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My Custom Door Pods Project

13K views 61 replies 12 participants last post by  MeanMugga 
#1 ·
Hey guys, a little while back I mentioned I was pursuing some serious audio upgrades. One big part of that is that I'm using speakers that wouldn't just fit underneath the grilles in the door, and my custom installation will produce far better acoustics for the speakers to perform in. That journey has now begun, and of course I'll share it with you guys.

I don't have them in hand yet, but I finally placed my order for the tweeters to match the woofers for my doors. As soon as they get here I'll start work on the door pods. I have all my supplies ready to go.

For this project I will be creating door pods for Legatia L6v2 woofers paired with Scanspeak Illuminator D3004 (1") tweeters. After I get this all built I'll get my DSP to go fully active, but lets say that is a reward I am only going to allow myself once I actually finish the speaker install.

I'll be installing in my 2000 Dodge Intrepid, but I have a fully 300M interior. I also have several spare door panels to play with so I can really hack them up as I see fit to make an install work.

There is going to be some significant glassing to do here, as I'm going to install them on axis (pointed straight at the driver - pending some testing of speaker locations), with the drivers themselves in the same vertical plane, and as much as possible a teardrop shape coming back from each speaker to reduce harmful reflections.

Here is a shot in the car of the passenger door panel.


And then here are two shots in the car of the drivers door panel. The first is from my head position (listening position) so show my angle and spacing that I have to work with. The second is a more direct shot to see the panel meeting the dash. I'm missing a lower trim piece in these shots (just sitting in the garage).




Then finally a shot of a couple of spare two tone panels out of the car. Besides color they are identical.


I'll get to the exciting stuff soon, fabrication!

So far I taped up both panels to be ready for fiberglassing the base for the door pods.



Now I filled the grooves with resin and put down the first couple layers of fiberglass. I intentionally have the fiberglass coming up higher than I need so I can go around the edge and trim the bases for the pods down to the correct point.





Next I'm going to lay down in one batch several more layers of fiberglass to get the rigidity that I need for these bases. After that I'll pop them loose from the panels and it'll be time to start mounting speaker rings to them for speaker placement testing (mostly aiming).

While that's curing I'll be programming my table engraver software for all my speaker rings. I'll precision cut those out of MDF on Wednesday most likely, then glue together the multiple layers of the rings to make each speaker have one assembly it mounts into.

Also I'm going to drill the mounting holes for the pod bases from behind the door panel through the screw holes in the door panel. That way they will line up for sure.
 
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#46 ·
Nope. I measured how far I'd have the speaker rings out in each seat with my legs in the car, placed at the widest comfortable position. If I try I'll bump it, but it won't bother me normally.

You have to remember, I'm really skinny.
 
#50 ·
Deaf from a set of components..lol .. wouldn't that suck?!!

Nice progress.. I appreciate your attention to detail..
Ideally I won't lose hearing. I won't push these anywhere even close to their max volume. For really high SQ you needs lots of power/power handling so you don't reach the points near the equipment's limits where distortion levels rise.

The placement and quality of drivers is by far for the purpose of SQ, but if I wanted to show off I could blast some ear drums.
 
#52 ·
Alright, back in action. I've already gotten advice on how to do this differently in the future, but my current methods will all work. It's just a matter of learning the most efficient path towards completing a project.

I wasn't sure so I just went ahead and totally taped up my speaker rings. My plan was just to fill up the whole deal with foam and because I have the big opening in the back remove the foam after I glass this. That'll still work, but essentially most people just put in something like tagboard pieces to keep the foam from going where you don't want it.



Now I took the saw and sander to my giant foam chunks to carve them back down to door pods. This is still a really rough shape with lots of work left to do, but it resembles what I'm going for now. I ended up starting to remove foam from the center of the one pod just to let me get my sander in to a couple spots, and got a bit distracted. Removing that stuff right now isn't really important.



I'm sure I'll get a little bit of work done tomorrow and Friday morning, but I don't expect I'll be doing any glassing until Sunday night at the earliest. I'll be out of town for the weekend for work.
 
#53 ·
Alright guys work and life got in the way for a few days, but I got back to it and have some real progress.

I finished sanding the foam into my shape, blew off the stray foam with the air compressor, and got to glassing. These were a huge pain in terms of shape for glassing, particularly considering how new I am at this. The second one definitely went a lot easier than the first one. I ended up doing thinner strips to make it around the areas that curve in two directions. I also forgot to tape off the speaker rings on the inside the first time, which means I have to sand that back down. Noob mistake.

Here are my fully glassed and cured pods. No hiding my work/mistakes, I've got all angles.















This is just after doing the rough trimming that I did while it was about 2/3 cured. Now it's time for some sanding before I go to the first round of filler. I'm going to sand down the stray fibers on the surface as well as the lines from the overlap of the top layer of mat.

I'll also tear out the foam now. I've got a couple of ideas to make that go pretty easy.
 
#55 ·
Soon. I just did my rough sand job on the outside and carved out pretty much all of the foam. Tomorrow I'm going to pick up some wire wheel dremel bits to strip the remnants and then I can reinforce weak spots. I'm also going to test fit in the car tomorrow to see if I need to sand down any specific spots on the outside to make sure it still clears.
 
#57 ·
Here we go.

So in the process of my test fitting after glassing the pods I did end up sanding through enough of the fiberglass in a few spots that it was pretty weak. I cut through in a couple of those spots, carved into the foam, and then used kitty hair to rebuild the sections. It was really just two spots on the drivers pod that really needed this (not clearing the arm rest as easily as I thought). I used the kitty hair to fill in a few other spots that needed larger chunks while I was at it.

In the other areas I thought needed reinforcing I had access to the back after having removed the foam. I added a few layers of glass on both the inside and outside where needed, reinforced seams with a layer of internal glass, and stuffed some more kitty hair into a couple of spots where I wasn't going to realistically be able to add glass. This is all probably overkill, but I build things to be durable.

Then I went ahead and did the full body filler coat. The one pod I did in two parts just because I underestimated how much I'd need when I mixed up the filler. I used rage extreme body filler.

Here is where I'm at now. This is just knocking it down with a rough grit sand paper while it wasn't rock hard (started in green stage and went until happy for now).







Keep in mind these aren't meant to be symmetrical with how they're aimed, but some of that will get evened out in sanding.

Over the weekend it'll be test fitting, sanding, and a little primer to work on sanding to a paintable finish.
 
#58 ·
Now - call me crazy, but I see something a little more soft and fleshy when I see them pods sitting like that. Looks like a nursing bra on top... can't put my finger exactly on what I'd say the bottom picture is specifically....

hahaha

Great looking project, I like the step by step!
 
#61 ·
Yeah not much at the moment. I jumped on some other stuff for a bit and then family time took over. I'll be back on these some time over the next week, but the priority is getting my brakes done.

I did just get my DSP to run these active for Christmas, so I'll be able to put the new install to full use.
 
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