[CaptainMorgan]

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.

[CaptainMorgan]

Oh and for anybody wondering about the resin drips here ruining 300M special two tone panels these have damage in a couple of areas and are truly spare panels. If they were in perfect shape I'd have totally covered all areas to protect the panels.

[crypt keeper]

Very cool i like where this is heading.

[scarce911]

Very nice! I'm doing a similar mod to a set of door panels, I am utilizing more of the door panel (cut out entire speaker area behind grill) I'm using a 3 way set and sealing up the carpeted area some to make a sealed enclosure for the midbass and midrange separately... Watching your progress should encourage me to make some of my own dang progress. Good luck

[CaptainMorgan]

I thought about hacking out that part of the door panel, and was even pointed towards doing so but decided against it. I do so much tinkering with door panels that I thought as long as I could be successful I would go for making these drop in pods. The only modification I made was to cut out the three tiny plastic tabs that the stock speaker frame sits up against. They were a combination of too easy to cut out and too much annoyance to work around. They take about 30 seconds to cut out and are totally unimportant.

To go 3 way you would definitely need more space than what I am doing. Using the carpeted section is pretty common, as well as making kick panels (not my favorite). If I really needed to add a mid range I would probably make dash pods for them, similar location to sails but much better acoustically. I would just worry about putting a speaker even lower on the drivers side in the carpeted area. It's already a tight fit to not block the speakers with your legs too much.

[CaptainMorgan]

Alright, last update for the night. All Speaker rings are ready in software, just have to get a chance to go in to work on my own time and cut them.

Finished the glassing on the pod bases. These are minimum 4-5 layers thick at the weakest points, and every single corner has a lot of overlap so you'll end up with as much as 8-10 layers thick at those sections. That may be overkill (probably) but I tend to err on the side of overdoing instead of redoing.





Now I get a bit of a break from glassing. I'll enjoy getting to spend some time aiming and listening after I get the rings made. I like fabrication, but the results are still more fun.

[cdmccul]

Wow, looks like fun. I'd like to see the cutting in process...

[Patel.748]

Damn dude!

[beeblebrox82]

so is the speaker opening still going to open into the door?

[Scooter-Man]

What he said.

there's a ton of leak holes around the window and door lock switch. Cancellation will occur.

[CaptainMorgan]

Yes the opening will stay in the center and yes there are a ton of leak holes in the door. If you seal up something this small the speakers won't sound right, way too low volume. If I was going to go the route of a sealed enclosure I would have to cut out a significant section of the door and replace it with the full enclosure. We're talking like replace a third of the door.

I have done my best though to seal up those leak holes in the past and will take a better run at it for sure going forward. The worst leaks are the ones around the edges of the speaker grill area, hence why this pod base will totally seal that area up around the edges.

The panels that are on the car now alraedy have expanding foam in every crease, the only spot I still need to address is the gang switch. I didn't want to block the ability to remove it, but I think now I'm just going to treat it like a hot tub. Insulate all around it and if you need to service parts just tear out the foam, it really isn't that big of a deal to redo and how often will the switch have to come out? The other option is just to make sure I can pull it out the top and seal that section off, I really need to take a fresh look at it.

[beeblebrox82]

I also foamed my doors, amazing help. I did notice that some of the foam was too close to the door lights and was starting to burn. check yours when you pull them. have you sound deadened the metal in the door to knock down on rattles? Very cool project, I definitely see the point to sealing up the main area here.

[CaptainMorgan]

I have LED lights in the doors that don't generate enough heat to burn the foam, so no I never noticed that.

On the next version I'm going to be careful not to over foam the doors so that they still have enough volume to act as an IB install for the speakers. I also have deadening under the foam on the panels, as well as deadening on the door in a few spots. In the future I can definitely take the door deadening a step further, and I'm sure I will invest the time and money into it once I have this great speaker install.

[CaptainMorgan]

Alright guys, update time. The rings are all cut, but need some finishing still. I also pulled the pod bases off the doors. The one I got a little handsy with and cracked the resin in a spot where I used it to fill a groove the seals a whole in the door panel, but it didn't break where the fiberglass is at all. I'll cut out the crack and patch it up a bit. It isn't in that important of a spot I just want to make sure I don't have a weakness that could get worse later.



Tweeters with rings.


L6 rings. On the right is the lower half of the grille sitting in the frames how it's supposed to.



Wife comes home from out of town tonight, so I probable won't get too far over the weekend. I'll probably take some time to completely finish up the rings and trim up the lower half of the pods some more, we'll see.

[gearhead291]

wow pretty sweet project !!