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I was a little shocked coming into this platform how little development there is in the audio system for the pcar. I'm still trying to figure out what speakers I will go with, I'll probably make a new thread when I get to that point.
What you do on the short bus is your own business. :P
I went ahead and selected some speakers from parts-express to try out .
The Bose midbass woofer is an odd size--and my biggest challenge--it really measures at to a ~7.5" speaker so there's nothing really drop in for it. I thought about trying an 8" woofer, I was worried about them interfering with the door panel itself and really didn't feel like making my own spacers.
That inner flange is ~7.75" OD, so I was looking for something that could fit there. I was hoping to stay with something larger, and there's a few 7" speakers on the market that work with an OD of 7.11". Just a little too small to mount directly on the flange itself.
But since Bose loves to reuse their stuff in multiple applications I determined that these Bose woofers are the same as in the NB miata and ordered a pair of 6.5" speaker adapter plates that will bolt right in place. Hopefully I'm correct here, otherwise I'll just make the same from some ABS or thin cutting boards.
I'll have to widen the cutout of these from 5.5" to the ~5.9" cutout for my 7" woofers I bought. (Again really shocked no one else has figured these out for this application)
I also went ahead and purchased 4" mids in place of the front 3" mids. Looks like the should I should be able to utilize the (2) stock mounting points of the adapter plate the 3" mids are screwed onto. Manly, because the 3" mids I wanted to buy are currently out-of-stock.
For the tweeters I plan to run them directly to amp and remove them from the mid-woofer channel.
I didn't buy anything for the rears yet, since it's just filler I may just keep the factory 3" / tweeter combo. They didn't require much for EQ and again, they are just filler, so not much point here.
Ultimately I'm hoping the midbass woofer have more sensitivity and less EQ than the Bose woofers. I had to do some aggressive EQ on them to get them flat (you always pull dB never add gain) and therefore they require me to lower all my other channels to compensate. So now I have to turn my HU up almost to full volume for my regular listening volume with no extra headroom for when the windows are down on the highway. And again, I'm doing a real budget setup here -- I'm talking $120 for (6) speakers. I chuckle a little every time I see the "budget" audio threads and see Hertz and Focal and DynAudio. I picked my speakers based on their audiophile reviews, specifications, and frequency response, not a brand name. Don't get me wrong Focals are great, but it's still just a speaker.
Also the biggest thing is more sound deadening. The doors are awful and it seems I have to remove the inner metal panel to really get it under control.
I'm still on Bose drivers, but the result is excellent. And I can look forward to speaker upgrades after I blow one up
It honestly sounds really good right now, there's really not necessarily a need to upgrade the speakers -- they can handle the power and eq out decently. It sounds much better than it did on the Bose amp.
And yes, the DSP and tuning is where the magic happens. You can install the most expensive speakers in the world, but they might still sound like trash without some effort. A car's cabin is a terrible place for a sound stage. We have two ~8" woofers pointing at each other roughly 4' apart -- that in itself causes a cancellation due to the speed/length of the wavelength at roughly 200Hz; exactly where you want them to shine.
I saw this phenomenon myself, once tuned, the L and R 8" woofers did not want to combine -- they actually cancelled each other out (red trace). There's a ~17dB drop from 75Hz to 175Hz on that red trace. I flipped the phase on one of them and I gained back 5dB between 100-300Hz (3dB is double the energy level or roughly 25% louder).
I was already crossing them at 80Hz, so I was okay with moving that back to 100Hz and having the subwoofer extend out a little more. I need to check that I didn't mess up my wiring (flipping + and -), but I did see a video where they mentioned they've seen this as well.
Wouldn't really be able to fix that without the DSP (well you could flip the polarity physically).
I had a license plate light bulb going out, so replaced them both with these LEDs found HERE at Amazon. 36mm in plain white. Direct fit replacement for the halogens and no errors on my 997.2. MUCH brighter and whiter than the original halogen bulbs.
Let us know about the dust from the Porterfields in the coming weeks?
I am really not happy with the bite on my Hawk Ceramic Pads and would give up some dust next time to get better performance.
But I don't want black wheels after every drive either...
I've got a few hundred miles on the Porterfield R4-S pads now. I installed them with new rotors to replace the Textar pads on my 997.2 C2. I am super happy with the R4-S pads. They have much better initial bite and feel versus the old Textars. It takes much less pedal pressure than before and the brakes feel very strong, lots of confidence. No noise at all and the R4-S have about a third of the brake dust as the Textars. There is still dust but much less than before. The R4-S box says "Carbon Kevlar" racing brake pad. I chose them because I wanted an upgraded pad with better bite and performance for street use but did not want a noisy, dusty track pad. So far I am really happy with them.
Went to @PaEuros grand opening! Saw @J.Tan there, good seeing you!
Highly recommend Adams Graphene ceramic coat, we’ll see how it last but the pictures above are after driving 1 hour through hurricane Ian behind semi trucks throwing water on the highway and then just parking the car. Didn’t touch it at all.
Replaced the engine mounts on 2010 C2. The old ones were original to the car. Exhaust is now inline with bumper and subtle improvement in shift action, improved first gear selection. I used the VNE mounts from FCP. They appear to be identical to the factory mounts, down to the stampings.
09-26-2022, 11:11 AM
