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The momstangs rebuild

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I have to laugh as when he told me the price my immediate reply was "That's all?! Ok lets do this."  He even bead blasted it to get the marks my vice put on it when I was drilling/tapping holes.

 

Meth addict is something along the lines I was thinking with some smoke or something coming off of the letters.

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Been busy getting stuff done and making more plans.  Found an airbrush artist but decided I wanted the tank power coated first so it and a couple of other things went to powder and my fusebox parts and wire loom went to the anodizer.  Funny enough while doing a search for images for ideas I did a google search for "Got Meth?" and the #4 image was this.

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The irony there will probably be lost on everyone except logan because its pointing at my home town.  Our county has led the state for some time both in meth arrests and back before the one pot in meth explosions.  So "Got meth?" seems perfect.  Can't wait to get the tank back from powder so I can take it straight to the airbrush artist.

Been busy with the primer and so far up to 600 wet on most of the car.  I started off with just a spray bottle and paper and was happy with it till I looked closer the next day.

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The next day I realized the paper was just clogging up to fast for a spray bottle so I grabbed a hose and went back at it for a 2nd day.  Got 80% of the car done and learned wetter is better when wet sanding as well as I needed some sandals for wet sanding.  It was really humid here the next two days and I spent them squishing around in my shoes. 

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Woke up for day 3 of wet sanding and got my daily lesson early, 2 days of wet sanding = one VERY stiff/painful back.... I could hardly move so I took a step back from all that motion and finished a couple of pieces I still needed to get anodized and powdered. After I dropped all that stuff off I switched gears to polish the ridetech caster/camber plates. I was told that some easy off oven cleaner left on for 15 min would make the annodizing wipe right off and ready to polish. So I sprayed it on, went to wipe it off 15 mins later and found it left a crusty surface on the top and some of it wiped off but most of it stayed on. So I put some more on and came back 15 mins later only to find it didn't seem to come off. Tried a wire brush and by the time the can was empty and I washed it all off this is what I was left with = not happy. So learnings from this day was that easy off ain't so easy...

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so after some time with my angle grinder and a flap wheel it was better but learnings for today are sandals are great for wet sanding, not so much for grinding metal.....

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After some time with some 600/1000/1500/2000 grit its ready for the polishing wheels I should receive tomorrow. I have spent the time to wipe every other logo off of any part I got. I didn't mean to wipe the ridetech logo off of these and was looking forward to seeing them polished up but after having to grind down all the crap from the easy off they didn't make it. cry.gif

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So while my back is almost better I know it well enough that if I were to get back at the sanding today that it would just aggravate it again and I would wake up tomorrow even worse then I was on day 3. So again I switched gears and started to get the wiring for the engine bay ran again. Can't wait to see it with the new MM suspension parts and the air struts.

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I got a box of these stock style harness holders and have been using them all over the place but with the 4 - 0 awg power wire runs there was not enough space(and they were too heavy) so they were just zip tied to the fender rail to ensure they stay in place. 

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it would have just been a back-woods Indiana redneck shirt to 99% of the people that came across it but to me, its home :)  It has been getting bad around here though.  Nothing worse then a crack head at the register they will never just shut up and ring your crap up all the while I am wondering if I will be the first person to pull a gun on the clerk NOT to rob them just to get out of the store...

 

Got the call from the anodizer today that he was done and ran out to pick it up.  The steeda sway bar mounts really look nice and I could not help but run home and put the wire loom together.  Also can't wait to see the fusebox mounted and see what the lights look like.

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i'd say this is the most thorough and best updated thread with continuous work and updates on this site. with your health issue you definitely don't allow that to keep you from getting directly back at it....awesome.

 

i'm liking what you're doing with the engine bay and definitely love the wheels but what i'm most impressed with is the fact that you are tackling just about every aspect of a major car build yourself! i mean from motor to suspension to paint and body lol. dude that's awesome. hell you even do all f your own painstaking, tedious polishing lol. 

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Prior to getting sick I was the kind of person that never sat still.  I busted my ass to get through school to get a nice comfy job where I would not have to work so hard and then when I got it I was bored so I got a 2nd job doing the same thing I busted my ass doing through school.  I went back to installing after about a year off just for the fun really but also just to keep busy.  When I wasn't doing one of those 2 jobs at one point in az I was riding my bike 75 miles a week off road, weight training 3 times a week and swimming all in training for cross country mountain bike races on the weekends.  It was a full schedule but I still managed to get out 2-3 nights a week to hang out with friends.  Then I got sick and literally all of that went away.  I don't have the energy to even do short rides on the bike other then maybe when I walk the dog around the block and needless to say the 2 jobs are gone as well.  The only thing I have left really is the car and I still enjoy working on it.  This project grew so far out of hand slowly I am not even sure how now.  After the accident I was really just going to paint it, do a wire tuck and call it a day.  But then all the ideas of stuff I had seen done or dreamed of doing slowly became a reality after a couple of searches and research of how it could be done.  If it were not for my computer, youtube and sites like this it would have just been slapped back on the road a month or two after the accident.

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man I swear if it isn't one thing its another. My stomach problems have been better since I went back on an old med the insurance dropped and of course then why wouldn't my back go out. I have two compressed discs in my back(the only thing they tell me is wrong when they do an x-ray for my stomach) and I guess they do not like sanding at all. Had to step back for about a week just to let it rest/heal before I could get back into it. I had most of the pieces ready to paint and only needed to work 2 spots when one night as I was getting something to eat I heard the fender fall off the saw horse in the garage. One of those things that I knew what it was as soon as I heard it, of course no one was around just shtuff happens... So then I get the fender fixed from the chips in the primer and get the final spot I had been having problems with fixed. So I thought at least from this pic you would think all was good.

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The blue line was hiding the 3rd brake light lens that I flushed in. I got the idea at a show a few years back when I saw a hotrodder had done something similar and after smoothing everything else out on the trunk lid this seemed like a good idea. Well last summer I got to talking to him more and found out that he has a complete fiberglass body... Needless to say the expansion of the metal vs the plastic was different and it would always separate on the pass side. I thought I finally had it fixed when I took the pic above only to come out the next day and see it had done it again. I didn't want too but I broke it out and decided to try a different plan, not sure how much I like this vs just deleting it but I really do not like deleting safety items like brake lights if I can help it. So this is plan B, plan C is the delete. I ordered 50 red flat top 3mm leds and cut out this piece and drilled the holes in it this afternoon. I also cut/drilled out a piece of plexi to go on the back that I would mount the leds in the plexi and then mount the plexi on the back so the leds hopefully fit flush with the back end. I stopped here so I can think about it overnight and sleep on it before I weld it into place. What do you think?

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and because I am sure someone will want to know how, I used 1/8" plexi as spacers on a jig I set up on my drill press. I would drill a hole, remove a block of plexi and then move it over and repeat. The plexi is not all uniform shapes because I was just concerned with using the thickness of the plexi then the size I cut it into. 


 

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i think that would work.  have you looked into maybe doing a licence plate frame as a brake light?

 

like this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CHROMED-ALUMINUM-LICENSE-PLATE-FRAME-with-LIGHT-AND-LED-THIRD-BRAKE-LIGHT-/251998440076

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i think that would work.  have you looked into maybe doing a licence plate frame as a brake light?

 

like this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CHROMED-ALUMINUM-LICENSE-PLATE-FRAME-with-LIGHT-AND-LED-THIRD-BRAKE-LIGHT-/251998440076

hmmm.  No I had not seen or thought of that and I think I like that better then the complete delete idea.  I will slide that into the plan C option before the delete if I change my mind on this but after thinking about it and sleeping on it I think I will go ahead with it.  Another cool option I thought of last night is I can wire them any way I want and use an automotive led sequencer I found to light it up from the center out 3 at a time. 

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Sorry to hear about your back.  I like the new 3rd brake light idea.  It will be very smooth and subtle looking.  I agree with not removing things like 3rd brake lights.  They are proven to be effective.  I notice I actually tend to watch for them and notice them first; often times they light up before the regular brake lights.  If I owned a car without one, I'd actually install one.  Especially an older car with brake lights that aren't great in the first place.

 

If you decide you don't like the 3rd brake light when you're done for whatever reason, you could make or buy one to put in the top or bottom of the rear window.  That's what I plan to do.  With the tinted windows it won't even be visible until it lights up.  Then the trunk lid could be completely smooth.  

 

I almost forgot to ask, but what is the rectangle mark a few inches below the brake light?

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i've considered doing an interior 3rd brake light in the rear window for safety....but imo these sn96 brake lights are huge and easy to see light up. but the led 3rd is going to look cool regardless 

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Sorry to hear about your back.  I like the new 3rd brake light idea.  It will be very smooth and subtle looking.  I agree with not removing things like 3rd brake lights.  They are proven to be effective.  I notice I actually tend to watch for them and notice them first; often times they light up before the regular brake lights.  If I owned a car without one, I'd actually install one.  Especially an older car with brake lights that aren't great in the first place.

 

If you decide you don't like the 3rd brake light when you're done for whatever reason, you could make or buy one to put in the top or bottom of the rear window.  That's what I plan to do.  With the tinted windows it won't even be visible until it lights up.  Then the trunk lid could be completely smooth.  

 

I almost forgot to ask, but what is the rectangle mark a few inches below the brake light?

I had another person suggest that they make some 3rd brake lights into some license plate frames that I slid into the plan c option if for some reason I didn't like this.  I was really just afraid that I would end up with one hole a little out of place and it would all look like hell because of it but I kinda surprised myself and did a really good job of getting them even.  Its actually even enough that all 43 holes line up no matter if you flip the plexi or the metal to the back side which I didn't expect to happen.  Its hard to tell but I dropped the holes on the very end just a tad from the others because when I put a perfectly straight tape line on it and stood back it just looked a little strange.  There isn't any other straight lines on the back of the car and this follows both the line of the spoiler above it and the slight curve to the top of the license plate frame I never noticed until I did this.

 

The small square below it is for the laser jammer *cough* shifter(the FCC frowns on the "jammer" title) for my escort 9500ci.  All it is, is a laser receiver to see when it is shot and then some infa-red leds that flash in a sequence to confuse the laser gun and give it an err.  Check your state for legalities but in Indiana it isn't a problem.  If your curious if it does work I had a dare cop at a show try it and it gave him an err :)   I have not had any problems with that piece separating because it was epoxied into the composite material that makes up the license plate frame.  The square part you see is actually just the tape covering the lens and once it is peeled off prior to clearing the only part that should show up is the little bubble receiving area that sticks out.

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Monday was my 40th birthday so I am pretty sure we can call this my midlife crisis car... just minus the crisis really. I was happy to get the call from the powder coater that the meth tank was done, again. They called 2 weeks ago and said everything was done so I went to pick it up. I had 5 things done and didn't want them all bouncing around off each other so the tank I tore the foam wrap off in a few spots to see it looked good and then put it all back in the box. It wasn't till I got home and took a closer look that I started to wonder what happened to the tank. All the other pieces were good but the tank had a couple of spots on the weld that didn't coat and there was one corner that was just completely missed. 

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And not sure what happened to the cap.

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I am sure I am not any different from anyone else that I hate to take stuff back but also am WAY to picky about this to let it slide. Thankfully they were happy to do it over after I pointed out the spots as they were all surprised to have not noticed it all before while wrapping it or powdering it. But anyway its all looking good now.

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I also got my pullies done black as well after going back/forth about going with a billet set or doing something like this. I think this will do. I also had the brass cap I got to cover the EGR port on the headers done a chrome powder and everything had a clear on it as well. 

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now that I have the tank back and see everything all nice and glossy black I am not so sure I want to have the "GOT METH?" art work done. It all just looks so clean and simple and besides that the first quote I got for it was more then the anodizing and powder put together.... I am not saying its not a fair price as I want a good enough job done that I want to see people just having to touch it to see that they are not cut out of aluminum and real(3d) and I know a good artist is not cheap. mmmmm fresh powder. might just have to pull out the p21 wax and do a coat or two tonight, just so the tank is extra smooth for when I sleep with it *COUGH* I mean so its ready for install.....

Don't judge me I know I am not the only weirdo that has slept with his freshly done parts cheesy.gif

 

also found out the led sequencer for the brake light is better then I thought it was.  It is able to control 16 outputs so it will make for a nearly seemless sweep from center out and then will flash 3 times.  The speed of the sweep and the flash is adjustable so it should make for some bonus points in my opinion.  If anyone takes the time to notice I will be happy to know they are locked onto my brake lights...
 

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Very sneaky with the laser jammer, haha.  I like it though.  Way to stick it to the man.  The plate frame would be a good spot also for the 3rd brake light, but I think what you're doing will work well.  It will be cool to see it all light up in sequence.  

 

All the new powder coated parts look excellent.  The powder lays down great.  It's always so smooth looking.  Like a smooth candy shell coating.

 

Happy Belated 40th!   :happybday:   I'll refrain from the over the hill jokes, hehe.  Hope you had a good day though.  Those PC parts are a good present.  

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Very sneaky with the laser jammer, haha.  I like it though.  Way to stick it to the man.  The plate frame would be a good spot also for the 3rd brake light, but I think what you're doing will work well.  It will be cool to see it all light up in sequence.  

 

All the new powder coated parts look excellent.  The powder lays down great.  It's always so smooth looking.  Like a smooth candy shell coating.

 

Happy Belated 40th!   :happybday:   I'll refrain from the over the hill jokes, hehe.  Hope you had a good day though.  Those PC parts are a good present.  

thank you very much kind sir!  The laser jammer *COUGH* shifter is a cool little piece and that detector in general with the GPS built in is just an amazing package.  Expensive as all hell but it honestly takes all the annoyances of the radar detector out and just leaves a great confidence in knowing if its on that you will know. 

 

There was a huge hot rod show in town this weekend and I think I saw almost every possible way to stick a brake light on a car in the swap meet/vendor area.  With all the options though I didn't see anything I liked better then what I had planned here.

 

I could not be any happier with the powder and now after getting all the fittings put back on the meth tank I am just going to leave it clean and black.  After working on it now for months its nice to see it finished and will be even better to see it mounted and working. 

 

got my leds in the mail and got to mounting them all in place since I had been waiting to mount them before I welded to be sure they were straight. Final count was 43 leds in the bar so if they can't see that then f-em... I had been waiting for them to come and of course a watched priority mailing package always takes 5 days. I used the metal plate shown here that I welded into the car when iwas done here, as well as another aluminum strip I drilled through all at the same time to ensure that they are all in straight and aligned. The studs on the top are to mount the plexi and to help guide the leds into their place. I made sure that the leds were sticking out from the panel when I mounted them so that I can put a foam seal between the panel and the leds to ensure the trunk is still sealed from water. That will be my next part of this project as well as grinding down the welds from welding it to the car and starting the fill/sand/fill dance to finish it off.

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Wiring this little sob is going to be interesting.... With the 16 channel led sequencer lighting it up it means there will be 18-20 wires needed to be kept in order to light it up from the center out like I planned. They are 2v leds so I will be doing a series/parallel wiring system to get the voltage correct. And literally as I finished mounting the last led I had that thought or moment of clarity "Maybe I should have tested each of these really quick before I mounted them?!". No shit the last led.... I will certainly be checking them out before I start the wiring phase.

 

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  Got the metal welded in place and smoothed in and now some primer drying on it now although it needs a little more block sanding to get all the curves right on that small area. From the spoiler down its cocave, from the drivers to pass side its convex and I don't want a wavy ass when I am all done. hopefully it will be done soon.

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and then I was all excited as I found my grinder/polisher I had been looking for. I covered it up with a grocery bag so the buffing wheel would not get crap on it and it just didn't look like a grinder. I ordered some buffing wheels and compounds to use and been wanting break them out since I started on my CC plates but again could not find the grinder. Slapped it all together tonight for the first time and could not be more happy on what happens when I ran it across 4 wheels and 3 compounds. photobomb for bonus points.

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Josh at ridetech needs to give an option for these to be polished rather then anodized as they look killer.  Wish I could have kept the ridetech logo that was in them but it got lost in the grinding/polishing process but could not be any happier with them.

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still not totally sure it will work myself. I made a foam seal that went between the plexi and the body panel so that it will not leak and when I pushed it in the first time 5-6 leds popped out which is no huge surprise. So I reglued them and put them back in place and now I am just waiting for the glue to set. This pic is just with a light behind it lighting them up but you get the point. 

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I also got the sequencer to light them up from the center out. Now the real fun begins, wiring that sob.... I was happy to find a electronics booth at a large hot rod show this weekend and picked up a couple of 15 pin male/female harnesses to make it all easy to install and remove.


I would love to hear who hates it honestly. I am still not sure on it myself......

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I still think it looks good. It looks modern. I see an increasing amount of LED strip lights on cars and bikes these days.

http://www.newragecycles.com/Monster_1200_Stealth_Fender_Eliminator_Kit_p/1200-fe.htm

Things like that, replacing traditional incandescent lights all together. Hmm, makes me think a modern version of the 94-95 horizontals with some real smooth looking LEDs like that could be cool. Will you be using the horizontal tails or vertical? I can't remember.

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I have been keeping busy on this for the past 9 days. At first it was a little slow as my epoxy primer/sealer requires a 48 hr curing before sanding if they are not baked and needless to say I don't have an oven. One day it occurred to me that its summer and sunny/hot so since then I have been putting the parts out in the yard for 6-8 hrs in full sun and a black part on a summer day gets perty warm. So with that then I have been spotting in some primer in low spots in the evening and then in the morning setting them out, wet sanding early evening and then repeating it all. I was starting to think it would never end when I took a step back at the big picture and realized all the shit I have done to this car now. There is not a part on this car that I have not smoothed/molded something into cut/drilled/modified in some way from the stock bumper to the carbon fiber hood. It took me a while just to remember how many things I have changed on the decklid now that its all nice and smooth/simple. How many things do you count different on it?

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Thankfully this part is done now... There is one small spot on the fender I need to finish and then I think its finally ready...

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Looking good Scott!!!!

Now get that car painted already!!!!! Lol

This message courtesy of crapatalk!

never been more motivated especially with the great weather.  Oh and one more thing to help that you are probably one of the few that would understand.  Well remember the stereo install I was in the middle of doing when the accident happened?  Well I am sure that on your list of "Gear I would LOVE to get" was the alpine F1 status system as was mine.  An online buddy came across a sweet deal on  NIB set with the DVD player, the screen, processor and amp.  He would have got it but he was broke so I jumped on it. 

 

Everyone else I know is probably confused on the excitement of a dvd player but this system is probably on the top 3 list of sound quality systems that any car audio dude would make.  Other then the Pioneer ODR or some Mac pieces its the best of the best, the stuff that you would see in competition cars that no shit cost $10k when it was new.  Copper chassis on all the pieces and fiber optic to burr brown DA converters.  It will give me the ability to autotune the system with a mic as well as make independent EQ/time alignment/cross over corrections to each speaker individually.  I remember reading about these systems and thinking that they sounded nuts both in operation and price and of course when you least expect it, one pops up.  The of course after 3 days of thinking about and finally pulling the trigger of course I get an $800 hospital bill.....  Yup that's how karma treats me.

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We were an f1 dealer. Had to send 2 guys to Vegas to get trained to be able to carry f1 status.

It was nice equipment and it was awesome how far you could tune everything but I still preferred the pioneer odr setup.

Either will make for a completely badass setup!!!

Congrats on the awesome find!!!

Sucks to hear about karma!!! Lol

This message courtesy of crapatalk!

how much do you include in per-diem for strippers/hookers when you send sales/install people to vegas?  :)

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Congrats on both the progress and the purchase.  I'm not much of a car audio person.  I'm still rocking the factory Mach 460 system.  Which sounds just fine to me.  That is when I listen to it.  Which I hardly ever do.  The radio may get turned on 3 times in a month.

 

I'm waiting to see the color applied!  

Were you going with the original paint code or are you planning to change it up some?  Maybe add a little pearl or a bit more metal flake, etc.?

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Congrats on both the progress and the purchase.  I'm not much of a car audio person.  I'm still rocking the factory Mach 460 system.  Which sounds just fine to me.  That is when I listen to it.  Which I hardly ever do.  The radio may get turned on 3 times in a month.

 

I'm waiting to see the color applied!  

Were you going with the original paint code or are you planning to change it up some?  Maybe add a little pearl or a bit more metal flake, etc.?

its staying the same color but from what I saw when I the engine bay this mix has a little more blue pearl in it then the original color one did.  I think by the time you take into account the Carbon fiber on the hood/bumper and the wheels that are grey now instead of black and it should make for a new/different look color wise not to mention all the body mods.

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man life can throw you for a loop.  My dad has had a hip replacement scheduled for a while now and while we were starting  get him ready for it my mom picked up what we thought was a cold.  Well after 3 weeks of her being dizzy/vertigo with 2 dr's appoitnments and finally getting nauseated to the point we had to take her to the er were she was admitted for a week.  Thankfully my brother came home to help as of course then right after dad goes in, my stomach goes bad.  So we had my mom and I in different wings at the same hospital and my dad across town recovering from surgery and my poor brother was stuck putting up with 3 very unhappy people.  Finally I got out and right back on my feet trying to keep mom in bed and keep dad moving.  Had to cross a couple of parent/child boundries that I know no one would look forward too needing but thankful to have when needed.  Since then we are just happy mom has been able to hold food down now for 4 days in a row and dads dressing changes are looking better.  I went out in the garage yesterday and realized its been 3 weeks since I thought about it and still not the least bit concerned.  All of this happened the afternoon I received all this gear so as much as I have been dying to play with it I have just been to busy.  Finally got to look at it today and power it all up and damn its a big step up. 

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The average car guy would look at it and see its a nice set up with an in dash dvd player and a sound processor, but anyone in the car audio world would recognize that this is the best sounding system alpine ever designed around the idea of SQ.  The chassis of all the units is copper although I have no idea why they painted over the deck copper.  Even the mounting screws are copper in the idea of rejecting as much noise as possible.  The box on the upper left houses all the power supplies needed for the deck from the led display down to the general power supply for the rest of the unit.  With this mounted off and away from the signal again its a small detail that = ultimate sound quality (SQ).  Now if you look closely at the sound processor you will actually notice there are 2.  I did this(its designed to do it) so I can run some rear component speakers as well as a front/rear center channel for video.  these processors will do all the work of the cross overs(takes the bass out of the tweeters signal)/31 band eq to adjust and tune/ and finally time alignement so that the sound from each speaker that is mounted different distances from your ear at the same time.  Now all this is neat and dandy but it gets crazy complex to realize that it will do this for each of the 14 different speakers individually that I am going to be running.  It also has a dual microphone system that is used to auto-tune this and get the hard work done so that I can then finish and adjust it to my taste.  The other down side to the nearly infinite adjustability this offers is that I will need a separate rca cable for each speaker between the processors and the amp, but in good news it will be a short run between the two.

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Sorry to hear about the difficulties you guys are having, but i wish speedy recoveries for you all.

You're right about the audio equipment. Just looks like a nice stereo to me, ha. From your quick little run down it sounds cool though and I'm glad you're excited about it.

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Sorry to hear about the difficulties you guys are having, but i wish speedy recoveries for you all.

 

Thanks for the kind words.  We are just taking it day by day now but its slowly getting easier/better.  I hope I get a chance to spray it before its too cold and I would need to figure out some kind of heating for the garage or wait till spring.  But in the grand scheme of things, the car can wait, family can't....

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I have finally got some time to work on it.  I have some primer drying and decided to do another quick project I have had in my mind.  After getting that kick ass stereo I needed to find a place for a center channel.   I had plans for both din locations and never liked putting them in air vents so after some though I decided to cut up the clock pod and hide one in there.  I had already modified it to hold the display for my radar detector and only needed it a little larger to hold a speaker comfortably.

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so after separating the front/back I made two cuts and then added a 1/2" piece to each side and then glued in the grill mesh.  Excuse the mess as the glue is still drying.  Tomorrow I will clean it all up and smooth out the joints.  The plan is to make it all glossy like the front and continue the stripe over it but if I don't like the way it looks then I will just cover it with some grill cloth.

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after a lot of thought of what speaker I would like to try and fit in there I decided on a 3.5".  Problem was that I had 3.3"...  So with a little creativity I stretched it out just enough by adding a design element that will match what I did on the gauge pod I made in the a-pillar.  I added 2 pieces of plexi separated by a thin strip of metal that when I inserted it between the two halves of the pod stretched it out just a little more.  Turned out to be a bigger pain then I thought and when I was at this point last night I really started to wonder if I could put humpty dumpty back together again and how much a new pod would cost me.... 

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I honestly hacked this thing to death but now I just have the finishing work to do and it will work.

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I have some more trimming/fitting to do on the metal strip.  If your curious I took it out of a windshield wiper.  There are two metal strips like this that go down the length of the rubber blades that I have found useful before.

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and the good news is I should have JUST enough space for that 3" I was hoping to fit.

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Been busy getting stuff done and making more plans.  Found an airbrush artist but decided I wanted the tank power coated first so it and a couple of other things went to powder and my fusebox parts and wire loom went to the anodizer.  Funny enough while doing a search for images for ideas I did a google search for "Got Meth?" and the #4 image was this.

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The irony there will probably be lost on everyone except logan because its pointing at my home town.  Our county has led the state for some time both in meth arrests and back before the one pot in meth explosions.  So "Got meth?" seems perfect.  Can't wait to get the tank back from powder so I can take it straight to the airbrush artist.

Been busy with the primer and so far up to 600 wet on most of the car.  I started off with just a spray bottle and paper and was happy with it till I looked closer the next day.

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The next day I realized the paper was just clogging up to fast for a spray bottle so I grabbed a hose and went back at it for a 2nd day.  Got 80% of the car done and learned wetter is better when wet sanding as well as I needed some sandals for wet sanding.  It was really humid here the next two days and I spent them squishing around in my shoes. 

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Woke up for day 3 of wet sanding and got my daily lesson early, 2 days of wet sanding = one VERY stiff/painful back.... I could hardly move so I took a step back from all that motion and finished a couple of pieces I still needed to get anodized and powdered. After I dropped all that stuff off I switched gears to polish the ridetech caster/camber plates. I was told that some easy off oven cleaner left on for 15 min would make the annodizing wipe right off and ready to polish. So I sprayed it on, went to wipe it off 15 mins later and found it left a crusty surface on the top and some of it wiped off but most of it stayed on. So I put some more on and came back 15 mins later only to find it didn't seem to come off. Tried a wire brush and by the time the can was empty and I washed it all off this is what I was left with = not happy. So learnings from this day was that easy off ain't so easy...

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so after some time with my angle grinder and a flap wheel it was better but learnings for today are sandals are great for wet sanding, not so much for grinding metal.....

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After some time with some 600/1000/1500/2000 grit its ready for the polishing wheels I should receive tomorrow. I have spent the time to wipe every other logo off of any part I got. I didn't mean to wipe the ridetech logo off of these and was looking forward to seeing them polished up but after having to grind down all the crap from the easy off they didn't make it. cry.gif

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So while my back is almost better I know it well enough that if I were to get back at the sanding today that it would just aggravate it again and I would wake up tomorrow even worse then I was on day 3. So again I switched gears and started to get the wiring for the engine bay ran again. Can't wait to see it with the new MM suspension parts and the air struts.

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I got a box of these stock style harness holders and have been using them all over the place but with the 4 - 0 awg power wire runs there was not enough space(and they were too heavy) so they were just zip tied to the fender rail to ensure they stay in place. 

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If your from southern Indiana you get the GOT METH tee-shirt lol.

 

The car is looking good man.  Keep it up.

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So after a lot of though and looking around at different speakers comparing numbers(size, sensitivity, freq response, off axis response, ect) I thought I found one that would work.  When I got it I could not help but think it was the beefiest 3" I have ever seen.  And and grabbing a ruler and looking just out of curiosity I nearly shat myself when I saw this....

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I knew I didn't have much room and that this could quickly become a problem.  I had cut/bent a bracket for the speaker but....

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but after cutting and bending a new piece and a lot of trimming/fitting to get it right this is what I have.

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now the only problem is if there is enough space between the speaker and the radar display.  I was going to move it down just a hair and I might bring it out a tad as well but one way or another it will fit.  I had to do some trimming on the dash to make room for the magnet.

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Thankfully there was room to trim and it was not a big deal.  Before:

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after:

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and after after:

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I need to add some material to the bottom corners and the back where the shape lifts from the recessed area of the dash but the epoxy is drying on that already.  I also finished modifying the dash for the deck and screen. 

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It was ALMOST warm enough to paint today.  I am just doing these projects while watching the weather forcast like a hawk to find a day or two warm enough to spray.....

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