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I'm upgrading my sound system, and wanted a subwoofer enclosure that wouldn't rob me of usable cargo space on the floor. After all, cargo carrying capacity is one of the big selling points of a Fit in the first place. I made a subwoofer enclosure that hangs from the underside of a deck plate that sits on the mounts for the cargo cover. It took a cardboard template and two iterations in wood to get the deck contoured perfectly so it is removable but also fits tightly. (The first iteration became the bottom floor of the sub box.
Construction is 3/4" MDF. The box is sized as a sealed enclosure for a 12" NVX subwoofer. External dimensions: 27"x14"x8.5". Nominal internal volume 1.25 cu-ft. The plan is to allow for easy (relatively) removal. If the seats need folded down for hauling, the box can stay where it's at, with cargo sliding underneath. Or, it can be moved to just behind the front seats. Or, it could be removed altogether.
My one worry is that it will prove too heavy for the cargo cover mounts. Any thoughts for how these might be strengthened?
I went a different route and strengthened the floor and put in a powered sub. It is possible to put in a shallow mount sub in the spare tire cavity, or build up a little higher to have some sort of enclosure box.
I went a different route and strengthened the floor and put in a powered sub. It is possible to put in a shallow mount sub in the spare tire cavity, or build up a little higher to have some sort of enclosure box.
I considered that. I tend to carry a lot of stuff around in the back of my car, though. I figured that sooner or later I'd damage an upward facing sub if it was on the floor.
I dislike posting pics of in-progress projects, but I'm making an exception for my wheels.
After my experiment with the purple wheel covers, I decided to spring for wheels. It helped that the tires on my 2013 Fit need replaced. I bought a set of Konig Illusion wheels with tires mounted and balanced. The new (ish) tires that came on the 2016 car will be moved to the 2013 Fit.
The Illusions were selected specifically because they lend themselves to a purple and yellow paint scheme. As delivered, they are black with silver trim. The plan was to make them purple with yellow trim. I shopped around to several custom paint places in my area and got quotes for custom painting the wheels. In every case, the quotes came back for more money than the wheels themselves cost. That pretty much ruled out that option. I briefly flirted with buying a paint sprayer and learning how to shoot paint myself, but that seemed like overkill. Also, my compressor is sized more for nail guns rather than a paint sprayer. I was pretty happy with how the paint turned out on the wheel covers, though the duplicolor multipart system is a bit of a pain. Little did I know...
The first step in the process was to strip the stock clear coat and paint from the wheels. I wanted to do it right, not just spray over the stock paint, so that meant getting down to bare metal. I tried a bunch of methods on the first wheel, and once I found the right technique, I did the other wheels the same way. I tried hand sanding with scotch brite, hand sanding with sandpaper, power sanding with an air tool (my compressor couldn't drive it), and power sanding with a power drill. None of these worked efficiently on the thick factory paint. I ended up using Aircraft Stripper, and scraping the old clear coat and paint off with a spoon. This was followed up by finish cleaning the surface with a dremel tool mounted flap wheel, and polishing with scotch brite.
As you might imagine, this process took many hours. If I were willing to throw money at the project, I could have had the tires unmounted, the old paint sandblasted off, wheels powder coated, and tires remounted and balanced. That probably would have tripled or quadrupled the final cost, though.
After prepping the wheels, this is what they looked like.
Next came the Metalcast basecoat.
After the basecoat, you spray on the nearly transparent color layer. I had one partial can left over from the wheel covers, and bought 4 more cans for the wheels. I used the partial can to do the first coat on one of the wheels before finishing with two coats on all of them. This is when it became apparent that the 4 new cans of paint didn't match the first can, or the color of the paint can cap. I wanted a violet shade of purple, but the new cans were pinkish. Needless to say, I was pretty angry, and not sure how to recover without stripping all the paint and starting over. As a last ditch, I made an emergency run to the store and picked up a can of blue. I sprayed a light coat of blue over the pink and managed to get a decent color match to the one good wheel.
The bottom wheel is the older purple can. The upper wheel is the new purple paint, which matches neither the lower wheel nor the paint can lid. The wheel on the right has the blue overcoat, trying to match the good wheel.
Here is how the 4 wheels turned out after I color matched them the best I could.
Finally, over the color coat(s) went a couple coats of clear. The wheels are currently curing in the garage. After the mis-matching color fiasco, I'm a bit dubious. I'm hopeful, though, that with the yellow trim added, and more clear coat, that they'll look pretty good. I sure hope so.
If I have to do it again, I'll probably buy a paint sprayer and use real automotive paint. The cost of 10 cans of spray paint at $9 per can doesn't save any money over professionally mixed automotive paint, and I no longer trust that the cans of Duplicolor will match each other. I spent way too many hours on stripping and surface prep to have the job ruined by non-matching spray cans.
My current cell phone is a Samsung S5. I carry it in this belt clip, normally on my right hip. Occasionally I move it to my left hip, usually during robotics team meetings when I hang a pouch of tools on my right hip. A couple times I've left my phone on the left hip when climbing in the car, caught the phone on the seat, and broken the clip. The last time that happened, I kept the part of the clip that held the phone, thinking I'd use it to make some sort of car mount. Well, Amazon Prime day provided the opportunity, when I saw a CD slot mount phone holder on lightning special. I picked it up for $10.
I removed the magnetic mount, and used some #6-32 flat heads to attach the phone holder from the belt clip to the CD slot mount base.
By positioning the clip so it attached to the base at the lower edge of the clip, rather than the middle, the phone is positioned so it doesn't block the radio screen.
It does interfere with the air coming from the right center vent, if it were aimed at the driver. Still works fine for the passenger, though. I can live with that.
Nostalgia for childhood days of building model cars. I used Testors enamel model paint for the yellow striping on the rims. The spoke stripes took two coats, and the perimeter stripe is four coats. The spokes were done free hand, using the milled grooves for guides. The perimeter stripe was masked.
Here's the first wheel with the masking removed.
Last steps are wet sanding with 1500 grit, then finishing off with more clear coat.
The stuff I'm doing with the subwoofer enclosure at this point don't really affect the acoustics, so I'm posting in the car documentation thread rather than the audio install thread.
I added handles to the cabinet made from materials that will be familiar to anyone in the world of FIRST robotics competitions. The posts are short lengths of 1/2" hex axle from VEXPRO. The handles themselves are 1/2" x 1" T-slot bars from 80/20.
The handles make it easy to move the cabinet behind the front seats when the rear seats are folded flat. I lose a little cargo space, but not much. I can fit stuff under the "wings" of the cabinet, and on top of the sides. We just got back from a week long vacation where the back of the car was loaded to the bottom of the window sills.
It was a long road, but I finally installed my wheels this evening, with these lug nuts. Didn't have a good camera for the first test drive, so I took some phone pics.
Some pics from the East Coast Fit meet. Lots more in my Facebook album. (I'd link to it, but apparently links to facebook from here don't work correctly.)
06-06-2016, 08:04 AM
