[simplicityinsound]

So a few weeks ago i posted the build log of the first of three cars we received from a client on the east coast, this is the 2nd build log from the collection.

Out here in Cali country, where gas prices are sky high, we tend to do a whole lot more cars than SUVs or Trucks, so this 2014 Grand Cherokee is something of a new territory for us. Regardless of anything else, i was kinda excited to work on a vehicle where i dont have to bend my back at an absurd angle to work on day in and day out

lets first visit the goals:

1. achieve a nice level of sound quality and bass output

2. maintain a classy and congruent appearance in the interior (truck already had full suede headliner and pillars wrapped prior to its arrival)

3. maintain a fully usable cargo floor but still have the ability to showcase the install in a classy manner, the customer also specified that he would like to have an infinity light and a scorpion logo (a good luck charm) integrated into the build.

4. integrate the Mosconi AMAS super high resolution BT streaming device into the mix as the oem headunit is not replaceable and its signal purity is so so at best.

lets first take a look at the car. The new GC is actually a vehicle we dont see a ton of here on the road, i kinda like it, way less awkward than some of generations before this. this particular car, is a top spec summit edition with the 5.7L "yall got a hemi?!"

first thing to show is the integration of the mosconi RC mini dsp controller into the center console. as the Mosconi AMAS streaming device will be the primary signal source, a controller is needed to do master volume when streaming, it also has the added benefit of subwoofer volume control and preset changing. Joey fabricated a cool mounting that fits seamlessly into a small picket behind the shifter, and it frames the RC mini and provides all the controls within easy reach of the customer:

in typical ahem, joey fashion, we are a bit scarce on build pics, but essentially, its a piece of acrylic carefully routered and shaped into a perfect fit for the pocket, and then painted black:

the side brackets you see here, allow an additional piece of acrylic bar, secured to the back of the controller itself, to bolt into these side pieces, thus securing the controller in place into the rack:

The customer wanted from the get go to have different front stage speaker choices for each of his three vehicles. the Genesis posted earlier got the Audiofrog 3 way set, this car went perhaps even a bit more exotic, and utilizes the Gladen Aerospace 3 way 6.5" component set. Seldomly seen in the US though it is available through ORCA design, the last and only time we used this set before was in the GTR show car from two years ago.

the 3" midrange was molded into the A pillars and wrapped in headliner matching black suede, while the tweeter was installed in the oem sail panel location. here is the finished product from various angles, note the dip in the A pillar mold above the speaker so i can recess the speaker a bit more without the shape of the pillar blocking it:

some build pics of the front mid and high stages, here is the oem tweeter location, with the stock tweeter and with it popped out. out of sheer luck, the tweeter location opening is IDENTICAL in size to the flange of the Gladen tweeter:

however, the opening of the stock tweeter location is too big for the gladen tweeter, so i routered two rings for the tweeters, and carefully trimmed off some of the material so it would fit dead in the middle of the oem opening. thus giving me an ability to secure and center the Gladen tweeters perfectly. this looks simple but actually, getting all the angles and shapes right while trimming those MDF rings took me quite sometime and two tries to get right:

once the adapter rings were epoxied in, the backside of the sail panel was smothered with CLD damper:

the gladen tweeters were then secured with provided set screws:

moving onto the midranges.

first, i trimmed and cut the pillar covers, aimed and secured the two mounting rings:

next, mold cloth was pulled resin applied, and i made a press using a few stacked mdf rings and strapped them to the opening above the baffle, this basically formed a rounded dip in the mold cloth. when it cured, and i pulled those presses off, it looked like this:

then basically its about filling, smoothing and shaping the pillars with filler until they had the desired shape and smoothness:

then came the fun job of wrapping them with a single piece of black street suede. it was pretty tough since there are some drastic angles in the pillars, but after sometime, i got the suede to behave and ended up with these:

the backside of the pillar also received some CLD damper:

and then, the gladen midranges were secured in place. note the grilles are absent from these pics, that is because they are not sold with the kit and had to be airshipped individually to me, and they are glued onto the metal mounting trim ring with supplied adhesive after the pillars were installed:

the last piece of the front stage is the Aerospace 6.5" midbasses, for these, jesse built a set of adapter plates for them that matches the oem speaker flange:

he then ran the speaker wires into the door, sound proofed the outter skin with blackhole tiles, and the inner skin with STP CLD damper, and mounted the adapter baffle with oem hardware after coating them with several layers of truck bedliner to protect them against the elements:

the Gladen midbass was then installed and wired up:

the door card also received a fair share of CLD damper to help with resonance:

the same procedure was then repeated on the other side by Jesse:

 

[simplicityinsound]

thats it for the front stage. moving onto the wiring.

the stock battery is mounted in a cavity below the passenger seat, and here you can see the stinger fuse holder bolted to the side of the cavity with rivetnuts, and the wires lead back out of the cavity via the oem route:

here you see the single mosconi dsp controller wire routed to the center console area, secured to oem wiring every step of the way:

Jesse ran all the wires in the car, with all signal speaker wires down the driver side. these are the passenger side speaker wires as they go from the passenger side to the driver side, against, organized and secured every few inches:

here is the same theme going for the single mosconi AMAS BT mic cable that travels down the driver side a pillar:

all the wires meet in the driver side kick and then is lead back:

because the wire bundle is secured into a channel below the door sill and thus completely out of sight, jesse took a picture of the bundle before it went in to show that it is carefully organized:

and here is what i mean by it going into a channel below the door sill once its in the car:

the next time the bundle emerges, its in the driver side cargo compartment, again, ziptied to the factory bundle along the way. note the signal wires tapped into the oem amp mounted all the way at the back of the wheel well:

the power wire was the long cable down the passenger side, traveling under the carpet and in the channel until it too, reaches the back cargo compartment. at that point, it is also ziptied to the oem bundle and led to the back:

once that is all ran, jesse reinstalled the side trim panels, and here are the bundles coming out at their desired locations towards the back of the car:

 

[simplicityinsound]

moving onto the focus of the build, the cargo area.

as mentioned, the goal was to have a totally stealthy and usable cargo area, but still be able to show off the build. also required was an infinity light and a scorpion logo. so here is the normal look with the cargo floor in place., as you can see, virtually 100 percent oem. only a fellow GC owner, and a really meticulous one, would noticed that the cargo floor handle is gone and replaced by a simple vinyled opening. this is because the oem handle dipped really deep into the space below and does not clear the install.

lift up the floor and here is what you see. the lighting condition was a bit weird that day and sorta made everything look a bit lighter than it is...in reality the colors mesh pretty well.

a complete fake floor panel covers the oem spare tire well area, with a angular shape cutout in the middle. in the opening, there are two big cutouts and one small. the big cutouts are covered with black mesh, with the back one showing off two illusion audio C12xl subwoofers, and the front opening showing three mosconi Zero amplifiers. a Zero4 powers the mid and tweeter with 200 and 100 watts respetively, a zero3 sends well over 200 watts to the midbass, while another zero3 is bridged powering the subs with 1800 plus watts rms. in the middle, is the infinity light, though its hard to see with the lighting effect off:

a closer look at the infinity light without the lights on, looks pretty much like a mirror with a faint scorpion logo in it. the bolt holes you see here is actually on the rear hatch panel reflected in the mirror

flip a switch and three areas light up. first is all the area beneath the mesh, though its hard to see in daylight pics, the second is the ledge lit plexi border around the main opening, and finally, the infinity light itself, showing now a white lit scorpion and a white lit frame relfecting onto itself forever:

the best way to view the lighting is in the dark, so here are some shots from a darkened garage. the lighting plays havoc with my cheap 100 dollar cameras sensors, so its kinda strange looking, but they are the best i can do

 

[simplicityinsound]

so thats it...lets look at the build pics of the rear:

first, after everything was stripped out, the rear cargo floor was taped and 6 layers of fiberglass laid down to form the bottom mold of the sub enclosure:

when it cured, it was pulled out, trimmed, and lined with CLD damper:

then, two support beats were attached, that would space up the top floor at the correct angle and orientation:

and a top board secured in place:

mold cloth was pulled around the edges, resin applied, and five more layers of glass went onto the outter walls to strengthen them. after that cured, i made a cutout on the back for the subwoofer mounting plate and this is what it looked like:

the bttom portion of the subwoofer mounting plate was then secured, this would space up the subs to be the same height as the amps. the box is quite spacious, measuring roughly 36" x 30" x 4"give or take, good for the two c12xls in sealed conditions

next, i made a simple board that will house all three amps:

and mounted all the amps onto it and preran some of the wires:

four threaded inserts were installed onto the front portion of the subbox, that will allow the amp board above to be bolted down in place:

at this point, i also topped the subwoofer mounted plate, painted it black, and secured it, the box is then secured via a bolt through the oem spare tire mounting hole, and the box stuffed wtih blackhole stuff

this the top trim panel for the subwooefer before and after vinyl, note the little edges at the front and back of the panel, this gives me a surface to attach LED strips for the lighting:

and here is the little board that mosconi 6to8v8, loaded with all the AMAS goodies, will sit on and secure to the main piece:

here is a quick layer by layer look at the infinity light.

first, the entire stack and the mounting plate that it sits on:

broken down layer by layer.

at the very bottom is a piece of 1/8" mirror plexi:

it is followed by a piece of 3/8" acrylic frame that has been painted black:

then a piece of solid 1/8" clear arylic went on, this is the surface that will hav the scorpion decal, so when light travels through the clear acrylic, it reflects off the white decal and make it glow:

next came a clouded 1/8" acrylic border that will cast a smooth glow inside the shape, i didnt really like the spotted led look i saw on most infinity mirriors and chose to do this intead. note the cutout on this piece if a bit smaller than the rest, so you would see a glowing ring inside the structure:

this is followed by another piece of 3/8" acrylic painted black:

and then its all topped by a piece of 1/8" TWO WAY mirror acrylic. the led strip is secured to the middle of the structure so it shines through the two 1/8" pieces, the vinyl decal attached, and here is a test of the infinity light before it is secured back into the vehicle:

so here are some shots of all the components fully secured and wired up in the car. quite a lot going on here despite the relatively simple apperance from the top after its ll finished a group of barrier strips at the front corner allows quick and easy access to troubleshooting if the need ever arises. a lot of attention was paid so that the signal wires and the rca cables on the front stage amps never come close to one another.

if you look closely, you will see that there are led strips affixed to every surface that shines into the two display areas (amps and subs), the easiest to see are the ones surrounding the subwoofer area. note the extra strip of led lights on the outer casing of the infinity light that shines OUTWARD to also cast light onto the subwoofer area:

a quick test of all the under floor lighting shows where all the led strips are:

 

[simplicityinsound]

once that was all in place, i turned my attention back to the top trim panels of the well.

here is the main floor panel above the components before after suede:

the suede was then trimmed o the precise shape of the edge lit plexi ring seen here, and the acrylic was secured to the main board below:

an led strip was added around the entire outter edge of the ring, and black duct tape was used to prevent any light leakage from the backside:

these are the three press fit trim rings that goes into the three openings of the main board, in bare mdf form:

and here are the two mesh pieces that go into the bigger openings before they were painted black:

here is the first big trim ring vinyled, and then with the now black mesh attached:

and here is the second big ring vinyled:

and all three vinyled and ready to snap into the main board:

these were then secured to the main board, the back ring over the subs and the ring over the infinity light are pemenantly fixed to the board to prevent any rattles, while the front one, over the amps, is a press fit, so i can gain access to the amp controls for tuning:

this board is now secured to the car above all the components. note the slot cutout over the dsp gain controls so i can access them without having to remove this board:

here is the stock floor plastic well, trimed all the way down so it can fit over the board, before and after installation into the car:

and here is the main top cosmetic floor panel, before and after vinyl, this press fits over the entire structure, located by a series of studs.

only thing left is the quick fab work to replace the oem floor panel pull handle with a much more low profile one, made out of two pieces of mdf that bolts into each other after being vinyled:

and finally, the aforementioned removable front trim ring.grille that allows me access to the gain controls on the front stage amps easily:

so thats it! at the very beginning, i was kinda happy in that this car seems to have a lot more room than the genesis while needing to fit almost the same amount of gear, but in the end, it definitely look some thinking and planning, especially to integrate the infinity light as that look added room. but i am pretty happy with the end result cosmetically.

so how does it sound?

well, lets first look at the crappy stock signal analysis, which was or sure the worst of three cars.

here is the oem mid/high signal at various volume levels on the headunit, not a lot of dynamic eq safe for the very odd low frequency information that goes into it at high volume setting. but it is quite uneven:

here is the same analysis of the oem front low signal, no signal leakage from the high side but still very jagged:

and here is the oem subwoofer signal, now there is a kind of dumb thing going on here...

so basically, this signal is NOT a NON FADING signal, if you fade it all the way to the front to enjoy the front stage only, the subwoofer signal cutouts COMPLETELY. as you fade it more and more to the back, you get more subwoofer signal. this is the analysis of the sub signal at various degrees of fading, with the pink line being 100 percent centered in the car between front an back. this means, if you want to listen to the sub at max volume, and dont want to loose the rear speakers (as this was the case here), the rears would have to be playing as well and would take away from the front stage enjoyment SMH:

so here is the summed signal before smoothing by the mosconi input EQ of the front low and front mid/high signals:

and after playing with the input eq and mixer, i got this better signal:

by stark contrast, here is the mosconi amas signal:

luckily, the customer has specified that 99 percent of his musical listening is done via streaming, so the stock signal sources deficiencies isnt really relevant.

on the stock signal source, its not terrible, but the rear speakers definitely take away from the experience.

on the Mosconi AMAS however, its a totally different story.

the imaging is quite good, dead in the middle of the dash, hovering a few inches above the dash. width is excellent at a little past pillar to pillar, depth is decent as well.

tonally, the Gladen aerospace set reminded me again of how good they are. midbass impact and especially extension is SUPERB, and really hits you in the chest with the snare drums, the mid and highs are just smooth and natural, not harsh nor dull, just a very good balance. again, kind reminded me of the GTR build. this set can also get quite loud without distortion.

the c12xls of course, impresses, and this car, being an open vehicle, really can get loud and deep. the subsonic extension of the subs is still amazing despite my numerous experiences with them. the blending of the subs is also excellent. this is for sure the strongest bass vehicle of the three.

so overall, quite pleased with how it all came together...i will try and put up the build log of the final car in this collection soon.

cheers!

Bing

 

[Kevin K]

As always, great work and thanks for sharing. The infinity display is very creative, unique, and just plain cool.

 

[thehatedguy]

I like the amp rack the most. The black textures with the white lighting and the shapes is a real stunner.

 

[jpeezy]

man whoever you guys get wire ties from must love you! But really like he said above a real stunner,you guys need to do a reach around on this one and pat yourselves on the back. fantastic proportions and organic shapes and it all flows so well, Bravisimo!!

 

[mark620]

Very nice and top notch equipment I would guess close to 10k just on that alone. Must hit like a concert stage but crystal clear

 

[WhiteL02]

Great work once again!

 

[knever3]

Amazing, I love the tweeter plastic, what a change than to simply put a triangle on the door panel. Jeep really stepped it up on the newest WK2.

 

[eling23]

Love how those tweeters look intergrated into the sail panel. Nicely done! so fresh and so cleaaaan cleeean!!

 

[justdofit]

Brilliant install as always!

I'm curious about that DSP Mic, I can't find much info on them. I'm assuming this offers bluetooth headset style connectivity with a phone?

 

[thehatedguy]

Bing, where do you normally cross the 3s in the pillars when you do them?

 

[wdemetrius1]

Great job guys.

 

[simplicityinsound]

Brilliant install as always!

I'm curious about that DSP Mic, I can't find much info on them. I'm assuming this offers bluetooth headset style connectivity with a phone?

basically, if you are streaming from your phone to the AMAS unit, it bypasses the stock headunit and thus its built in BT, the mic basically allows the user to use the amas itself to do hands free BT if they chooses:

MOS Micro – Mosconi America

 

[mikey7182]

Excellent build. The cargo area is really impressive.

I'm curious about the significance to the customer of the scorpion? The way that turned out is really cool.

 

[Niebur3]

How do you normally determine the mounting angles of the a-pillar mounted mids?

 

[justdofit]

basically, if you are streaming from your phone to the AMAS unit, it bypasses the stock headunit and thus its built in BT, the mic basically allows the user to use the amas itself to do hands free BT if they chooses:

MOS Micro – Mosconi America

Perfect thank you for the explanation.

This arrangement with the mos-micro would be perfect for my car as there is no bluetooth on the factory deck and I already run a 6to8. I have been toying with the idea of adding the sp-dif-multi & dsp-amas, this may just be enough to push me over the edge

 

[simplicityinsound]

Excellent build. The cargo area is really impressive.

I'm curious about the significance to the customer of the scorpion? The way that turned out is really cool.

i believe thats his private matter so i will keep it that way but it wasnt anything strange like he was Skorpion from Mortal Kombat in his former life, or anything like that