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KorbenDallas "Hawkeye" Build Thread

14K views 39 replies 6 participants last post by  KorbenDallas 
#1 · (Edited)
I'm still relatively new (March 2016). This is my first build thread. 2011 Army Green Very Special To Me Edition. This is going to be a bit strange because I've already done most of the work! Quick background on me: I'm a musician at night. I play the drums. I needed something to haul gear after spending 16 years destroying mazda protege interiors. It was between the FJ or a scion XB and well...

I want to put this thread together because It seems like I did a bunch of really weird and detailed stuff that either doesn't exist on this site, or wasn't well labeled or organized. I'm talking *detailed* here. If you are going to do any work at all to the interior of your truck, this thread might be for you. If even ONE person learns how to approach something or figures out a clever trick and avoids hours of frustration and possible financial loss or general loss of sanity, then this thread has been a success. I'm gonna start at the beginning... but its going to take me a few days to put this together. I have a bajillion images that I'm having to resize for this thread, I can provide full size images if necessary. Mods please be gentle.

The basic rundown as follows:

1. Pull all the emblems because I like a clean look.
2. Bolt on some sliders for the inevitable parking lot wars.
3. Large audio install.
4. I have it all torn apart, might as well insulate everything. Emphasis on everything.
5. Well I have the panels out might as well do all of the lights. 18 bulbs and two headlights. I think the dash lights are the only things left.
6. Lets build a subwoofer box for the first time!

Day One. March 17th, 2016. A green truck on St. Patrick's Day. Bone stock except for the Baja Rack and Nitto Trail Grapplers in stock size.

For those of you not aware, this truck is a bit of a unicorn. 2011 supposed-to-be-trail-teams, but the tsunami hampered parts delivery and these are now called "Upgrade package 3" or jokingly the NSSE Not So Special Edition models. I think there are only 80-ish accounted for on this forum and I've only run across one other 6MT like mine on here... so maybe there are 10 6MTs ever? 46,000 miles upon delivery to me. Sat for about a year on a lot at Fort's Toyota in Pekin IL. Paid $29,991 before tax, title, fees and delivery.

Options on this particular truck:

Army Green (badass)
Blacked out trim.
Matching roof paint for the TT models.
Stock Steelies (The stock steelies are completely fire. I would I have traded alloys down for them.)
This truck didn't have rock rails, didn't appear to ever have them considering the condition of the threads.
May have had a stock roof rack on it at one point because there was some ghosting around the roof mounts.
JBL premium sound system. Six disc changer in the dash. Six speakers and a woofer. (The highest of fi, but more on that later... for a stock system its really not bad)
Didn't have the top of the dash mount compass gauges, not sure if it was supposed to.
Green interior seat inserts that are pretty slick.
I appear to have a locking rear dif, traction control, something called A-track and I think I have some additional options to the immediate right of the steering column.
It also came with USB and AUX inputs, not sure if that's also across all models of this year.

 
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#33 · (Edited)
Amplifier install time!

Back at the other garage space now. Sweating. Swearing.

Here you can see the power wire mock up - I borrowed a factory ground for the airbag system on the seat cross member. I stripped the area under the ground down to bare metal with a dremel tool. Tight fit.



More sweating and swearing. Running speaker and signal leads. This was a lot of trial and error. I had to figure out how my speaker wire was going to run around the center console so that it wouldn't be pinched upon re-assembly. My thought process this entire time was devising ways to only ever do this once and never touch it again. The crossovers are bolted down as well, sitting on smaller cutting board standoffs that may not be very visible here. I should also note that every single connection was stripped, tinned, connection crimped, tinned again and covered with shrink tube. I used various sized lugs everywhere they would fit, only used spades in a couple of places due to size constraints and those were only the subwoofer speaker leads if I recall correctly. The subwoofer lead is massive, 12AWG two conductor, largest wire I could still terminate, its about a 10 foot run, 300 watts RMS @ 4ohm.



Making my own signal leads! This is RG59 which is similar to RG6 which is your standard cable box cable from your TV at home. I use this because they are heavy duty, fully shielded and I can use compression tips and make them exactly the length I want. I've been using them to make what you would call RCA cables for several years now with great results. Unfortunately though, its at this point that I learn that I have to literally split the front signal twice so I can feed both front and rear inputs with a replicated left / right. Why on earth would an amplifier bridge LEFT TO FREAKING RIGHT AND NOT FRONT TO REAR WHILE MAINTAINING STEREO? STUPID! So now I have to order some digital coax splitters at the last minute.



Mockup is complete into test mode. You can kind of see the difference in amp rack near the center console as described in the transition from MK2 to MK3. I set the gain sensitivities on the amp to 50 percent, no bass boost, no loudness, flat EQ on the head unit and subwoofer to 5/10. I've got the filters wide open on the amplifier and am instead doing my filtering at the head unit. I think I roll the doors off at 60Hz and the Woofer at 180HZ. Rear speakers are rolled off again at 70HZ in addition to the bass blockers. Getting that balance was tricky. I had to use a fade combination at the head unit and gain settings on the amp to get the rear pillar speakers up in the mix to be audible. They aren't super forward, but you'd know if they were missing. Hard to describe.



And the flooring is back. Ended up pulling most of the carpet padding out because it was interfering. Also had some issues with some black structural plastic on the edges of the vinyl floor where it clips into the wire harness runs on the door sills. If its not readily apparent, I removed the amp, standoffs and crossovers in order to lay the vinyl floor back down. The crossovers have little standoffs but they stayed under the floor. I was then able to relocate the threaded posts I set up to mount the equipment and get those to poke through the floor. Took measurements to figure how and where to cut so that I could pull my wires through. Due to the mock up process, everything was already terminated to length, I just had to fish it out.





Remember when I was worried about clearance? This is why I took the floor vents out and only ended up using one set of the plastic cutting board standoffs on the amp mount. We've got about a quarter inch of clearance from that rusted portion of the seat frame. I can move the seat all the way forward and back and will not hit anything. We have Clearance, Clarence! Roger, Roger!

Bonus points - I forgot to put the amp trim back on, so now I get to take the seat out one more time.

 
#35 ·
Honestly, the only reason I'm using them is because they had a 6x9 component set that made sense, economically speaking. I had originally picked out some kickers, but the surrounds are foam (not great for longevity, especially in cars) and they apparently took a dive in quality when they got picked up by Best Buy, so my audio shop (independence audio) suggested memphis. The rears are memphis just because independence had them and they match the series, so I figured they'd be similarly constructed / voiced. Focal has a drop in set of 6x9 components specifically for Toyota, but they want like twice as much money for them. After a while I got on the internet and found all kinds of crazy component sets that would have probably worked, but dat cash money. There is a guy out here who had some nice JL 8's for his doors that are part of a three way component set from JL that runs like $1300. The Focal's also get nutty, in terms of price. I wasn't really able to A/B these memphis components against anything else but they sound good to me. Vehicles are inherently terrible listening environments anyway, there is a limit to what you're gonna get back.

Memphis has been around a while and they make decent stuff, Independence Audio has carried them for a while too. They do everything from these little speakers to amps and absolutely bonkers subwoofers.
 
#37 ·
Speaker Box Time. I had this Kicker Comp CVR 10 since about 2006, with the grill. Its kind of middle of the road in terms of performance, not entry level, not bone rattling. I think its 300 watts RMS at 4 Ohms, which matches the kenwood amp specifications.

3/4 baltic birch ply.



Sealed enclosure. basic cube design. Screwed and Glued. If I recall correctly I used coarse drywall screws for assembly of the actual panels. Had the guys at the shop cut the woofer baffle on the CNC mill. I think it was about 8 bucks for setup and machine time. Its also perfect. Pre-drilled and tapped for T-nuts for the woofer and grill.



Brick $hithouse. This thing is bombproof. I think outer dimensions are something like 18Wx15Hx15D. This works out to about 1.75 cubic feet, not taking into account four small triangle braces and the volume of the woofer. This is almost more than a cube larger than the previous MDF POS this thing was in. Sealed enclosures are simple to design, and relatively predictable in terms of performance. I like them because they are punchy, tight and clean. Ported and band pass enclosures have tunings and weird unnatural peaks and valleys in frequency response. Its kind of like having a bass boost at some hertz range that you can't turn off or modify. Plus they are larger and more complex to design. Just my opinion of course.

 
#38 · (Edited)
Being a musician, I often had to pull my speaker box out of the trunk of my old car then cram drums and cases and junk in every space I could. I'm also around lots of huge speaker boxes and various amps. So I thought i'd wrap this box like a guitar amp or speaker cabinet and put a handle and feet on it.

This is a tolex inspired vinyl cloth that has a Marshall Amplification pattern. Parts Express!



I wrapped it like a six-sided die and then cut the speaker baffle and poked the rest of the holes for the hardware. The vinyl adhesive bonded well to the birch, but the overlapping vinyl didn't stick to itself for $hit. I didn't like that, so I had the shop laser cut some black textured ABS plastic strips that I used to line edges of the box as well as underneath where the vinyl material overlapped. I screwed those down kind of haphazardly after I drilled them out and countersunk the screws. Kind of wish I had used black screws and pre-drilled with the drill press but that probably would have been a major pain with everything assembled. Either way these pieces will further protect the corners of the box from damage.

I bolted up the handle, feet and mounted the woofer and grill with allen head machine screws that were as beefy as would fit. Sucker ain't going nowhere. One other detail - I've used a Neutrik "Speakon" locking quick release speaker connector that mates with the tip of the speaker cable. Its commonly used in pro audio speaker cabinets. They make power connections now as well. I use them for absolutely everything I can.





I think for my next speaker projects, I'm going to paint the boxes instead of wrapping them. There is this textured black paint that mimics the finish of a lot of pro audio cabinets. Its kind of similar to truck bed liner.

I stuffed this box full of polyfill, ended up being quite a lot, but that's what the specs called for. It hits surprisingly low, probably due to the larger enclosure. I tuned the system using "Young Lust" from The Wall by Pink Floyd. That song hits hard and has nice low mids. Its also in the era of recording prior to compressing the ever loving $hit out of a signal and losing all dynamic range.

Hip hop and electronic music really shines with this box, in my opinion. New albums from A Tribe Called Quest, Run the Jewels and DJ Shadow have been in regular rotation. Having a subwoofer enclosure actually in the airspace of the cabin I'm riding in, as opposed to locked away in a trunk, has been a pleasant listening experience.



Bonus cat house from old box:

 
#39 ·
Nice build thread. I plan to upgrade my speakers, mine are the standard ones and don't sound as "good" as they once did. They rattle a bit. I have a 07 with the nicer higher end radio option, it has the factory sub. I'm not a huge music fan, so i don't plan to get as detailed as you did. Will I have any issues just installing new speakers? I had a SAAB once that I installed a head unit in, I had no idea about the signals needed for sound. Ended up having to run speaker wire through the whole car just to get the sound back.
 
#40 ·
Man - sorry I guess I don't get notifications on this thread if someone replies to it. When you have the SUB in this truck from the factory... you have a "premium" sound package. This means that there is probably an amplifier bolted to the bottom of the sub box that actually powers all (six?) speakers I think. Mine was configured this way, but its the 2nd generation of the JBL premium system from yours. You could theoretically replace the factory speakers with aftermarket units, but they will be designed to handle a different load. Its not going to piss the factory amplifier off, they are actually a higher resistance than factory. You will obviously have better performance than what is currently deteriorating or rattling. Its probably best to take it to a reputable shop and have them check the specifications and consult with them on it.

Cheers.
 
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