I've installed the Eclipse 4430 DVD/tomtom Nav unit, and i'm currently working on the sub enclosures. Yes I was inspired other members here to do this.

The subs are soundstream stealth 13's they only require .5 cu. ft of air space each, and I'm be using my old trusty Alpine MRD-M500 to power them. lastly I'll be placing some Kenwood 6.25's in the doors run off the Eclipse.

Pictures to follow. gotta go to work now.

I have to say however that I am pretty impressed with the Eclipse. It's functionality is excelent. Basically you get a nav computer in the tom tom, and a head unit working seperatly at the same time, and you use the push button toggle to switch between head unit visual out put, or nav visuals.

As others that have used blue tooth enabled portable navigation units can attest to the BT features work excelent. So If you phone works with a tomtom, then it works with this unit as the tomtom handles all thephone related business.

 

Do you think the shallow soundstream subs will be loud enough for ya?
I've yet to hear any shallow subs but they seem to good to be true.

 

I don't know yet,I was running 1 12'' 1200 watt dvc by american bass for the last 3 years so we'll see if it will be good enough. B ut the two subs wired together in parallel should make good use of this amps power.

BTW the alpine amp came with a factory bench test card. And it put out 551 watts at 12v,so i probably will never get rid of it. That's what i like about alpine amps rated power is at 12v ,not at 14.4v like some other brands.

 

I was going to go with a shallow sub for mine however, i'm just going to go with a regular style sub that uses the same .5 cu.ft. sealed enclosure in a 10"

 

Supposedly, the soundstreams are supposed to play lower in a .5 cu ft. box than most 12's in a .75 cu ft box. I'm just going to have to turn the gain down to not blow them out with the alpine.

like I said earlier, we will see how they perform. I hope it's as advertised, as I'm somewhat an early adapter.

 

Here are the glassed enclosures that I have been working on for the past week or so.

I need this ready in a week so that I can take a trip across the US in the Fit.

Right side


Left side


the flat piece to the right of the speaker ring is for a capacitor to mount to.

I also took some time and Dynomatted the spare tire well. and added a bag and a half of poly fill (pillow stuffing) into the rear shock mounts and tail light interior trim.

made a pretty good difference. Even if it didn't I'm not getting much of it back out now.


I have to finish the fiberglassing, and I'm going to sand then paint with some black "hammered" finish paint.

 

Looks good, keep the pics coming. Looking forward to seeing finished pics.

I went with a 10" RF Shallow mount P3 for the same reason - to keep as much trunk space as possible.

 

I just sanded for about two hours this morning, went through in couple of places so i'm going to patch it up with fiberglass filler and sand again tomorrow. Then i've decided to paint so we'll see how it goes.

 

Your off to a good start. If you end up with more than .5 cu ft, that will be good. You'll have smoother sounding bass with better extension on the bottom end. I never heard a 12 in .75 cu ft that didn't make me want to throw up. I call that boofer-bass. Not good.
Use polyfill in your enclosures. Eclipse is a good choice.

 

So how much volume did you end up with?

 

what's the best way to measure?

 

Fill the enclosure with styrofoam popcorn(peanuts). Then empty it into a cardboard box. Measure the width, height, and depth of the popcorn in that cardboard box. Then multiply those three measurements and divide the number by 1728.

Example: C-box is 12"x10" inside. It fills up about 9 inches deep.
12 x 10 x 9 = 1080
1080 / 1728 = .625 cu ft.
1728 represents 1 CUBIC foot (12" x 12" x 12")

Your subwoofer takes up maybe around .06 cu ft, so you would have a net of .565. This would be too small for smooth bass with good low end extension.
You want to be around .75-.85 optimally before accounting for the woofer.

 

Thanks for the method, but theese subs are designed for enclosures as small as .5 cu ft.

They are however optimized for enclosures of .75 cu ft.

in the literature I read that they will sound like shit in boxes over 1 cu. ft though!

(or something to that effect.

 

even though it says it can fit in an enclosure that small its always best to go with the ideal... its worth the little bit of lost space in the end

 

Painted, will fit and bolt in tomorrow(with velcro).

Then pictures...

 

I'm looking forward to seeing how it turned out

 

Here are my finished pictures finally


















as you can see from the last two pics the pop out access panel is attached to the sub box. It holds the sub where it 's supposed to be pretty well. I'm not sure if you want to rely on this being the only thing that holds your box down if you drive like a rally racer though.

Btw it bangs! I'm pretty impressed with the sound quality. At first I was a little concerned, then I took the time to tune the AMP to the Eclipse's strengths and it's working out pretty well. Doors are being run off of the 4430's internal amp with cheap Kenwoods as upgrades to the stock speakers.

First on the progression was the Eclipse AVN 4430. This made the stock speakers sound so much better I was almost convinced I was wasting time upgrading the stockers.

Then I did just the front doors with the Kenwood's and some dynomat on the biggest metal section of the inside door frame, some dynomat in the spare tire well, and some polyfill in the tail light access area. This made me realize that the stockers were totally inadequate, sounding very boomy, while the speaker plays lower frequencies easier, it distorts them quickly and has a complete lack of high frequency ability. The Kenwood's remedied this easily, and I took some of my volume back with a little bit of sound deadening.

I finished (trying to make look pretty) the sub boxes, installed the power wiring, hooked up the capacitor, and bolted down the subs and amp, while waiting for some stuff to dry or while I was ready to try and sit for some of the installation took care of the rear doors intermittently on Sunday. I cussed, bled and got sunburnt, but damnit I was tired of working on this because this upcoming Friday I'm taking a road trip from Florida to my home state in Washington (The Evergreen state, not D.C.) I'm going to Japan for a year in a little over a month and I satisfied with works right as opposed to looks pretty. I can always go back over things with some fabric later on with very little hassle if need be.

The Subs hit hard, without trying to mess anything up and physically measuring I believe the subs excursion to be about 1 full inch, which I think is incredible for a sub with only 2 inches of rear depth.

The Eclipse has a LPF at 80 HZ, I turned it off, and am using the AMP's LPF at 100 HZ with a + 3 db peak at 45 HZ and a width of 4 HZ curve surrounding the 45 HZ peak.

The AMP's model number is MRD-M500, i picked it up new in '03 and haven't found a need for a different amp since. I think all of it's digital tuning features are excellent and would recomend it to anyone if you can find one!

So What do you think?

 

awesome set up. anything rattle?

 

just the lid on the amp controls, it's got an aluminum hinged door that covers the controls that I need to screw down once I'm done adjusting everything, then I can flash the settings to it's ROM to store them in case power is disconnected.

 

how much? it cost u?