So what was the plan with this ?
Well for quite a while ive always been a bit of a petrol head, never as much for the speed but certain for the style and audio , so in many ways that would make me a boy racer ... rather than a petrol head. Anyway , my last car I always intended to get a decent head unit with GPS etc. but I was lumbered with a vehicle that used the old VAN bus system so most of the stuff that you would normal benefit from such as steering while controls etc would not work.
Anyway , as time went on , I decided to sell that car and buy a newer car, well that didn't go as planned as I had my eye on Peugeot 308 , which unfortunately sold 2 days before I was going to see it , then there was the alternative , a Peugeot 307 cc facelift , so for those among you ... yes I have had the piss taken more than once over it being a " hair dressers car " , but I don't care , its a nice car .. it came at a good price had reasonable mileage and I like it, its my midlife crisis and when i leave work and everyone is roasting at 100 degrees in the summer, I can press a button and enjoy the sun without roasting.
But leads the my problem, as its a convertible with a hard folding roof, that roof has to go into the boot , leaving me with virtually no space for any install. I had some Subs that I had for a while , they had been sat unused for 2 years but were still extremely serviceable and were still in the enclosure that I purchased when I bought the subs, Little did I know back then that I always felt they were a little under powered and not very loud, I was using 2 amps to power them, one of which unbelievably is now 20 years old.
So What did I have
1 x 800 watt amp
1 x 500 watt amp
2 x 400 watt pioneer TS-W306c subs
1 x 1.2 farad capacitor
loads of bits and bobs from various installs in the past , such as power distribution blocks , 4 gauge cable , rca leads, graphic eq for sub and for full range (this things were massive and looked really impressive) even active nakamichi cross overs, 6 x 9's essentially , just loads and loads of stuff.
I really wasn't sure that I would use any of it, one thing I did find out is that my subs were being suffocated in the box they were in, I did some research and was able to find the theile-small parameters for my speakers but others had in the past , and the best box , would be a 1.6sq foot with a 3 x 8" port. Something that my old enclosure didn't even come close to, so that would explain how they always sounded weak in comparison to what they should be, especially coupled with an old yet massive amp, Certainly no class A or 2 decades off class D amps we have now.
So I decide I am going to start,
Head Unit
My wife was nice enough to get me a new head unit for Christmas, in the past I was always partial to Pioneer stuff , but it really wasn't up to speed for what I wanted, I wanted something that had bluetooth , could play MP3's DVD's etc. but what she got me was excellent ,
I wont go into installing this in detail , as with the conversion kits etc, it was pretty much plug and play, with a little bit of chopping the dash about to get it in.
Not only did she get me THIS bad boy , but she also got me all the cables, CAN BUS conversion kit, reversing camera etc. it even has digital TV just in case I want to watch the telly while driving to work .... i think not *lol*
It went in without too much trouble, however I was short a double DIN conversion surround as no suprise not only do they not supply you with a cage, but also no facia, but a quick trip on Ebay and a few days wait it was finally IN.... just havnt fit the versing camera as yet as the weather is crap. but at least I have reasonable sounds now and no need for a poor sounding MP3 FM modulator and copious amounts of SD Cards. This unit also accepts USB Sticks, so have a couple of large ones loadedReversing Camera
Its a nicer day today , so I decided to fit the reversing camera, now this was a pain in the arse, mainly because its the first one I had ever done, So a quick read of the instructions and a you tube video I was ready to go , I ran the cable all the way to the front of the car , and found a place I could get power at the rear , luckily, Peugeot always chose to put a 12v socket in the boot , that was my goal , I cant exactly just plug it in though , so all the carpets etc. Had to go.
Its actually quite an extensive process, mainly because 1. how do you lift up the rear seats, and 2. how the hell do you get the cable through. At least I was able to find a solution with the bumper off. Anyway ,most of the time , people suggest you use the reversing light as your trigger, So i got a relay to switch the power as I cant pull to many amps from a reversing light. Then I had a thought , as the car is CANBUS then maybe theres a trigger at the front.
So I checked the CANBUS converter and as luck would have it, it was there, so all i needed was power for the camera that had either ignition or accessory, so it looks like I can use the 12v accessory socket in the boot , with a trigger from the CANBUS converter through to the head-unit. I tested the feed from the converter when in reverse and as luck would have it it sent a 12v signal to the test light, result , just hooked it up to the reverse signal wire to the head unit and went to wire up the back end.
Once I had worked out how to remove the rear seat, there was a small opening I could trace the wire to, ran the cable behind the carpet and out through a side panel vent round to the bumper. Luckily there is a connector in the camera connection so out came the dremel and I drilled a hole in my bumper and took a notch out of the number plate so that it would clear the camera. Gave it a test and everything worked fine. Set up the angles etc. and I was away. Its still a little odd to get used to as the camera is quite low down so you get a cats eye view, but im getting used to it. Certainly as I had reversed into somebody once already in a car park.. this was a necessity as I am so used to hatchbacks , a car with a boot ... is a strange thing to gauge. Anyway ... job done. onto the next thing.
Front Speakers
They arnt in a bad shape , but they are standard factory fit single cone shyte you get as standard , so I broke out the old debit card and went shopping, I had the options of either some JVC replacements for front and rear , or I just spend a little more and get the fronts sorted out first. As most of my music is quite heavy in the low end, I wanted something that can handle to lower frequencies. Peugeots do come with dash mounted tweeters but they are a little sharp and not very lound so I decided to go for some MTX 6.5" coaxial's
Just look at these bad boys... , will blow your socks off with the farty goodness of paper cone stockness.
But the panel came off and what it does do, is give me a little plan for later of adding door pods, after all who really needs maps pockets in a car eh, although I always keep a set of gloves in there and a cloth, I guess something will need to get sacrificed in the pursuit of better audio. Point though in the CC versions of these cars there's really not enough storage or cubby holes. but I guese that just means you store shit you don't need so best rid of them later. 
I gave everything a little clean , but heres the MTX mids in, everything is soldered , however I think I will need to run new lines later as the speaker cable isnt really up to what I would see as enough. Especially if I am going to run some pods with some components in, for now though...I think that's the fronts sorted.Rear Speakers
I havn't replaced these yet , but I am looking for some 5" coaxial's as I only have 13cm to play with in the rear section. Thats not a lot and whats there at the moment is actually pretty decent, but they WILL have to go at some point.
Power Run - A cautionary tale
With it being such a loverly day when I fitted my front speakers, it was a Saturday and I thought ... hell why not look at running the power cable down through to the back. I read online where the best place is on the 307, I was given 2 solutions , the main loom grommet, or under the car. I jacked the car up and took a look at what was happening underneath , it wasn't good , as its a convertible there's just too much bracing etc. to weave some 4 gauge under there, I know i should really use 0 gauge , but to be honest ... I think its a bit overkill, expensive and i already had some red 4 gauge from a previous install. It wasn't cheap shit either it was proper OFC. So I decided to look for the grommet.
Ahhh theres the grommet that i need to get through, they suggest on the Peugeot forum that you cut through the rubber with a knife or use a drill to drill through. Its quite solid, so I checked the wiring either side and decided I would have enough clearance to get through.
I used a small drill bit at first , just a test , and it went very well , no problems, then I used a larger drill bit , and noticed I could see bits of shiny coming out with the drill bit ... and it was copper, copper shiny does not bode well. I though maybe I have just nicked a wire , so I reconnected my battery , I was somewhat relieved when everything came on , radio etc .. all working fine. Then I tried to start the car ............ nothing , not a click , or a poof of smoke .. nothing , it was dead from the waste down, everything else though was working. So what I had feared the worst had happened, I had broke the back of my car ... it was now paralysed.
My stress levels had just jumped through the roof , because this was saturday , I had to be at work on Monday and my options were limited. Most people at this point would have cried , but I had hope, I knew I could fix it ..... if only I could get to the affected wires. Unfortunately Peugeot had done something that i HATE them for , you might think hate is too stronger word , no ... HATE is too nice for them, not only did they run the loom though the grommet , they also sealed all the wires in rubber too, together in a clump sealed into the rubber grommet. I hacked at it for the rest of the day , the car looked a mess, the windows wouldn't close and it was getting late, Everything hurt ... and I was in a panic, I didn't sleep too well that night with stress , worry and pain. Worse thing was ... I knew i needed a good nights sleep to try and fix it on Sunday but that didn't happened either. I know you might ask , why would I tell anybody about it , well its a cautionary tale, Anyway , I woke up Sunday , had a coffee and went to look at the mess , Kate suggest I took a Dremel at it , and that's what I did , slowly exposing each wire as you can see in the pic. Every wire was pulled from the solid clump.
I stripped each of the 20 damaged wires , twisted, soldiered and heat shrunk each one, hooked up a meter and ran continuity and resistance on each wire, If it was too high the wire was replaced.
Eventually the car started again , with no throttle , noticed one red cable was still disconnected , got it soldered etc. and everything fired back into life without even a single ECU issue or reported fault. I cleaned up what was left of the grommet, as even through the wires do not rest or run on metal , I like to be safe , so put it all back together, reinstalled the grommet and finally ran the cable.
What a difference a day makes , the picture on the left, is how it was about about mid-day on Sunday, everything was all over the place , the wires were a mess but it was starting to look up.
The picture on the right was at 6pm on Sunday evening, everything was screwed back together and operational.
I have only a few things to do on this stage now, one is to remove the dash again, check my connections, re-loom the cables with tesa tape and if happy reseal the grommet, however even after a month or so, I have had no issues with starting, running or engine management faults. so dodged the bullet.
So I bought a cable kit and some new battery terminals that could support at least 4 gauge, its honestly a pain , as nobody does a distribution block , its always a step down from 0 gauge to 4 gauge , or 4 gauge to 8 gauge. never same to same. and I didn't want to run 8 gauge to my amps even though I have a few meters of both black and red. I will come back to this when there's been some progress, however for now ... the cabling will have to wait as I don't want half done wires hanging around and I will have to take the seats and carpet out to do the runs.
Back to the Boot.....
So after a lot of work , I have achieved little more than repairing my fuck up. however now I want to crack on and the weather has take a turn for the better. As I said at the start , with it being a convertible, I had very little space to play with, I was limited as due to the mechanism for the folding roof , my width had restrictions, and due to the space the roof take, I could not make a taller box, So I measured what I had , went to the 12volt.com and started crunching numbers as to how far I could get and what size box I could work with in order to get the correct volume for a ported box , that was shallow and not very wide in the space I had.
As I was limited on height , the first thing that had to go , was the boot floor , so out it came, this gave me a better understanding on what i need to do, 
Once I had done all the measuring , I managed to talk my misses into taking me for a supply run to the local wickes, after a few hard earned coins had been passed and the roof rack tested , I arrived home with
1 x 2.4 x 1.2 meter sheet of 18mm MDF
1 x 2.4 x 1.2 meter sheet of 12mm MDF
This should be enough to build both the sub box and the amp rack,plus any trimming and give me enough left over for the door pods, eventually.
Attempting to maximise my resources , all the wood was cut to size, it would give me the approximate proportions with the ability to trim any if the skill saw goes a bit off. Luckily enough it all went quite well, It it was all assembled and glued and screwed with as you can see, even clamped just to get a good a seal as possible.
Made sure that each chamber was the right volume , with a little bit of adjustment due to bracing etc. I wasn't really sure whether i was going to hard port it using MDF , of just tube port it , I decided ultimately to tube port it , so went and bought some ports and a speaker terminal
Ports test cut .... embarrassing note , this is the second time I've cut these , as the first time I cut them lower down and forgot about the amp rack clearance , easily sorted though.
Internal cable run using 16 gauge OFC speaker cable, its meaty stuff. The black stuff is sealent, even though its square and a good seal , I always put a bead around the corners just to be safe, I also took an inch off the height. This was due to a test fit making the estimate as to where the subs would be being too close to the blind that covers the boot when the roofs down. it did clear it, but only half inch, so I took another inch to drop the subs down further.
Now it was time to cut the speaker holes , I wont tell a lie , in the past I did it very very crudely, not really having the tools other than a jig saw , this time I wanted to do it right, I measured the half way point both vertically and horizontally and drew out the centre points. This gave me the centres , and then measured the subs. What I really needed was a way to get the holes cleanly.
What I really needed was a router jig , aka a router compass, A quick look on the internet I found exactly what i needed, but at £40 I thought f**k that, I got some acrylic, and carefully made myself the jig, removed the router base plate, using that as a template, cut the plastic, and once I had done that I measured out off centre of the bit till I got the diameter of the inner edge of the sub. screwed the jig at the centre of the baffle board and cut away.
It came out well, so made sure everything was sealed well. One thing I did think though is that the edges were a little poor, and the speaker connector wasn't flush mounted, so ordered a rabbet bit and voila.
So ends the current work on the sub, its sealed now and all the edges have been routed with a 45 degree bevel to make it neater and will really look nice when vinyl wrapped. With hindsight I should have made it in reverse with the top being fixed and the bottom being the last thing to do , because I will struggle when it comes to wrapping the holes as I cant trim it as nice , but lesson learnt. if ever you make your own box , take that into consideration. I did trim the back edges slightly with this, as i didn't want it to push to far out into the boot , as i had the next step to do yet .... the amp rack.
Amp Rack
These were the amps of my choosing , both Pioneer. but different models. I wanted to power the door speakers by an amp rather than by the head unit, because the speakers can handle so much more than the head unit can supply so
1 x Pioneer DM-D8604 4 Channel Amp
The subs are wired down to 2 ohm so they will get 1000 watt RMS from
1 x Pioneer DM-G8601 Mono Block Amp
One of the things I hate about doing installs , especially when you don't have a garage , is doing test fits and templates. the best thing you can ever find to help with this is the trusty old cardboard and some tape. The tape is great for adding bits to a basic shape, and cutting the edges to fit, you can get some quite complicated shapes prepared. If only I didn't have to hump the box in and out all the time to test fit. 
I did managed to get a rudimentary template done though and worked out where on the board the amps would sit, you have to be careful here , because the roof mechanism on the 307 means the whole back of the car levers out
So not only do i have limited height, and width , I also now haqve limited depth due to the size of the sub box , im actually starting to think that it would have been better to build a sealed box which could have been smaller than a ported one. I have taken this rack as high as I could as this should tell me what sort of adjustments I need to make, if you look under the MDF you can see one of the amps put there to see how low I need to be to line up with the height of the rack.
Theres some strange areas on the floor of the car, so when possible I have sketched out areas on the bottom plate to show where the wheel is , wheres theres supports and lifts , just so that I have space for cable runs. I originally was going to place the cable runs on top due to it having a beauty panel , but unfortunately the amps load the cable from underneath rather than from the side.
Doing the front panel though in all honesty was a royal pain in the arse of measuring, cutting, testing, filing and sanding.... till eventually you get the dimensions you need plus enough play for heat and the vinyl rap.
Of course then you just have to test fit again , to make sure it can all come in and out of the car.
This is something I have had to work around as it still has to be a useable vehicle, meaning i still need to be able to get to my spare wheel, I think though I will keep my locking wheel nut out so i dont have to rip it apart unless I have to change the wheel, I might remove the tools from the spare too , and replace it with a compressor in case i get a flat , not sure yet.... but I can do that after.
You can see in the above pic , where the spare is in relation to the amp rack.
So close .... needed to make sure everything lined up and to be fair its actually lined and levelled up well. Equidistant on the rack on the internal and external edges. The bottom plate still needs more work , but the top beauty plate just needs a good wrapping.
So another weekend has begun , I didn't want to do too much this weekend because of a family funeral which kind of pulled the mood down a little bit , but one thing I did want to sort out is building a router table , this isn't anything fantastic, its really only a plunge router upside down , set at a height and mounted using hex bolts etc. what it does allow is to router mouldings and duplicate templates. helped no end.
Kerfing at its best ..... what is a kerf , its where you can turn normal wood, in this case MDF and saw through the depth enough that the wood becomes flexible so that it can go around corners , this piece in particular is a trim piece that i got totally wrong in the size it needs to be , but such is life, I will redo it once I do another test fitting.
The amp base board is looking as rough as old bollox , I wanted to paint it , but it isnt holding the satin black paint too well , possibly because it doesn't have any primer, not really sure what to do about this just yet , might get some primer and redo it , alternatively I might just wrap it in vinyl , just you don't see it often so might be just a waste of vinyl , its only being painted so the wood shade doesn't show through.
Wrapped my box this weekend too , this wasnt actually a bit of a pain in the arse but I didnt do too bad a job of it , it was all glued and stapled, as I said earlier , would have been easier if I would have left the bottom till last so that I could staple the holes better , I still managed to do it ok though.
Another view of the flavoursome box , I only wrapped the parts that will be seen , as mostly it wont be apart from the top and part of the front, the rest was painted black.
Top down view of the amp rack being test fitted
Side view of the amp rack being test fittedAnd thats it for this weekend
Just a quick Mid Week post , have decided that I don't like the cables resting over tyres etc. in the boot , so a little bit of cable management , I couldn't find P Clips or Brackets that were suitable , so decided to design my own.... I will 3D print them later, PLA should be fine as they shouldn't get too warm. Ive designed a single and a double, I cant see the need for a quad or a triplet, and most likely will need to do something similar for the RCA and Speaker cable.
Couldnt do much this weekend as I had promised to help out on other things such as clearing my loverly mother in laws front deck , but still managed to print off some of the above brackets. Having trouble with bed adhesion , but needless to say I did manage to get some done of the singles.
Last weekend, I didn't do much , mainly due to Kate being poorly with a kidney infection , so this week Although there's more fabrication to do , I am at a point that if I don't start running cables then I will end up with lots of wooden bits but pointless.
So whats got to be installed ?
3 x RCA Interconnects
1 x Remote Control RJ11 Cable (sub control for one of the amps)
Front Speaker Cables
Rear Speaker Cables
Power and Remote (If i feel like it, see above why this scares me)
So firsts first , I had to remove the rear firewall carpet. This came our pretty easily after I had removed the screws for the roof blind. It had to be removed becauses there was no way to see where the cable runs would fit. I have never had a 307cc before so it was a case of not just throwing under the seat as its heavily braced. But I got it out and so this is the first stage of the install.
I have used all manner of posh very very expensive interconnects in the past and to be honest because these are not running along the same run as the power theres really no need for heavily insulated £30 version. These will do fine.
Out Comes the rear seat , I had un-clipped this a few weeks ago , but never really did much other than run the cables for the rear camera.
Rear seat removed, lots of room to do stuff.
I was going to remove the front seats to run this , but in all honesty there was no need, The carpet is clipped in , so I un-clipped it , and laid the cables down , all the cables have been flat loomed rather than bundled together so they don't sit like a drain pipe down the car.
One thing I don't like is that Peugeot have socketed the doors to the A pillar for cables , so I cant run a direct line to the door speakers. What I will do for now Is either strip the sockets back and solder the new cable on to them or patch in to the original cabling. Luckily the door speakers do have pretty good cables to start with however as I want to mount some more door speakers in the future I might just patch it and redo it all later when I fabricate the door cards. I have looped the cable rather than run two separate lines until everything is installed and I can cut with confidence as there's nothing worse than cutting short.
I have now stopped for something to eat and swapped the car around ..... next thing is the bit I'm dreading the POWAHHHH.
Note : never run signal and power down the same side of the car, it causes no end of problems with interference. I know sometimes theres no choice, but in this instance power will be run down the passenger side (closest to the battery) and the signal down the drivers side.
This is a scary area for me , due to totally messing up the wiring earlier on in the process, I have two lots of power cable that I can use, either blue CCA, or my old faithful that's been in lots of my cars, which is the red OFC cable. The difference between them is CCA is copper clad aluminium, and OFC is oxygen free copper. the OFC stuff flows current better over a longer distance.
Power Cable run down the length of the car, 100 amp fuse in the engine bay , and 100 amp RCD in the boot , so essentially something to protect the car , and something to protect the equipment, I always go double coverage.
For today (Saturday), I have packed up and made sure everything still works in the car. One of the other things I had noticed is that I need to do some patching on my Amp Rack , there's a few bits I didn't staple and the heat in there (32 degrees yesterday) the vinyl has come a bit loose and sticky. but I will sort it out. Just need to buy a new stapler as mine is shite.
So far Saturday is not going particuly well this week,
I had planned to re-reun new power lines , however 2 of my deliveries havnt turned up, did however get new 4 gauge power and earth (5 meters of each), i just cant justify 0 gauge for this size of install. and a very nice new distribution block and AGU fuses. Kind of makes a mockery of the kit I bought previously as it would mean i used non of it , however to be fair it was only 12 quid. and I might use it to wire up something for the wife , or just put it in the bits box with the rest of the stuff, you never know when you are going to need some stuff.
anyway , this weekend was pretty much a wash out , as was lacking parts and yes I could have put things together but truth be told , i didnt have enough of what I needed , so I bought a new stapler (arrow T50) and redone some trimming. Worked out the cable paths etc. relaid some painters tape on my 3d printer and printed off a load of brackets. I have been trying to do this for a few weeks but for some reason I had real trouble with bed adhesion.
Anyway , got most of what I wanted to get done, at least bracket wise, I also removed the rear 12v socket and plate , as I want to remake it in MDF so I can use it to mount my RCD for the power. Anyway ... as you can see on the left here... 3d printing is not a straight forward error free exercise and you get a LOT of failed prints especially when its so close to the end, however I fixed this problem with giving it supports.
Lets roll on next weekend, when I hopefully have the parts I need, and hopefully Kates stereo will have arrived.
Ciao
here it is the weekends work is once more upon us.
i'm ashamed to say that I appear to be doing less and less over the weekends at the moment , still doing about 5 or 6 hours a day though over Saturday and Sunday, but I do have one problem , I still don't have a suitable battery clamp that will fit my battery , the easy way is to buy a new battery but there's nothing wrong with the one that's on the car so I have a problem with buying things I don't need, anyway I did order a set that unfortunately broken when trying to tighten , but on further inspection they were designed to fit a 19mm positive terminal , and of course my battery like many these days are set for a smaller terminal, thing is every where i have looked, its all 19mm standards rather than 17mm positive. I don't know what I am going to do with that yet , but for the moment .... I contacted the seller on EBay and they very kindly sent me another, so a LOT of credit to them.
I never received my distribution block for the boot side of the cabling, the seller says they have sent it , but I am dubious to say the least, anyway I have waited 2 weeks for it , so I am going to get a refund as I am not prepared to wait any longer. It all delays things my end, but I am still doing what I can.What I am actually considering is either using the 100amp RCD I have , or buying some aluminium bar and make my own, with a couple of bolts. But as its live .. I need it to be as far away from the body shell as possible, and I found the perfect place in my car, there's 12v fag lighter socket in the boot of a 307cc that's using a tiny area or a rather large plastic panel that's sunk into the carpet, as you can see from the picture on the left , there's a lot of scope for using that recess, however I have always been one to not destroy or over modify whats already there , as I would ultimately life to return the car back to normal when ever I choose to get rid of the car , so of course what I am going to need to do , is to to remake that whole thing, but without the cigarette lighter socket..
The first step is to remove whats already there, to gauge what I am going to need to do, I ve had this out before as I used the 12v feed to power the reversing camera, I like using that feed as it isn't a constant live. But I pulled it out and started measuring up, its a funny thing though as there's curves all over it.
I still have quite a lot of 9mm MDF left so, that was the material of choice in this instance , I worked out the thickness of the panel itself and measure it out , of course it wasn't hard to make a template from what I had already as it was mostly flat other than the 12v cap. I would ultimately like to retain that 12v socket , but I suspect that I wont easily be able to remove it , and as I said earlier I don't want to destroy it ( or modify it to the points its changed too much).
After creating the first one , I used that with a straight edge bit on my home made router table and created another, I dropped in a few screws as I didnt have template tape , I figured as I am going to wrap it in vinyl anyway it wouldn't matter too much.
Tadahh, there we go three done and glued together , this is the last picture of this , as I wanted to rabbet the edge in with my rabbet router bit , but I came across a problem , I rushed it too much and didn't let the glue dry fully, when I went to router the edge .. it snagged and completely took half of it out , so all that work was pointless, but I did learn from it if nothing else.
One of the things I learnt , is that it wasn't going to be deep enough anyway, Not to do any of the ideas that was running around my head, so I had to start again, this time though I decided on using thicker MDF sheet, I found a scrap piece that I had left over, So did the same procedure as before but started the rabbet bit on the first start. Note I have also removed the panel for the 12v Socket.As you can see, the test fit actually looks fairly decent, it fits well in the hole and doesn't look too fat against what was there originally.. Once I did this I decided it still wasn't deep enough so I used what I had made as a template and went back to the 9mm material to add a little more depth.
Needless to say I but it out on the router table, and used a trim bit to make it flush with the face plate. I actually found some double sided tape, so used that as template tape, it worked well.
The bottom edge , I left an edge on while rabbeting the recess, this is so that the bottom edge has some purchase against the carpet. I used used the beveled edge bit and smartened up the edges, I am still unsure how to wrap the recess well , as I didn't think I can to be honest, I suppose with hindsight I should have recessed a rabbet so that I could sink a run around the race plate , but ohh well never mind. I also used every small clamp I had to make sure the glue set well. I left it for a few hours to set properly this time.
This is a quick block over with some satin black paint , it looks absolutely shyte to be honest, so I think I am going to have to bit the bullet and get some filler primer and sand a lot. Its something that I can do , but I has hoping I didn't have to buy any filler etc. but oh well never mind. better to not cut corners I suppose.
MDF never paints well without priming , as it soaks up the paint very unevenly , I knew this anyway , but just wanted to see how it would look in black . the screw holes will be filled and it will be sanded primed and repainted. I might do black , depends, Not sure whether to rattle can it , or to buy half a liter of colour and blow it over with the spray gun. It's now twice as deep as it used to be and I still have the original to put back if I rip it all out. I think its actually came out ok really. and it will look even better when I paint it properly and drop in the distribution. With hind site, I think I should I have only made it as big as it needed and square up the recess. but its done now, If I mess it up I will do it again.
A little mid week update, so where are we ... well every single battery terminal I have tried has been a pointless exercise, non of them fit , and to be honest.. the amount of batteries I have seen on vehicles that are the same as mine terminal size wise is ridiculous.
There appears to be 4 different sizes of post (excluding ford type terminals type F)
Most modern (not all) types of battery terminal are based on the SAE/JIS standard, at least that I can find in europe. Now this doesn't mean that everything is , but certainly the PSA group of vehicles which is Peugeot and Citroen , and believe me in Europe that;s quite a large amount.
The problem lies with the post diameter. SAE is 17.5mm for positive and 15.9mm for negative. yet EVERY after market terminal I can find, not only the posh ones for audio but also the standard OEM fitment ..tend to be the DIN standard or the EN standard, which is pretty cool as that's the German and European standards authorities however the French tend to want to be different. I cant work out why in all honesty, you would think a standard is just that .... a standard. But I have done lots and lots of reading and pretty much I have very few options available to me other than extending the connectivity from the battery to the distribution block and then feeding everything from there , the only problem I have with that is that it looks shit.
Anyway, the other option which I am really hard pressed to go with is connecting to the fuse box terminal, this is something I don't want to do ... but it is a viable option at the end of the day but I really can only see it as the LAST option, not the first... as its holding up my build , despite me cracking on with other things.
So what have I bought this week, for this weekends workThis is the last chance for the battery side before I hit up the fuse box as shown above.
I also bought some filler primer, black gloss paint and some ISOPON P38 to smooth out that boot panel and make it nice. I also bought some aluminium bar to make up my own bus bar as I cant seam to buy anything that would work as I want it. This will need drilling and tapping.
It was only £2 so no big loss , but I thought I would give it a go.
That's enough for the "mid week" update. lets see what I can do this weekend.
It was a bit too tasty this week with temps reaching over 30 , but I still tried to get things done, one of the main things this week is my MOT on Tuesday , so I didn't want to do anything that could cause problems with the car , and certainly I have to go get a new tyre on Monday as I don't think the one on there is too great for MOT purposes.
anyway............ what did I get done
I t was another fabrication weekend, but on a different level this time. As I said above I bought a few bits midweek , and mostly they all arrived before Saturday , Certain key parts didn't arrive but I found myself having to purchase 2 things I didn't expect, Mainly a tap and die set , I had one but it was imperial size, so had to get a metric size one, and a small bench drill vice. I bought them Friday night and they were with me by Saturday morning , so I was very impressed.
Saturday morning came and I felt he heat of the sun like it was a nuclear mushroom cloud, The inside of my workshop so was unbelievably hot that I was dripping sweat like a river. but I didn't want to waste the weekend so did what I could. What I did manage is to get the bar cut down. I really didn't need a 150mm long bar for what was essentially just splitting one into 2. so I figured 2 x 75mm bars would be sufficient one for power , one for ground. I could always order more or do a re-design but I cut the bar down and did a test fit in the newly 3D printed shell. .It actually fit pretty well.
I flipped it over and made sure that the bolts also fit before I tapped the bar.It kind of looks ok , but to be honest I didn't like the look of the rather rough filament, I took at it with some sandpaper and started to smooth it down.
I know it looses its sheen when you sand it , but I had a small amount of Z banding and like i say I didn't like the final finish , so this is really just prep work for the finished article.
Before I go any further, I better make sure I drill and tap the back holes for the bar, Hard as they are shallow, but all good.
A little bit more sanding and some filler primer later, its starting to take shape
Put a very very slim film of filler over a few bits of it , just to smooth out anywhere that the filler primer wouldn't go or was too shallow.... and tadahhh ... (still need to drill and tap the top bolts)
The workshop is looking like a bomb has hit it though , mainly because well , i work till i drop
So what else did I manage to get done over this toasty weekend.
I filled and primed the amp rack base , and side panel that I made
This really wont be seen, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't give it lots of love too , so just sanding, filling and priming, it will be covered with a panel anyway.
but its getting there......
Lots and lots and lots of sanding , which is a bloody pain in the arse. not really even going to see this , and kate says to me " why are you talking so much time on things you wont see " then she said " you are too much of a perfectionist.
Anyway Everything primed up , ready for glossing, at least the first hit.
New Toys for this weekend consisted of.......
Tap and Die set for the threads £12.00 Ebay
Small drill press vice .... to hold the bar while I drill it.
£10 Ebay
Kate got me a new router bit set, bless her , she always thinks of me when shes out and about.... best of any bunch she is.BOLLOX!!!!
now we come to the oh fuck part of the week.
MOT Due on Wednesday , so Kates booked it in for its annual health check. I noticed my front nearside tyre was wearing a bit heavy , so went down to the local SETyres to get it replaced, they took a look as the main center of the tyre was REALLY meaty , it had lots of tread on it , but both the inside and outside edges of the tread were quite heavily worn. ...
Both the inside and outside edges of the nearside tyre is a bit ropey , the tyre guy said this WOULD pass its MOT , as its not down to the thread , but it would only be a matter of time. he checked the other side and it wasn't much better .
He took a look at my lower track arm AKA "lower wishbones" and its not looking good, both appear a bit flakey , but the passenger side looks essentially collapsed , this is NOT good , as MOT due tomorrow. Kate just called up the place, they can do it , 2 wishbones fitted ... £270 .... WTF!!!! seriously that's not overly pricey , but its 40 minutes each side, but I suppose that's so I don't have to , you couple that with the £100 i just had to spend on Tyres and this is one HELL of an expensive MOT. I guess with the mileage I do every day you need to be safe.
Let us see what happens tomorrow when the MOT is done or they fine new expensive problems
Monday Night Special.
I got home from work , and the temperature was too bad , so I quickly nipped into the workshop and drilled and tapped the distribution block. Dont get me wrong ... its not perfect , but it will do the job ok
Other than that .. its MOT day , so ... we will see what unknown , unexpected and unwanted expense that will bring. should know by this afternoon.
Tuesday happened , the car went for the work that needed to be done on the wishbones , and of course the MOT.
and surprisingly the garage came back and said they thought the wishbones were within tolerance for MOT purposes ... and issued a nice new spanking MOT. so I am really pleased as its something that would have cost over £300 to get done , and that would just be crippling.
Mini Update
Well to be honest , I really wanted to get things done this weekend, but to be honest I just felt like crap .. all dizzy etc. it was too hot and wasn't achieving anything, so basically I just pottered around and made some decisions on where things were going to go.
After much mucking around , I have decided NOT to have the fuse box at the front of the car, although the cable does need to be fused as close to the battery as possible, I am going to put in an RCD as normally, and fuse it at the rear. I was just going to put the distribution bus bar I made at the back , but I thought it stook a bit prouder than I would have liked.
I pulled the existing wiring out cleaned all the terminals and re-crimped. To be honest I really wanted to solder these wires but they just wouldnt go to plan no matter what I did with them. So I figured its best to have a good crimp than a shit solder.
I actually like how all this has come together, I know its not ideal but at least it should work. I will use the distribution bus bar I made for the negative lines, while the replacement 12v line case in the boot that I made is large enough for the fuse holder. So I populated the fuses , made sure the correct amount of holes were drilled out in the right place and set about installing it in the side panel.
Please ignore all the dust etc ... and my finger marks everywhere , but you can see the power cable coming in , and the two lines out for the amp power. it generally wont be seen , but i need to make sure everything is fused correctly and not prone to shorting out off anything. But that's that for now.
So this weekend ....
Its been a bit of a heat wave , and suprising how much you just dont want to do when the heat is in. I cant post the end result in here yet , but heres a few steps.
I decided to do a few test fits this weekend to see how everything would pull together and weather or not I could still get to my spare wheel in the case of an emergency. One thing did appear from doing that was it was quite difficult to move everything out of the way to get to that spare wheel. I knew how far I needed to go cable wise to get to the fuse block... so the cable cutting began.
Went to test cable lenth .... and it all seams to be going to plan.
Now all of this would have been absolutely fine , however 2 things came out of this..
1. With the box in , its almost impossible to get to the fuses.
2. I have zero space to put the 1.5 farad capacitor in that's been kicking around unused and opened for quite a while.
3. Theres no hang space for the cables so they have to be cut to lenth , which is crap because then its too tight to get everything in and be able to pull it out to get to the spare wheel as theres not enough play.
A decision had to be made as to whether or not the spare wheel was such a massive loss , I know lots of people with new cars that have no spare wheel what so ever, they just have a can of tyre weld. My spare was in perfect completely unused shop original condition, so clearly had never been used.
There is a thought that at some point I might want to put a secondary battery in the rear ... so I committed myself and removed the spare tyre and cracked out the cardboard and scissors.
In my honest opinion I don't like removing my spare , but its extra weight, and i'm not 100% sure I would need it , unless I have a blow out , so I asked the misses , if she would bring me my spare if ever it was required. She confirmed she would so ... it HAD TO GO!!!! I will of course buy some tyre weld just in case. and possibly carry a small compressor in case I get a slow puncture. The trick is to remember the rest of the stuff.
Heres the back board, the drops completely into the wheel well , This will be braced and will give additional support to the sub box. the grooves are for the top panel to sit in , it will be glued and tacked into place when its all good , however at the moment im considering making the top panel slightly smaller , as its overkill really and its been a challenge getting a streight edge, despite measuring it in place , marking the board and cutting on a table saw it still sppears to be slightly off by a few mm. But It will come together im sure , but im now considering moving the fuse holder down to the wheel well too, because I can. Kind of makes a bit of a waste of the panel that I made , but such is life. You live and learn.
Another weekend is upon us , and im starting to think to myself that I am taking way to long on this and may be procrastinating a little bit , but i figure I should make some progress this week.
One of the first things to do is to set myself up a ground point. I have unlimited options on this as due to the car being a convertible it is very structural, and rather than the backseats being drop down like a hatchback , it has a complete steel wall behind the seats in the boot , so drilled it out, Xmas treed the hole to the right size, tapped it and cleaned it from paint. I did a resistance check between the battery and this location and all is good.
I am struggling with taking out the spare as a concept, I don't like driving without the spare unless I REALLY have to, so I thought to myself that as I don't have a secondary battery yet I don't need to completely wipe out the wheel. I took some measurements and the fuse block, distribution block and the power cap WILL fit , as long as I put it low enough into the spare. Everything was routed out and test fitted. before it was pulled back out for paint.
The only problem is that my power isn't actually long enough to go where it needs to go, now I found an extension for the power line, and I really liked it , it wasn't expensive at £4, and I went and added it to the cart.... £7 delivery ... in the UK, what a load of bullshit , I refuse to pay £7 delivery for a £4 item, and I know it should only be £1.99 so I scrapped that idea. Then I thought back to my broken Battery Terminal , it has the right size , it has hex key bolts, all it needed was to have the broken parts removed and filed / grinded down. but ohhh crap I don't have a bench grinder.
My wife asked "im off to the shop , do you want to come along for the ride ....... " sure I said.
shes regretting it now, as I found this in store .... so passed over some of her magesty's coin and brought this bargain puppy home. Its nothing quality , but certainly will work for what i need it for , the odd bit of grinding and sharpening.
Ive ordered a new Circuit Breaker for the front of the car , as I really don't want to use the poor quality AGU fuse holder that I have or use Ring Terminals because I can't crimp and solder them in place, I would like a hydraulic crimper for larger gauges, but I really cant justify it that much. I can't say I wont get one , but I have my doubts.
Strangely though , I say that yet I am also looking for an oscilloscope so that I can set everything up
Anyway , done for this weekend , nothing impressive I know , Roll on next weekend.
So , to get it out of the way early , I bought this week Care of Mr Ebay .... a couple of tools, one new .... one second hand.
The first item on the agenda is an 8 ton hydraulic crimp, this is potentially a serious messed up purchase , because I have seen mixed reviews about build quality on these. Some people seam OK with them other appear to break them with a few turns.certainly I dont like to throw money away, at 19.99 its not going to break the bank, but I thought I would give it a go , I don't have to crimp lots of terminals , but I do have to do some that I cant remove to put them in a vice , so this is for convenience more than anything really. I will let you all know how it works and whether or not it was worth the effort.
The second item of this week is this thing, now I wanted a proper oscilloscope , and really it was out of my price range for the purpose I needed it for, so I looked at the cheap pocket ones , they were alright , but nearly all were Chinese, which is OK apart from the delivery, so I then looked a ones that were part of multi-meters , again ... Chinese and around the £50 - £60 mark. Then I found this referenced on E-Bay, which is a PC based USB oscilloscope , as I only wanted to check for clipping , I won the bid at £35 unused second hand ( £70 new) so worth a punt.
Will let you all know if it works.
So what else did I do......
We this week was mainly about putting wires together, I in my complete stupidity never labeled any of the RCA lines which all looked the same when I originally ran them, I also just tucked them behind the drivers foot well.
Much testing , tracking and tesa taping was done in order for me to get here, but everything is now wired behind the Head Unit and almost ready to roll at the back.
Yes I know I should of taken a better picture , but its just asembly time for the wiring, so nothing really to see or show off. but you can see the Cap and the positive and negative connections on a painted plywood plate in the spare wheel. I still have to work out where to put the other bits , but for now ...... that's that.
