Sound Damping!!!
To prepare for the system that I wanted, I had to start with a SOLID foundation. This meant a lot of sound damping. Within 4 days of buying the Eclipse, I had the whole interior on the garage floor. My wife wasnt too happy about that. hehe But, its what I wanted to do....
As I said, the whole car was stripped.
The seat rails were filled in with expandable foam. Both sides of the car were done. Additionally, the rails in the rear hatch cover were also filled with foam.
This is the driver side kick panel close up. There was an opening about 3 square inches from the factory. We cut out the opening so now it is about 6 inches across and high. This was mainly done to allow the speakers to be moutned further back into the car (equalized pathlenghts). A side benefit was that I could then get some liquiq sound damping material WAAAYYY up into this panel. I could spray the liquid all the way to where the windshield and hood meet it.
The first layer of sound damping was a spray on liquid. Throughout the car, there is a total of 6 gallons of this stuff. There is 1 gallon per door, with the other 4 being used on the floor, rear quarter panles trunk, and hatch. You may notice that the trim in the car is tan...in more recent pics show the interior as grey. Well, I did a full interior color change. The tan was a little bright for me, and I wanted the interior very dark...so I got a new factory panels that were grey.
The doors panels were removed, 1 gallon of liquid, the several layers of Dynamat Extreme were applied. Each door recieved 3 layers on the outer skin and 2 layers on each side of the inner skin. Any more matting here, and I would not be able to get the door panel back on! With all the sound damping in the doors, I can get maximum performance from the 8" subs that are now in there. When I play the system for demo purposes, I only use the 5.25" speakers in the kick panes and the 8" subs in the doors. Thats it. It will definately surprise you!!
This is another picture of the liquid damping on the floors. You can also see the speaker wires that are run in protective split loom. They are run in a factory channel, and secured to the car with screw-hole zip ties.
The trunk area was also treated to 3 layers of Dynamat Extreme. (This picture was taken LONG before the taillight conversion.)
This is the passenger side rear wheel well. You can see that the liquid goes WAY into places that I would not get the matting. This was taken in the early stages of applying the Dynamat. Now, there is NO red showing in the car...as its ALL coverd with liquid and/or matting.
RCA Cables!!
I made my own RCA cables for the stereo system. The following will detail the process of making these. It was a TOTAL pain, but worth it in the long run. I made my own for a few reasons...the first is for sound quality. There are several different thoughts as to what it the optimal design for car audio RCA cables....I took what I thought to be the best, and tried to improve on it.
I stared with about 20 feet of the 3 colors. I put 1 end of each into a bench vice, and started BRAIDING. Thats right, braiding...not just twisting with the Makita. The thought process is that you get the benefits of "twisted pair" without the side effect of high-frequency rolloff. Does it REALLY work? I think so. Once the cable was braided to the length I wanted, it was fully covered in teflon tape. This was done as a protective barrier against any possible mishaps. You can see the white tape in this picture.
The next step was to cover the cables in white nylon braid that is fire resistant. This is an additional layer of protection.
The next step was to take a pair of cables (so you have both left and right channels) and cover them with split loom...again, for protection. The cables now have 4 total layers of protection....the jacketing on the cables themselves, the teflon tape, the nylon braid, and now split loom. Over kill? Yes. Just the way I like it.
This is the termination of the RCA ends. You can see that the red wire was used for the positive, and the black was used for ground. What happened to the grey wire? Well...its purpose was only to keep the positive and negative seperated throughout the braid...NOT conduct anything.
