I HAVE THE POWER!!!!

On saturday I took Biggy to see Adam 'dumdum' Daniels and John 'Daddy O' Aitken to get my new pair of alts fitted.

A while back we took off the standard alt and measured up for a custom bracket to mount the pair of 210A Renault alternators to. Adam got the brackets made up in 12mm steel plate

There is also a bracket for the back of the alts to - the large area at the bottom was to allow space for an idler

First up we had to remove the stock airbox and replace it with a cone filter - A massive thanks goes to Nick the Nurse for supplying me with the adaptor and cone filter!

We then test fitted the alts to make sure everything lined up

The alts needed no alignment - Adam had got it spot on!
We then mounted the Regulator on the old airbox mounts (this allows me to adjust the output voltage of the alts from the dash)

While John and I worked on this - Adam was modifying the alts to accept control from the regulator

Very Painful to watch your £160 alts bing butchered but the man knows what he is doing and once finished we where able to fit the 2 alts correctly

Here you can also see the idler mounted to the bottom of one mount- this allowed Adam to cut the baracked right down to prevent fouling o n the PAS pipes
As before alignment was spot on

Adam and his twins!  the first twin alt install he has done - in his own words 'f**king easier than trying to fit 1 on a kia'

We then set about wiring in the Regulator

This has an adjustable pot mounted in the dash to allow me to adjust the system voltage
Set to 14.7 should give me a nice strong power supply

And here you can see everythign completed  - cone filter in the back, regulator to the left

 

 

A1 Audio Designs really hit the mark! + Limited Edition Subs

Been slack in the updates recently but here is how we stand at the moment - Last friday night I went to see Paul at A1 Audio Design to pick up Project Big Black from him after he spent 10 days working on the door builds and rear door amp rack - all I can say is WOW

We spoke at length about what I was after and he got the idea perfectly - here is the finished article

Saturday morning we took everything apart for storage so as not to damage any of the panels Paul has produced - the plan for t he day was to get the front face of the box in - that didnt goto plan but will let you know why later ;) - As you can see pauls work is fantastic -The car will be going back to Paul before modded nationals to  have the rear amp rack and front face trimmed up as well as having the front seats retrimmed

First off was a trip to Travis Perkins to get some 25mm MDF - the plan for the front and rear of the box is to use 2 panels of 25mm mdf to make the baffle port and rear of the box

Loaded with 25mm MDF

Before we started I wanted to get a rough idea of port opening so i knew what size to cut the front face to so a lil BassBox Pro action in the back

Trimming the front face

Measuring out the cut out-

Decent spacing between the subs and a cut out designed for the GZPW12LIMITED Subs

And the new Whack a Sprigg game coming to a fun fair near you (copyright VD Games)

In the above board i was testing my cuts - routing isnt something I have much experience with but thanks to Ground Zeros 15th Birthday im glad I did.  Ground Zero are celebrating the 15th birthday with 555 limited edition Plutonium subs called the GZPW12Limited

They are rated at 3000wrms, have a stiched surround (the surround is stitched to the cone as well as glued making for a stronger join - it also rocks a 4" voice coil - all the better for eating power with.

So im now going to be using 8 of these babies instead of the GZNW12 - and im glad i held off on the cutting as the GZPW12LIMITED and the GZNW12 have differnt baskets and so the cut outs in the front face of the box need to be remeasured.

This weekend im off to see adam dumdum daniels and John Daddy- O Aitkin to have the alts fitted and to make a start on cable running as well as finishing the front face of the box

Updates soon!

Door Build Progress

Been a bit of a quiet week with Big Black begin at A1 Audio Designs for Paul Richardson to work his magic.  This weekend was spent clearing the mess we have created over the past few weeks from the back garden - during which I found the carpet for the Shogun which we gave a scrubbing - came up good

But I didn't find the trim pieces I thought I had kept to make the boot build so with the help of Si7 from www.pocuk.com I was able to get most of the bits i need

Its going to make Paul's life a lot easier when it comes to blending the rear build into the side and back of the box/Shogun.

Talking of Paul - he has been working on the doors and boot door amp rack and has been keeping me updated with pics and progress.

His first day on the project he was working out clearances and finalising speaker location - the original plan was for a triangle of mids at the front of the door but with clearance issues it was decided that we should look to spread the 3 mids out along the bottom of the door but this caused another problem with the window not coming down far enough but Paul spaced out the window mech and now it works a treat - The sign of good workmanship - coming across a problem then coming to me with different ways to solve it - any way here are a few pics of the work so far

Door panels cut

Here you can see the clearance made available by paul's mod to the window mech - Very tight!

The final design of the door builds

And the finished article ready to be trimmed in matt black vinyl with allen head bolts as feature pieces

I pick the Shogun up on Friday Night - so will get pics up of the finished work ASAP - i cant wait to see it all done.

Saturday its off to see dumdum to get the alts fitted - the alt bracket is cut and he just needs to see about locating a tensioner as well as moving the air box - I will also make a start on the power cabling as I believe my Shuriken Batteries arrive on their slow boat from the states tomorrow!

The next few weeks are going to be very VERY busy

A1 Audio Designs get there hands on Project Big Black

Well after a hectic weekend trying to get everything to a certain level we managed it yesterday.  After running out of Glass Fibre Matting and getting the sides, outsides and roof glassed in Project Big Black was ready to be handed over to Paul Richardson at A1 Audio Designs who is going to work his particular brand of fabrication and trimming magic on the front doors for the front speaker install as well as for the boot door build for the amplifiers -
Here are a few pics from Easter Mondays work

Roof didnt move a bit with 22st of me on top

First layer of F/G on the sides and roof - more to come once we get the car back

The car loaded up with goodies to take to Paul

And the man himself taking the keys

If all goes to plan I should have Big Black back on 17th April when it will be going to have the power and signal cable run and the altenators fitted as well as the wall design finalised

Eyes peeled towards the weekend for some pictures from Paul with some updates on his progress!

Ginormo-Post - Roof Build and Fibreglassing Begins!

Another long post this one - 3 days of work to catch up on so forgive me if it gets boring!

Started on Friday with help from my Dad again - it was chucking it down with rain so we tried to make a nice little waterproof area out back of the house to work in

This is how the roof stood when we started - The sunroof section is about 30mm lower than the rest of the roof so needed to pack the roof with wood to bring it down to an even level

Cut a large section of 6mm wood for the back section as well as a thinner piece for the mid section

Mid section braced to the roof

We then used some 18mm MDF to pack out the section between the braces in the sunroof
PU Foaming glue on the back and glued n screwed to the braced roof piece

Thats some good screwin

Rear section glued n braced to the roof

Even though we stayed slightly dry - we had position ourselves right by a blocked drain so ended up working in a pool!

Once the 6mm mdf was in the back section of the roof we needed to tie the mid and back section together and bring that to the level of the roof so in went a sheet of 12mm MDF

Braced and screwed up

This got the back section of the roof to the same level as the sunroof so we put in a final 12mm layer to tie the front and back together PU Foam on the back of the 12mm sheet before it went up

Up and braced - screwed to the previous layers with the right length screws - NOTHING WENT THROUGH THE ROOF SKIN! WOO HOO

Expanding foam in the voids in the corners to

And how the roof stood at the end of Fridays Work

We still had a little time and light left on friday night so we decided to prepare the final roof panels for Saturdays Job
we took 2 x 18mm panels and glued n screwed them together

Dad is old school and doesn't believe in power tools - or health and safety it would appear!

PVA Glue - Jackson Pollock Style

So we left it there for Friday - Wood back in the shogun for and left the roof braced over night ready for Saturday

For Saturday I had the help of Jon 'Project Diagram' Young He designed the ever changing project diagram in this article as well as the new Project Big Black Logo

He also printed off the latest edition of the Project Big Black system diagram (which will now have to change but more on that later!

We started out with the sandwiched roof panel ready to go in the van

Following some handy advice from Jon 'Wonkyjon' Clements we roughed up both surfaces and spread the PU foam over the whole board

take one squashed Jon and apply foam!

Once we got it in we braced with a Jack and some hastily cut to length braces (spot who had to shave his head after an unfortunate expanding foam in hair incident on Friday!

With the final roof panel jacked up into place we applied some beefy brackets

Screwed into place - again using the right length screws so nothing poking out the side!

All in and done!

We then drilled a few holes and started putting in the expanding foam - 2 cans worth!

OOOOOO the roof worms are coming to get me!

Nothing says bass like an MDF covered fat man

roof totally full of foam and solid as you like

Next we needed to finish off the fibreglass filling along the side joins

Jon getting all arty on the camera

Substance abuse if bad mkay!

After doing all this we were able to measure up the front face and do some scale drawings using pound coins as 15" subs

Epic sub fitting fail!
So we redesigned for 12s

Full of win!

We cut a mock face to get an idea of what we were dealing with 
Up close

And set back a little

We then drew on the subs

Plenty of port area available!

Jon had an unfortunate expanding foam incident

We then tested a centre baffle with dual port design

Still lots of port area with this design

Jon also hung around until about 10pm Saturday night putting together a few google sketch up designs of the possible build

I'm still undecided about what I'm going to go for with the front face but these are the two main ideas at the moment - That was Saturdays work all done!

Today - Easter Sunday - me and the wife started to get very high - today we were starting on the fibreglassing

We started with a clean Shogun thanks to Lou's cleaning skills

One giant tub of Resin

And some glass fibre matting

and a lot of painting resin on!

Covered the wheel arches

Now we learnt how not to fibreglass doing this next bit - we stapled the glass fibre to wall and then applied resin

but this method proved to be a pain in the arse as it was too much to keep right all at once
The second side we decided to cut the glass into 3 strips which proved much easier to handle

So as it stands tonight

And a quick picture of Megatron the coolest damn cat in the world!