Shovelhd media/nav upgrade

[fredridge]

awesome job, looks great. Love the deadening too, more and more I keep needing and wanting to get that done. I don't know anything about the resistor, I don't have steering controls

[shovelhd]

Here are some more pix as I slowly get closer to finishing this job.

This is one of the rear doors. The first picture shows the eDead V1 squared deadening on the inside of the door, the homemade 3/4" MDF spacer, and the Rainbow SL165 coaxial speaker. I'm not a huge fan of rear stage in SQ systems, but the head unit has 5.1 capability, and they do sound great when playing a movie.

[shovelhd]

Here are some shots of the front door. The speakers are Rainbow SLC 265. I bolted the crossover onto the inside of the door panel. I did the same treatment on the inside of the rear door covers as well. That plastic can use all the help it can get.

Running the speaker wire into the driver's side door was a BEEEATCH. Drilling out that dumb connector and relieving the door panel metal for the speaker wire was easy. Pulling the fuse panel and pulling a 180 degree snake was not easy. I'm glad I don't have to do that again.

[shovelhd]

Before I put the rear seat back in, I wanted to do some rough tuning with the RTA. This is a Rane 31 band calibration RTA. It is used to set up mobile sound reinforcement systems. The LED's are switchable between +/-3dB and +/-1dB.

The first thing I did was to turn off the HU crossover and use the HPF on the Eclipse XA4000 amp. It's a much better filter with a sharper slope. I did this with pink noise, then tweaked it down a few Hz with listening.

Next I used pink noise to rough tune the comps. This shot is of the comps with the sub gain down. The midbass hump is part of the speaker's dynamics and I left it alone. I like to set the response to close to flat from about 500Hz up. The mic was at the IASCA 26" height in the center of the driver's seat. The Rainbows have a peak around 6KHz, which I pulled down 2dB using the HU EQ. It's still a little bit hot, as the RTA is set at +/-3dB. The other hump was between 50-60Hz when I was tuning the sub. I pulled it down 2dB at 50Hz. That shot isn't shown here.

This is just a starting point, as the rear seat wasn't in, and thus the sub was facing up and not in place. It's close enough now to put the rear seat back in.

[shovelhd]

Here is a shot of the KTC-V300N NTSC TV tuner. It will only work for a few more years until the FCC grabs the analog TV spectrum back, but in the meantime, it's a great way to kill time when waiting for the kids. The antennas o\are on the windshield, and the box is on the right side behind the glove box, bolted to the dash fitting.

[shovelhd]

Here is a shot of the Kenwood DDX-6019 DDIN head unit installed. I used a Scosche dash kit, and sanded the pebble finish down using a 220 grit sanding sponge. I finished it with emery cloth, and painted it with four coats of SEM graphite plastic paint. The color is a closer match than this flash shot shows. It's almost identical in sunlight.

[shovelhd]

Here is a quick night shot of a typical DDX-6019 screen. I'll take a few more another time.

[RTXGuy]

WEll done man. that's a lot of work but well worth it I bet.

[shovelhd]

Here's a couple of shots of the external adapters, from bottom to top:

Sirius
iPod
Bluetooth

They are stuck together with industrial velcro, and I added a metal strap to the pile and screwed it to a dash support, so it's not going anywhere. The location is directly behind the speedometer inside the dash.

[shovelhd]

Once I got the last thing working (steering wheel controls), I wrapped the PAC, RCA's, and wire bundles in foam to keep them from rattling around. The dash rattles enough all by itself, no need to add any more.