Niraj

It hasn't been smooth sailing, through this project, and i'm sure i've yet to encounter many puzzles along the way. I've been posting up the minor setbacks i've had along the way, but this is where I want to keep my entire project writeup. I have definitely missed a lot of stuff out of here, so if you guys have ANY questions, please just ask, and I will go into more detail, with pictures if necessary :) The car you saw at JAE is still WORK IN PROGRESS… and I’ll keep this topic updated as I get a chance to do more work. Hope you all enjoyed reading it so far... :D

Testbench All of the above equipment was stuck on a testbench in my bedroom for approximately 3 months! The speakers and subwoofers were bedded in according to their specified timescales. This is what it looked like in pre-production, lol.

Fireproofed Floor : Rockwool With all that amount of electrical wiring, you’ll want to fireproof the floor incase of worst case scenarios. For this I used Rockwool. It’s about 2inches thick but when squashed is about 6mm. This provides excellent sound deadening for the front cabin, and that added security for your wiring.

Indoor Boot Setup This is how it will look when it is placed into the car:

Monoblock Poweramps These were fitted to a floor I cut from 18mm MDF. They are strapped and can provide the power needed to move the TS-W3004SPL woofers.

Powercaps & 0AWG Wiring I tried to pay close attention to this section. Supplying power to any device is probably the most important thing to make the electrical device last it’s suggested lifespan. I opted for 0awg to power my monoblocks, that run through these two 1F power caps. Power caps are getting cheaper these days, but I would not recommend them if you only have 1 battery! As they tend to cause more troubles than provide benefit to an audio system. Each power cap is fused within 12” of the battery, and individually designed to power each monoblock. This cable is not cheap, but can be found on eBay at bargain prices. (approx £5/mtr.)

4 Channel Amp I am currently using a 5ch Kenwood amp, that I used in my previous car. It is more than capable of outputting the required audio to the speakers, and made for a good choice in this setup. It is the KAC-859 which I bought 5 years ago for roughly £200. There are better and cheaper amps on the market these days one of which I recommend highly is the JBL GTO 75.4 It is screwed onto the inside of the left partition.

Blue LED Conversion AC Panel I love blue LED’s so I thought it would be really neat to convert my AC panel and all the lights on the dash to blue. It was going really well and looked alright, however, me being as fussy as I am, could not live with the uneven distribution across the panel. This is what it did look like though.

Dashboard wiring (29 April 2007) There is far too much to say in this area, so for those who are interested, post any questions and I will explain. Generally though, what we have here is: +12v continuous +12v switched -0v earth USB RCA S-video Composite and Serial wiring. I tend to go extra lengths in everything I do, so not all of this is necessary.

Split Charge Relay Kit (£45) Having the benefit of 2 batteries in a car, means having to maintain two batteries. Using the power from them also means having to charge them up. The best known method to do this from a single alternator, is by using a split charge relay kit. These are easy to install as you can see from the following pictures. Don't forget to cut the cable ties, lol.

Mounting Boot Fabrication: Angled Irons (06 April 2007) Unfortunately, the IS200 has many curves and angled shaped, which make mounting anything in situ, extremely difficult. So I bought some iron from B&Q. Cut it into 10" lengths and bent them to the shape I needed. I then attached some of these angled irons to the side of the subwoofer enclosure and joint at the shock absorber mount. It keeps the enclosure from moving side to side, and acts as an amateur rear strut brace. The rear of the enclosure is mounted into the car where the ski-hatch used to be. The partitions are held against the angled irons bolted into the floor on either side as shown below.

Boot Fabrication (01 April 2007) So far the bits I’ve made are the Subwoofer Enclosure, Battery tray and an EQ tray. From my original design, these were going to be hidden behind partitions for a slightly “stealth†look. The air pressure in the boot created by the subwoofers means the rear speakers in the parcel shelf would need protecting. So these had to be sealed away. You can also see a voltmeter from earlier, that I fitted to the parcel shelf enclosure. This will be connected to the amps that power the subwoofers.

EQ Tray for EQ : Boss Audio EQ BX35 (£50) ebay.com Software EQ’s are wonderful things, but nothing bits an active bit of hardware. The Boss Audio BX35 is more than capable of doing the job. It has 3 RCA inputs and 3 RCA outputs. By my calculations that equates to Fronts, Rears, and Subs. So to house the EQ I made this lovely little EQ tray, which fit snug in the left corner of the car. Opposite the Optima Yellowtop.

Cabin stripped (18 February 2007) It all feels like I’m making progress at this stage, and about time I get to the core of the car. So it’s time to strip it all out, and make way for some wiring! First we remove all the interior trims and seats. Then we remove the carpet. Looks scary, but it’s really not. These cars have been really well designed, and it should all go back together like an easy jigsaw puzzle (I hope)

Rear Battery: 4.2l Optima Yellowtop (RRP £250) As I’m planning to have a second battery in the boot to power the additional electronics I was going to need more power. So this deep cycle optima yellow top was perfect for the job. But where do I put something that weighs over 20kg! I made a battery tray out of MDF. A snug fit for the battery, which allows it to sit in the rear right corner of the car.

Rear Speakers : Pioneer 6x9’s (£40) I’ve now got the subwoofer enclosure and the front components done and dusted. An audiophile would stop at this stage as a good SQ setup doesn’t require rear fill. However, as a matter of taste, I prefer my sound to be available at all corners of the vehicle. So I got to work at making some rear baffles for a set of 6x9’s. However, as you can see, these look extremely thick compared to the original speakers. So they needed to be slimmed down, otherwise the rear parcel shelf would not fit.

Front Speakers: 6.5" Rainbow SLC-265 Kicks (£200) caraudiodirect.com Now that we’ve got the rear speakers, it’s time to upgrade the front components. I opted for the Rainbow SLC-265 Kicks. Rather pricey, but worth their weight in gold. However, mounting them into the door wasn’t easy. The depth of the speaker meant that it wouldn’t fit in the door. So I had to make some MDF baffles. Tools for this were some G-clamps & a jigsaw. This is what the final product was. Being a perfectionist, I wasn’t happy with these ^ so I got to work with Router and converted them into these friendly looking things. After fitting door card over the baffles, you can see there is enough clearance at the front: Tweeters; Rainbow 20mm These were as easy as opening them out of the OEM plastic shell and epoxy resin them to the original metal bracket.

Boot Install : Subwoofer Box The subwoofers I opted for, were TS-W3004SPL by Pioneer. They are cheap and cheerful subs and can be picked up for around the £90 mark from most car audio shops. The box then needed to be designed as per specification. As I have always loved the sound of sealed enclosures, my target was 24.1litres per subwoofer. Here is the design of the box. External Dimensions Internal Dimensions I was then able to build an install around the enclosure and came up with this: The false floor will house the amps... the side compartments will house an extra battery, and other audio equipment. The carpet colour is just for demonstration... the actual finishing i'll be using will be slightly different. The flat floor between the amps and subs is still undecided, i may fiberglass a small slope to allow air flow from the face of the woofers without the wave being bounced flat faced from the side of the false floor. (if that makes sense) Then it was time to build the box out of MDF:

Voltage monitor : LED Voltmeters (£16 each) ebay.com (23 December 2006) With all the electricity that will be surging through the car front to back, it would be a good idea to monitor the levels. So I opted for these rather lovely looking LED voltmeters.

Sound Deadening : Front doors In the same way that the sound deadening was applied to the rear section of the car, I got to work at the front doors. The following images show only the outer skin of the door being lined, however the doors were double layered, and then the inner skin was sound deadened, to produce an enclosure.

Sound Deadening : R-Blox 100sq ft (10th October 2006) I have already posted my progress on this but for those who missed it I will put it all in this section. Here is the original topic : http://www.lexusownersclub.co.uk/forum/ind...showtopic=36714 You'll be expecting it to power a nice set of speakers right? But what's the point in having nice speakers if the sound is lost because of bad acoustics. Unfortunately, as silent as the IS200 is, it's still not enough. Extend the audio capability of the IS beyond stock speakers and things will start to rattle. BUT.... there is a fix! For those who can afford the branded stuff... dynamat is the guaranteed way forward... for those on a budget, there are other various similar products on the market, but make no mistake, it's the best investment you'll ever make. Here's what the roof looks like when that's sound deadened too :) Doubling up on the roof made an approximate 30% improvement! Which all counts towards the final effect.

Voltage Stabilization & Grounding kit (£75) Danotech (30 July 2005) A simple device, like small capacitors fitted to the front battery reduces any voltage surges the electrical system might require. For example, when the Air-con switches on. Or the wiper motor turns on. As this was one of the first few mods I did to the car, I was very precious in how I installed it, and this is what I ended up with. Good earth grounding is a MUST when installing additional electronic devices in a vehicle. More battery: 3.7l Optima Yellowtop (16 December 2006) I then decided to upgrade the battery to a 3.7l Optima Yellowtop that retail at roughly £200 (not the price I paid).

Shark Fin Aerial & Customised Gearknob (05 December 2006) As I hadn’t created my ICPC for Radio, I decided to remove the rather large aerial, and replace it with a sharkfin aerial. Small and quite nice. A can of colour coded spray from Halfords costs around £10 and the Shark Fin aerial can be snapped up on ebay for around a fiver. While I was at it, I thought I’d customise the rather stock deteriorating gearknob. Let the 2 dry for a while before attaching them to the vehicle.

Headrest screens: 6.5” Veba LCD for headrests (£200) ebay.com (3 December 2006) You have to be extremely daring to do the following. But me being me, I couldn’t let anyone else do the job for me… where’s the satisfaction in paying someone to do everything for you? So I got out a nice ink pen and a Stanley knife. I don’t think the next few pictures require any comments, so just enjoy. Voila! Nice job don’t you think? :)

Double Din Fascia for 7" TFT (5 December 2006) To control this PC I would need a visual output. A TFT. So I chose the 7†Linitx Touchscreen (£200). However placing a TFT on the dash was not really the OEM effect I was after. Luckily a fellow member on LOC (Billsy) had made cut an Alluminium fascia with dimensions that fitted this screen. Thank you Billsy for the fascia! However, by the time I got round to using the fascia, I had damaged it in parts, so had to repair it. The following pics were created by Billsy when he first made the fascia My screen, fitted in pretty much the same way.