ICE part 2

Getting the gear is only half the game, the goal lies in getting everything installed in the car. And a coupe is not exactly the best car for an ICE project, its small, dashboard is near and the windshield slopes too much. Kinda hard to achieve a natural wide soundstage. But then again, I am not exactly building a sound competition car.

First up, I've got to figure out where to place the tweeters. It will definitely be up on the dash, only problem is, I couldn't figure out if I'm going with an integrated tweeter pod within the A-pillar setup, or if a custom tweeter enclosure is the way to go. These are some pics of how the tweeters were set up in my previous ride.

I liked this implementation. It looks integrated and very stock though one downside is that once the pillars are fibreglassed, the driver positions were pretty much fixed. No mucking around or sudden configuration changes possible. It also takes quite a while to do. In the end, I decided to go with a more fuss-free option for the roadster.

Over here you see the test fit for the custom tweeter pod I will be using. Fits like a glove. The end product will be anodized matt black and that only went through once I was satisfied that the fit and wirings have no problems and was assured that there will be no issues with the end-product.

Next up would be the midrange drivers as well as the midbasses. There weren't much choice I had to begin with, and it was a good thing that the stock tweeter location could fit the midrange so nicely. On the left you see a picture of the stock tweeter cover removed and the midrange driver fixed on. There are wooden holders behind the panels to hold the speakers in place but externally, this is about as stock as you can get. In the second picture, you get a better idea of how everything looks like. You can also see the finished tweeter pod in that picture. Midbass drivers are hidden behind stock speaker covers. I did thought about doing an exposed midbass mounting, something like the picture below. But decided against it in the end, as I wasn't too certain about speaker integrity of such an installation.
Three layers of sound proofing went into those door panels as well, They damped the door critically and also has an added side effect of creating a nice thud sound on closing the door.

It also took about 30 meters of speaker cable to wire up all these drivers to the amplifers, which i think is an unbelievable amount of cable, seeing that the car isn't very long to begin with.

See the picture on the left? There are a few more pages of that in my notebook. Planning didn't get much simpler even after I have decided on the amps. To be honest, I was fretting over the small details. I know the amps can fit in that tiny well in the boot, main issue is HOW. I didn't want to just throw in the amps and call it a day. Everything has got to sit NICELY. I had a few preferred layouts and although they look more or less the same, I gotta admit it was kinda fun moving stuff around to see what kind of effect I can achieve.

These are pictures of the first test fit I had.

This would have been the preferred layout if I had not neglected to take into account the length of the wires as well as connectors. There is no way I could have spared another millimeter of space to accommodate the fuseblock. That's how tough it is to get an ICE display going on in an MX5.

Here you see the second test fit with the cable and connector lengths taken into account. I sorta kicked myself a bit at that point, as I realized the ridiculously long plugs the cable guy used when he was terminating the cables. In any case, that's about the only boner I have with this layout.

Here you see some pics of the completed product.

In this picture you see how the wires are configured. The two amplifiers are identical, both putting out 4x150W RMS power. However one is wired bridged to deliver 2x300w RMS to both midbasses and the other remains in 4 channel mode. You can also see the annoying proprietry connector that Alpine uses for its speaker connections. There's a piece of acrylic embedded with LEDs underneath the amps as well, although its not too visible in this representation.

Some more pictures of the setup. The amps take up the entire indentation in the boot. You can also see that the entire floorboard of the boot has been rewrapped in PVC for a more discreet look.

Some night shots. Not exactly very well done. I'm using my phone camera for all these images and I guess there's a limit to what it can do in the dark.