SMALL AUDIO STORM TROOPER 2015 CREWMAX BUILD

Well I have been saving for a few years, collecting pieces for my slightly out of control Tundra Crewmax audio build.

Let me preface this by saying- DONT EXPECT ANY UPDATES TO ROLL IN SOON. It is winter here and I am not pulling the truck apart just yet. I have a few more items to collect before we go all in.

A little background: I am a former IASCA competitor with a few system builds under my belt including a 1st and 2nd place finish at the World Finals. So while this truck will be a much tamer build due to its utilitarian nature. It will sound as good or better than my best competition cars.

Also due to the fact that you can not access behind the rear seat in the Tundra there is no sense in me going full press court with a custom sub enclosure and amp rack, so I will use readily available items to accomplish the task so if anyone on here is so inclined to follow suit, you will have a basis for a somewhat tame insane build.

The equipment list is as follows:

Tech12volts JBL Wireharness

Arc Audio PS8
Arc Audio PSC

DS18 50 Farad Hybrid Capacitor

(2) Pioneer GM-D9605's

A pair of Pioneer TS-D1730C

(2) Pioneer TS-SW2002D2
(2) Pioneer TS-SW3002S4

Q Forms Kick Panels
XTC Baffles for every speaker except the 12's
Cheap on line sub enclosure (paid $109.00 for it) It will be heavily modified.
A set of 8" Fast rings

A ton of wiring mostly from an old sponsor of mine Phoenix Gold. And many other electrical items to wire this whole mess in the truck.

I will be maintaining the factory JBL head unit as I like all of its integrated features and it should be capable of performing just fine with the Arc Audio processor.

Let the very slow build begin. (actually it began 2 years ago) like I said THIS WILL BE A SLOW BUILD.

Sub Enclosure

Well the past couple of weekends I have been playing around with the sub enclosure. A lot had to be done to get it to where it is. The precut holes needed to be opened up to accommodate the Pioneer subs. The inside of the box was kinda, sorta, almost maybe sealed with a really bad white caulk that was pretty hard. I ended up resealing the entire cabinet on all seams with a clear GE silicone. Filled the cavities with fiberfill to slow the sound wave down and trick the subs in to thinking they are in a larger enclosure than they are. Added some Phoenix Gold cables with pants soldered all the connections and tinned the ends of the cables. Added the foam seal to the mount ring of the subs. Predrilled all of the holes for the screws and then hand tightened all of them to make sure maximum holding power was there without stripping any of the holes out. The subs are fully sealed now and air tight. Unfortunately due to clearance issues between the sub and where Pioneer places the terminals at I had to rotate the subs 90 degrees to allow room for the speaker cable to attach to the subs. So the logos are not how I would have liked them to be. Step 1 complete. The down side to not developing a full custom enclosure. But it was a lot cheaper and less time consuming doing this. Again, not a full competition beauty queen. But you wont see 90% of what is going in the truck. It will look factory or be very well hidden.















Mid Range:

The next item that I have worked on are the Kick Panels. I will see how well this works. If I am not in love with the way they sound, I will have to step it up a notch. These 6 3/4" Mids will run from 300hz up to 4K. I am holding off on mounting the tweeters in the kick panels until I get the system installed. I will put 8 feet of speaker cable on the tweeters and move them around, trying the kick panel, Door sail panel and dash before I commit to permanently mounting them. Once we get the best staging and imaging I will give them a home.









Front Subs:

Ok so this past weekend I messed around with front door speaker spacers for the 8" Pioneers. I will still need to completely change these once I have the door panel off and can play with the actual hole that is in the sheet metal to make sure they will fit. But they meet the minimum depth requirements that are theoretically there. So once I can pull the door panels off and make any adjustments necessary, I will build the final set, seal them and then paint them.

 

Awesome Sauce! Post pics

 

Congrats on the 1st and 2nd place finishes !!!....Thats QUITE AN ACCOMPLISHMENT!!!...Will be watching your build !!!!

 

Get back to slapping wood....AND GET YOUR FEET OFF OF THE DASH !!!!!!

 

Just curious what your opinion of Alpine is ??

 

For years I was an Alpine dealer when I lived in Sunny So Cal. I like a lot of their products. I chose a slightly more cost effective path with the Pioneer pieces because I have a full press court competition system in my Nismo 350z that uses a Pioneer AVIC head unit and all Pioneer drivers all the way around with some old Blade Technologies Class D amplifiers (they were a sponsor of mine). The system is 10 years old but sounds simply amazing. So that is the reason why I decided to go with a lot of Pioneers product for this build. Alpine is nice. If you can afford it I would say jump in.

 

I've mostly ran all Alpine in previous vehicles ....Love their products

 

Can't do nothing anyways... several machines ahead one busted a hydraulic line

 

Fellow Audiophile, curious to see the build.

 

I'm thinkin your Tundra system is going to be pretty cool. I got to attend a IASCA competition in LA LA land several year ago before I moved out to CO. The stereo systems are just crazy. You can tell lots of hours were put into the thought process, design, and actual build out by the competitors.

 

wowza....that's a lot of gear. Cant wait to see it progress.

So you are running 1-4ch and 2-5ch amps? how is that going to work?

I wish you had posted this up before i did my build (link in my signature). I was curious about those speaker baffles but doing research on them i read that people were loosing bass with them.

 

This will be good to watch, as I’m totally out of my element in audio systems

 

A lot of channels being bridged in this system. It should be pretty entertaining. Trying to maximize the power. It will start life as a 4 channel system.

 

In for updates. Good luck man. Looks like it's going to be awesome.

 

cant wait to see how it will turn out

 

jealous

 

so badass.. makin my 2 10s feel real lonely. need to hit the lotto real quick......

I hate this damn forum!!!!

 

Looking good!

No one will ever see the subs behind the seat.

Whats next?

 

May start playing with the Q-Forms for the mid range. They will need to be painted a semigloss black to better match the grade of plastic used by Toyota., Then I need to figure out how I am going to seal the 5 1/4" mids to them. I need to see how much room they left for mounting depth behind the kick panels. They are nothing like I would like to have made out of fiberglass and wood. But I also dont want to spend weeks out of my summer finishing a pair of custom kick panel enclosures on a vehicle that needs to sound great and look nice, but is not a Pro-Build vehicle like our other competition cars. I spent 2 months creating, finishing and painting the custom sub box in my Nismo Z. I could do the same here, but I am trying to avoid the complex build. So I will play with them next weekend and see how I like them, They are more of a ABS Plastic dipole speaker holder than a custom enclosure.

 

I was wondering about those kick panels. I've never seen anyone use them before. I'll be interested to see how it turns out. Will you seal the back of the speaker up or just leave it open?

 

I will find a way to create an enclosure. Without it it's just a free air design. They are about $4 worth of 1/8" ABS. Not something I would recommend anyone purchase.

 

Added phase 2.

 

keeping an eye on this one. like you, i've been collecting bits and pieces for awhile with just a few more things to pick up. i'm sure i'll pick up a couple of tips that'll help out when i tear into my own truck.

many moons ago, i had a few friends who were competing at that level as well. congrats on your placings. not an easy thing to do.

 

Well nothing new to report. Ran in to a problem with too much month at the end of the money. I have been waiting for my tax return, but my accountant failed to push the send button. I realized it 3 weeks after he said it was done when I didnt get any money back. I went to IRS.GOV and it said I had to wait 48 hours after submitting my return to see it. Well needless to say we are now on a longer delay thanks to my accountant. It is in now. But I also had to buy another vehicle. Which will hinder finances yet again.

 

What do you still need to buy?

 

The list of things I still need to acquire:

Dynamat
RCA's
The item I am going to use for an amp rack
Battery terminals
and a few odds and ends.

I ran in to an issue where my daily driver (a 2000 Dodge Durango 5.9L) took a dump on me. Now I am in a mad scramble to get a newer slightly used car. Something economical. So the Dr. ordered up a slightly used 2015 Nissan Nismo Juke RS as my new daily driver. I have to go pick it up this week. So that put a damper on my funding. Also I have been waiting for my tax return for the better part of 6 weeks. First 3 weeks my accountant forgot to push the send button. So that really pissed me off. By the time I found out, it put the IRS in the peak season. So its been another 3 weeks and I have not seen anything deposited in my account. Still states it is being processed. So that is also stalling me buying the few items I still need.

I will try to stop by Home Depot for some MDF on my way home this weekend.

Unfortunately too much month at the end of the money.

 

nice looking install. on my "to do list" next year.

 

So you have the JBL system - what are you doing with the factory sub?

 

I will box up all of the factory equipment and set it aside. Some day I will end up with another truck and I will pull all the aftermarket equipment out and put the factory equipment back in for the next person. I never leave equipment behind.