1/8" hardboard. this allows the baffle to slide in between the stock floor carpet and the metal floor to form a seamless transition. but, around the opening of the sub and amp, it obviously should be thicker. so a piece of 3/4" and 1/2" MDF board was bonded to hardboard, the opening was made, slant routed, and here is the result, from top and bottom:





and finally, its trimmed in black CF vinyl:





so basically, this piece was then slide underneath the stock carpet, and goes over the entire opening.

i know this is a bit hard to explain with words, but hopefully its pretty intuitive with the pics.

anyway, thats it.

i am pretty happy wtih how it turned out, the car sounds pretty good, but we will be doing some more tuning since htis is a speaker set i have not used before.

my initial impression of the SE-6 Elite set is quite positive. right off the bat, with nothing but the xovers set, the speakers exhibited a natural and smooth response. nothing jumped out to bite me in the face. smooth midrange and highs, and pretty good midbass. i think i am a bit spoiled by sq installs of much higher power that i do notice the lack of headroom and huge impact. but i think for his needs, its very good. overall, i am quite happy with the set and plan to use it for sure in the future.

cheers,

b

[lucas569]

as always bing, great work!

[dbiegel]

Greg is a great guy and I'm glad to see that his speaker company is getting some appreciation here.

Your install is an inspiration, as always.

[Starlet-SQ]

Man....
I now understand why peeps always turn to your for their system
if i was living in the states....you would've surely had2do my rides...
keep up the beautyfull artsy work u do
Nuff Respect

[cannan]

Really nice and simple install, I bet it sounds great. I love the 07-08 TL-S.

[simplicityinsound]

thanks guys, yeah, no doubt greg is a great guy and i will try to support him as much as i can from now on.

[RBeachTL]

Bing great job as always.

How did you run the power from the engine compartment through the firewall? Any pics?

Also do you have any concerns with cooling the Zapco amp? Is there enough air circulation with the amps in the spare tire well?

One last question, did you secure the components behing the glove box with velcro?

Thanks for your help and great job!!

[ikoolguy]

also set up...sucks that u couldn't keep the spare tires

[simplicityinsound]

1. there is a big thick factory grommit on the driver side firewall, in all the Tls i have used this, you can probably push two 0 guages through no problem.

2. cooling should be okay, the zapco dc has fans and its acutally more helpful to keep the two sides of the amps unblocked, than just the top heatsink. i drove around for half an hour yesterday and it didnt get all that hot, but there is also the option of adding a secondary fan in it should it become an issue.

3. yeah its HD vecro plus zipties to stock wiring bundles(TR4). there are too many vents back there to screw anyhting into. the back trim plate behind the glovebox also pushes right up against it all to keep things in place. the wide HD velcro i get from Homedepot has proven to be quite strong over the years

[capnxtreme]

I don't understand why you're using a LOC on a line-level signal (a balanced one at that--ideal for the Zapco).

[simplicityinsound]

mainyl cost, two BTLs plus to SLB-Us would add quite a bit to the overall cost. TP4 is a more efficient way to go from that standpoint

[capnxtreme]

If that's really the case, that just highlights how absurd Zapco's product line and Symbilink shit is.

You're adding an extra voltage divider, and an extra piece in the signal chain, just because Zapco's product line and pricing sucks.

Sorry to crap on your thread, but that's just so fucking absurd. SMH.

Also, look at this: http://tom-morrow-land.com/tests/navoneloc/

Couldn't you just splice a Symbilink cable into the factory wiring anyway, without adding additional boxes whatsoever?

[simplicityinsound]

how classy...;0

everyone have a certain budget, and we build things to accomodate that budget. i am not sure why the manufacturer is at fault? besides, if this method works fine, what is the main problem here? tell me what i stand to gain by going wtih two BTl and Two SLB-Us over this setup? and yes, i have done it that way half a dozen times before too

maybe its just penis envy for a TL type S becuase its better than your Si?


that last one was a joke btw. but really, your reply was kinda pointless, but i guess i saw that coming when you made your first comment

[capnxtreme]

I wasn't attacking you, Bing. I think your defensiveness speaks for itself.

Adding unnecessary components to the signal chain certainly doesn't help with the budget. And that's a pretty weak card to pull, when we're talking about high-end, expensive amps. If you can't afford to feed your high-end, expensive amps a clean signal, maybe you shouldn't be using those amps?

[simplicityinsound]

p.s. i mean what do i stand to gain in the real world from a audible perspective, by not going with the other route of maintaining balaneced throughout?

[capnxtreme]

huh?

[simplicityinsound]

i can clearly see this debate is pointless no worries.. i will take your advices into consideration for future builds.

[capnxtreme]

It shouldn't be pointless!

That last question simply didn't make any sense.

The factory outputs are already balanced. No matter what, the system should indeed be balanced the whole way. I do not believe that you need additional components in the signal chain to accomplish this (though I could be wrong on that).

Regardless, using a LOC on a line-level signal seems like a bad approach to me. Getting the best possible source signal seems like more than a minor detail to me.

And if Zapco's pricing structure is such that it prices its customers out of buying the correct tools for the job, well, see my comments above.

[simplicityinsound]

okay okay lol.

from reading your responses, i have an impression that you dont have a firm overall grasp of zapco's pricing or their simblink stuff. and i am also a bit unsure if you have a firm idea on the way the TL's stock system works and how best to integrated.

but again, i could be wrong here was just put off by your off the wall attacks on zapco, a brand that has treated me extremely well and i am very loyal to and of course will defend against your remarks.

but again, if you want to prove me wrong, why dont you tell me how this system should be done? with zapco and non zapco products, on this particular car, to achieve a superior result?


p.s. please do realize that the main reason for the DC reference was not for simblink balanced intput, but for its tuning capability so we can have the least amount of gear possible? if i just cared about simblink the iforce amps have simblink inputs.

[capnxtreme]

I'm not sure why you would assume that I'm incapable of using the Internet, considering that we are communicating over the Internet. Using this "Internet", I am able to see pricing information on Zapco's Web site. These prices appear to be those of "high-end" car audio products. You said yourself that the reason for not using some of these products (the correct ones for the job) was that they were out of the customer's budget.

And yes, you "could be wrong" regarding my understanding of the TL's stock system, considering that it is essentially the same as the one in my "small penis" Civic, which I have interfaced to aftermarket components.

I don't need to prove anything. If you actually wanted my help, you could have chosen a different attitude, and I would have been happy to do so.

[fourthmeal]

Bing, great work as usual. your skill with simplistic, good looking designs always brings a smile to my face first, and a grimace when I realize that even with your detailed build pics and explanations, I simply cannot make mine look as good as yours. But that's just how it goes I guess.

Did you notice that the SE mid-line speakers look a whole lot like Daytons?