Car audio... Lol
- Thread starter ericfx1984
- Start date
As for power usage those 2 amps pictured above by themselves could drain a pair of optimus batteries in about 20 minutes of listening at moderate volume level. It has 2/0 power wires pushing the 600 watts atlas and I think the gemini amp is 375 watts or 400. I can't remember. The car is at the other house so I can't go look.
Also it had amps up front too but I can't remember that they are.
The sound quality of that thing is unbelievable but I know everyone claims that.
Also it had amps up front too but I can't remember that they are.
The sound quality of that thing is unbelievable but I know everyone claims that.
Of all of the vehicles I have had and I have had 100's that 85 trans am is the best platform I have ever dealt with sq wise. To me its all about "shape" of the interior that achieves the sq effect.
The bmw x5 I have now has the high end factory system which sounds decent and hits hard too but it can't hold a candle to the pure sounds quality that old t/a has.
My corvettes are the absolute worst sound platform for surround sound chamber wise I have ever owned. I can do loud with them but they lack the space to achieve the same effect the t/a has.
The bmw x5 I have now has the high end factory system which sounds decent and hits hard too but it can't hold a candle to the pure sounds quality that old t/a has.
My corvettes are the absolute worst sound platform for surround sound chamber wise I have ever owned. I can do loud with them but they lack the space to achieve the same effect the t/a has.
86 z51 coupe. I bought it in 1987, sold it in 2014. I put 175k miles on it. It was silver beige from the factory. Painted it black after running from the cops one night, successfully.
It was a love/hate affair, everything on the car except the hard parts in the drivetrain broke at least once or more... but in the late 80s it outhandled ANYthing on the road. 86s are a weird one, as you may know they were supposed to get aluminum heads and some did but all were recalled due to cracking. Road and Track subsequently tested an iron head coupe and stated the car was "in phenomenal tune" and clocking consistent 5.7 second 0-60 times- almost a second faster than an 85. My car also seemed a lot quicker than it should have been. My theory was that either A: the blocks meant for aluminum heads had higher compression when fitted with iron heads... Or B: GM did something to tweak those cars so they would perform so well owners wouldnt feel screwed for not getting the aluminum heads they were promised.
86 was also first year of VATS which I endured years of issues with until I changed the ignition switch.
I spent about a year putting that sound system in including about 3 months gutting the whole inside and dynamatting everything and tightening every nut and bolt on the car. The HLCDs on top of the dash worked amazingly well and the cd changer on the passenger side took a lot of work to fit in but really paid off because the steel reinforcements silenced all those annoying squeeks and rattles. I had a rear view camera mounted in the roof brake light and another camera in the front bumper with a high power IR illuminator connected to the Clarion TV screen. The intent was for high speed running with the lights off but in practice it was scary as hell. Dont let me start on the parts I was collecting for the next addition but I already had a high power (for the 90s) IR laser module and a joystick servo controller... Was going to put it in the dash to blind abel pursuit helicopters' night vision cameras.
About that time I got my license back so didnt feel the need to keep smoking cops.
About 20 times in one lifetime was plenty. (Mostly on motorcycles)
Funny thing I havent had a moving violation now in 35 years. In the 80s I collected tickets like baseball cards.
We must be soul brothers because before my C4 I had an 85 trans am. Burgundy 5.0 TPI with t-tops.
Not mine but close. Great car, pretty reliable. Before that, 72 240z, 79 firebird formula, 72 porsche 914, 6 motorcycles in random order. I burned the most cops in the 240z and this:
Which was my last motorcycle. Got out while I was still ahead.
Thats scary I have owned or own every car you listed
71 firebird sold
97 formula firebird with lt1 and 6 speed stick (still have)
Bike you listed looks alot like the suzuki I had.
914 porsche but I don't remember the year it was (sold)
240z 70something sold
1984 300zx still have
85 trans am still have
87 convertible vette for sale
The 86 z51 I had was a good car but was a royal pain on bad roads. The suspension had no give. Could pull over a G laterial so handling was off the charts but a pebble in the road hurt driving over it. Put holes could put you in the hospital
Daddy Tanuki
Solar Wizard
fuck me, 1997 japan IASCA 3rd place in the nationals for the 600 watt class! two image dynamic horns, 4 kicker F6.5 in the doors and 8 orion 15" XTR DVC's... two 2100's for the subs, two HCCCA 250's for the mids and a NT 100 for the horns. 3 single wire alternators driven by a hydrualic pump. and 12 optimas on bussbars... god i miss those days!
This is the equipment card I displayed on my dash. Those are image dynamics horns on my dash. I ran them through my table saw and shaved off the bottoms so the dash became the bottom of the horn. Worked great and made em 5/8" thinner. Image Dynamics headquarters was in Los Angeles near me. When they saw the mod I had done they wouldnt even talk to me. They were pissed. It made em easier to tune and got rid of that honk effect. (Also because they were so close you didnt have to play them loud)
Horns are a pain but I used an a/d/s p840 for the front stage, and its mounted in the lower middle of the sub box. So from the drivers seat you just turn around and have access to the gain and crossover controls for those channels.
I also had mixed subs- a pair of 10s and a 12. Just because everyone said you cant do it. If each set has a gain control to balance them you can!
I won SoCal division on points and the regional championship meet. Got invited to the world finals in Dallas. Rented a trailer, took a few days off work, and packed up my van. It waa 100 degrees the day we left and the van blew a head gasket going over the mountains before we even got 100 miles.
I was actually relieved.
The next year I started building a system in this:
65 cadillac. You could stand up in back there was a disco dance floor a fog machine and neon everywhere. Had 5 amps, veritas aluminum horns, 8"s in the kicks, pair of 15s in a sand jacketed box. That absorbed all mechanical vibration so the bass was pure air movement.
The floors had rust through holes when I got it so I put aluminum plates over that with adhesive and bolts. But you can see the 8s. I built enclosures into the vent boxes. Plywood forms screwed in with brackets then fiberglassed inside. Then covered with modelling clay then sikaflex. Since I didnt have the vents any more, the sliding controls on dash were connected to the horns so you could adjust their angle up and down.
There were 2 systems in the hearse one in back and in front. You could switch the 15s to play with either system.
The floors had rust through holes when I got it so I put aluminum plates over that with adhesive and bolts. But you can see the 8s. I built enclosures into the vent boxes. Plywood forms screwed in with brackets then fiberglassed inside. Then covered with modelling clay then sikaflex. Since I didnt have the vents any more, the sliding controls on dash were connected to the horns so you could adjust their angle up and down.
There were 2 systems in the hearse one in back and in front. You could switch the 15s to play with either system.
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Daddy Tanuki
Solar Wizard
i always wanted to try the veritas horns, but they never made it over to japan back then. met eric stevens in 87 when he traveled over here to check out the scene. was a lot of fun back then.
Daddy Tanuki
Solar Wizard
Shoot I have been looking for a set of the ID cd2 comps for forever, I sold my last set in 98 as I was going through a divorce and to sell all toys to survive
I still have mine with the modified horn bodies but cant find the titanium drivers. I have them buried in a 10x20 storage locker somewhere. Cant remember if they were cd1 or cd2 but they were comp and about $950 a pair in 1997.
This was fun. This is the enclosures i made for the rockford fosgate symmetry epx2 that was my signal processor. The main unit has a blower and the remote or rdat had aircraft quick disconnect pins that mated with receiving holes in the corvette dash. That processor was cool 31 band eq a lot of settings.
I still have the clarion max 2256 head unit setup from the vette. Think it works fine. Bet Id have a hard time getting $200 for it on ebay now, it was $2300 new. The vette once had Zapco System 150 amps in each fender- the three piece ones with an energy storage module that were $750 ea. in the 80s. They became unreliable so replaced them with the p840. As I was doing the competition build I still wanted amps up in the fenders so bought a pair of phoenix gold xs2300s. Stout little amps but IASCA would actually disqualify your entry if you cannot access the amp fuses and gain controls. So with incredible difficulty I cut holes in the fender wells drilled holes in the side of the amps for the wires to come through and mounted each amp with an aluminum access panel visible inside the fender... Had a plexiglass panel and illumination just so the judges could look up and see you can get to the fuses. Cut the gain controls out of the amps and wired them to pots in outboard aluminum boxes.
Which of course forced me to advance to expert level because I modufied the amps internals. Cool on a regional level because youll always trophy since only 2-3 experts are even in a given region.
If you went to the nationals youd have to face that guy with the 4runner that had his whole dash and fenders built into a giant hlcd and 15s in the kicks.
Anyway I still have the xs2300s but cant find gain controls to put back in them.
Which of course forced me to advance to expert level because I modufied the amps internals. Cool on a regional level because youll always trophy since only 2-3 experts are even in a given region.
If you went to the nationals youd have to face that guy with the 4runner that had his whole dash and fenders built into a giant hlcd and 15s in the kicks.
Anyway I still have the xs2300s but cant find gain controls to put back in them.
Daddy Tanuki
Solar Wizard
PM me biyatch!
Daddy Tanuki
Solar Wizard
those soundstream mid bases were pretty shit red hot back in the day.
Pictured is the 10" sub, I had the 6.5" component mids in black plexi pods in the doors. I knew right off the way to impress the SQ judges was midbass so I had 4 of the p840s 8 channels dedicated to those 2 drivers. 120w each side and the a/d/s plate amps are very tightly regulated with nearly identical output at 12.5 volts and 14.4 volts. So ch 1&2 for the horns, 3&4 the soundstreams tweeters in the doors, and 5&6 and 7&8 just for the midbass. The tweeters were tuned way down to add width to the soundstage just imperceptively, as the season went by I tuned them even lower and stopped using rear fill altogether. If I was to continue competing with the vette the 6.5s might have been removed in favor of shallow 8"s in the floor reflected off the ceiling as lots of guys were going that way. However since my horns were actually very close to the listener, I couldnt have solved the pathlength differential I would have introduced between the mids and horns.
The cadillac had enormous width in the front and space in the kicks for big mids. I finished the system but never got to compete with it. During the year I was building its system living 100yds from the ocean the sea air took a huge toll on the car and the rust was insurmountable. I took care of it , washing and waxing it (and the corvette next to it) twice a week. But it rusted in unseen places, the rocker panels and frame rails. Then a head gasket blew, before I reassembled it the city tagged it for removal as an abandoned vehicle. I gave it to my neighbors brother, he towed it to riverside it never ran again.
Here was the cadillac in my driveway a week or so after 9/11, the engine was apart at the time.
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I mentioned to another user "teamROCS.com" and rec.audio.car then realized that things that existed 25 years ago on the web may not now.
teamROCS started from river oaks car stereo in houston. Its owner eddie runner had the installer.com domain and lurked on the usenet newsgroup rec.audio.car which was popular. Imagine a message board where industry professionals and hobbyists alike got together under the guise of being helpful but instead spent their time flaming people proving who was right etc eventually forming a club with exclusive membershios where legacy members beat up on newbies who were often top industry figures who wandered into rec.audio.car and believed we were the coolest thing on the web. Many members were installers, some were trolls living with their parents. We had t shirts and wore them to competitions, which was great if you were a lone competitor getting stomped on by local industry bullies.
Here archived is eddie runner abusing tom nousaine (a regular contributor at carstereoreview magazine, and a nice guy I met at several shows) in a thread about box stuffing.
Note that eddie is actually wrong and tom is right, however tom cant really drive home a convincing argument and eddie is a master at lowbrow bullying and has several teamrocs members piling on.
Eddie was a local legend in houston. At the strip mall his store is in, a young thug purse snatched a little old lady and tried to steal her car, breaking her arm in the process. Eddie heard her screams, cane out of his shop and stepped in front of the car to block the kid from leaving, drawing his handgun down upon him. When the thug shifted into drive and put the pedal down, eddie put a bullet through the windshield right between his eyes.
True story.
Every teamrocs member got a nickname that was a friendly insult played off their internet handle. As batvette, mine was buttsweat.
Eventually teamrocs had over 200 members, including alma gates (owner of the gates bronco world spl champ, first 180db competitor) who received red carpet treatment as a passenger in my cadillac limo at several events.
Now its just a memory as we all moved on, some have left the building forever.
teamROCS started from river oaks car stereo in houston. Its owner eddie runner had the installer.com domain and lurked on the usenet newsgroup rec.audio.car which was popular. Imagine a message board where industry professionals and hobbyists alike got together under the guise of being helpful but instead spent their time flaming people proving who was right etc eventually forming a club with exclusive membershios where legacy members beat up on newbies who were often top industry figures who wandered into rec.audio.car and believed we were the coolest thing on the web. Many members were installers, some were trolls living with their parents. We had t shirts and wore them to competitions, which was great if you were a lone competitor getting stomped on by local industry bullies.
Here archived is eddie runner abusing tom nousaine (a regular contributor at carstereoreview magazine, and a nice guy I met at several shows) in a thread about box stuffing.
Note that eddie is actually wrong and tom is right, however tom cant really drive home a convincing argument and eddie is a master at lowbrow bullying and has several teamrocs members piling on.
Eddie was a local legend in houston. At the strip mall his store is in, a young thug purse snatched a little old lady and tried to steal her car, breaking her arm in the process. Eddie heard her screams, cane out of his shop and stepped in front of the car to block the kid from leaving, drawing his handgun down upon him. When the thug shifted into drive and put the pedal down, eddie put a bullet through the windshield right between his eyes.
True story.
Every teamrocs member got a nickname that was a friendly insult played off their internet handle. As batvette, mine was buttsweat.
Eventually teamrocs had over 200 members, including alma gates (owner of the gates bronco world spl champ, first 180db competitor) who received red carpet treatment as a passenger in my cadillac limo at several events.
Now its just a memory as we all moved on, some have left the building forever.
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