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just wrapped up a pretty simple SQ build in a 2011 civic, this also marks our first relationship with the re-launched Audiomobile line up, old school guys will remember their MASS drivers from about 10 years ago, even older school guys will remember the initial products long before that.
The reason we decided to give their subs a shot is that my rep Scott, whom i trust and love to work with, recommended the line to us, and talking to a few other knowledgeable installers around the country who has experienced the product, all seem to recommend it...so we decided to go with it as well.
so the car is a 2011 honda civic sedan, and the goals were:
1. achieve a decent level of sound quality on a modest budget
2. keep things hidden in the interior
3. maintain a stealthy and classy appearance in the trunk with no trunk space lost.
lets get started. division of labor on this one is that Joey did the underhood, headunit, tweeters and ran the wiring, along with cutting of the doors, while i did the rest, including the trunk.
with Joey here, we can always do some awesome custom mounting for the fuse holders and circuit breakers, in this case, he fabricated a L shaped bracket out of metal that tucks the stinger CB right next to the battery, it is rock solid and you can almost rock the car with it:
the nerve center and signal source for the entire system is a pioneer 80 PRS headunit, which will run the entire system actively, it is installed in the stock location via a best kits dash kit:
Joey, as usual, did a clean job on the harness. i think after a while, you guys will instantly be able to tell who did the harness, joey will twist the wires and solder/heatshrink, while i prefer to wrap in eletrical tape, and use crimp nuts and a few bigger wire ties.
the front stage consists of a set of Morel Virtus 602 two way components, we were determined to mount the tweeter in the stock location withOUT having to surface mount it on top, infact the morel tweeter was chosen for this for its small size. but still we had to go quite a bit of head scratching. after some time, joey came up with a pretty cool concept. so here is the stock tweeter, mounted to the grille, as you can see, quite small:
so what he did was, to invert the mounting cup the morel tweeters came in, push in the tweeter from the bottom, and then mounted little tabs to the outside, this would then allow us to secure the tweeter int he stock hole AND have the Morel arches clear the stock grille:
looks so simple but it took the better part of a day to come up with that one haha
the midbass went into the doors, first, new wires were run into the doors and the metal trimmed to accomodate the morels, while rivet nuts were inserted into the proper location, a few blocks of Focal blackhole Tile went onto the outter door skin around the speaker to provide added resonance killing:
next the entire door was sound proofed via STP closed cell foam, while the area around the speaker got some CLD damper:
using the oem speaker as a template, we made these spacer rings for the Morels, triple coated with truck bedliner to protect them against the elements:
the spacer was then installed into the door via those rivet nuts and bolts, whcih also line up with the four mounting holes on the morel drivers, so a bolt through design:
next the outter door skin received their fair share of STP sound proofing:
the identical procedure was repeated on the passenger side:
next comes a few wiring pics, being Joey is still getting used to the idea of taking pics at every step, we are missing a few, namely the pics of hte driver side wiring between the kick panel and the back seat area, but trust us, its the same, ziptied and secured to the vehicle every few inches hehe.
on the driver side went a single 0 gauge power cable and speaker wires, while the passenger side received the rca cables, remote turn on wires, and the passenger side speaker cables. in order to run the power cable properly in the trunk, we changed it over to dual 4 gauge under the back seat:
as some of you may know, the rear deck cover on the newer civics is a pretty big rattle trap, and since we heard the audio mobile provides really good output, i was determined to prevent as much rattle as possible. so this time, i tried something new, instead of putting cld or CCF on the metal rear deck, i put down a crap load of really thick 1/2" OPEN cell foam on the bottom of the rear deck cover. the idea for this is that it compresses will and always put some pressure and decouple the rear deck from the metal, prevent them buzzing against each other:
The reason we decided to give their subs a shot is that my rep Scott, whom i trust and love to work with, recommended the line to us, and talking to a few other knowledgeable installers around the country who has experienced the product, all seem to recommend it...so we decided to go with it as well.
so the car is a 2011 honda civic sedan, and the goals were:
1. achieve a decent level of sound quality on a modest budget
2. keep things hidden in the interior
3. maintain a stealthy and classy appearance in the trunk with no trunk space lost.
lets get started. division of labor on this one is that Joey did the underhood, headunit, tweeters and ran the wiring, along with cutting of the doors, while i did the rest, including the trunk.
with Joey here, we can always do some awesome custom mounting for the fuse holders and circuit breakers, in this case, he fabricated a L shaped bracket out of metal that tucks the stinger CB right next to the battery, it is rock solid and you can almost rock the car with it:
the nerve center and signal source for the entire system is a pioneer 80 PRS headunit, which will run the entire system actively, it is installed in the stock location via a best kits dash kit:
Joey, as usual, did a clean job on the harness. i think after a while, you guys will instantly be able to tell who did the harness, joey will twist the wires and solder/heatshrink, while i prefer to wrap in eletrical tape, and use crimp nuts and a few bigger wire ties.
the front stage consists of a set of Morel Virtus 602 two way components, we were determined to mount the tweeter in the stock location withOUT having to surface mount it on top, infact the morel tweeter was chosen for this for its small size. but still we had to go quite a bit of head scratching. after some time, joey came up with a pretty cool concept. so here is the stock tweeter, mounted to the grille, as you can see, quite small:
so what he did was, to invert the mounting cup the morel tweeters came in, push in the tweeter from the bottom, and then mounted little tabs to the outside, this would then allow us to secure the tweeter int he stock hole AND have the Morel arches clear the stock grille:
looks so simple but it took the better part of a day to come up with that one haha
the midbass went into the doors, first, new wires were run into the doors and the metal trimmed to accomodate the morels, while rivet nuts were inserted into the proper location, a few blocks of Focal blackhole Tile went onto the outter door skin around the speaker to provide added resonance killing:
next the entire door was sound proofed via STP closed cell foam, while the area around the speaker got some CLD damper:
using the oem speaker as a template, we made these spacer rings for the Morels, triple coated with truck bedliner to protect them against the elements:
the spacer was then installed into the door via those rivet nuts and bolts, whcih also line up with the four mounting holes on the morel drivers, so a bolt through design:
next the outter door skin received their fair share of STP sound proofing:
the identical procedure was repeated on the passenger side:
next comes a few wiring pics, being Joey is still getting used to the idea of taking pics at every step, we are missing a few, namely the pics of hte driver side wiring between the kick panel and the back seat area, but trust us, its the same, ziptied and secured to the vehicle every few inches hehe.
on the driver side went a single 0 gauge power cable and speaker wires, while the passenger side received the rca cables, remote turn on wires, and the passenger side speaker cables. in order to run the power cable properly in the trunk, we changed it over to dual 4 gauge under the back seat:
as some of you may know, the rear deck cover on the newer civics is a pretty big rattle trap, and since we heard the audio mobile provides really good output, i was determined to prevent as much rattle as possible. so this time, i tried something new, instead of putting cld or CCF on the metal rear deck, i put down a crap load of really thick 1/2" OPEN cell foam on the bottom of the rear deck cover. the idea for this is that it compresses will and always put some pressure and decouple the rear deck from the metal, prevent them buzzing against each other: