It took a long time- but I had fun doing it. The car came apart pretty easily- it wasn't all to much different than an American car. I see why these are more expensive than a comparable American car. They are put together soo much better. Everything is solid and insulated to the max.

Audio equipment is as follows:
Factory headunit
Rockford Fosgate 3sixty.2 processor, EQ, and electronic xover (controled via bluetooth on my laptop)
JBL GTi (no passives- all tuned actively)-Single 12" sub, 7" mid, 1-1/8" tweet, and 5.25" coax in the rear doors for a little rear fill
Arc Audio FD1200.1 on the sub
A/D/S P840 on the mids and highs
Elemental Designs deadener
Knu wiring
Monster XLN Pro RCA's
IPOD hookup located in the asktray

Other mods:
H&R springs
Koni adjustable shocks
clear front marker lights
CL grille
flat hood emblem


It's 99% done. I still need to clean up a couple things in the trunk. There's a little glue overspray on the carpet edge of the false floor (white stuff you can see around the Arc amp) as well as add some carpet or black paint to the edge of the false floor around where the A/D/S/ amp is mounted (You can see the the wood showing in the area I am talking about).

After getting the Sonotube enclosure built- I really didn't like the way everything was looking in the trunk- so I changed plans and just built a regular enclosure. I screwed up there though. I centered the woofer on the front baffle. I should have raised the woofer 2" on the baffle to account for the fact that the false floor is 2" tall. It still looks fine though- most people probably wouldn't even notice it though.

So far I love the sound- everything I read about the GTi line was correct. The tuning is very close to being done also. I will most likely leave it as it is for another couple months until the speakers have a little more time to burn in. I think everything turned out looking quite good. My goal was good/clean sound and I didn't want to mod the vehicle in any way which couldn't be reversed. I even sourced plastic harness/terminals from Tyco and had them imported. That way I didn't have to cut anything on the factory harness. I just left those wires lay behind the dash and made all new harness' for myself. Although the pictures don't show it too well- the carpet I used is a 99.9% dead on match with the factory trunk carpet. Both the color and the matt is as close as can be.

The windows will be tinted in a couple weeks. The wheels have been nothing but a pain in the rear. I ordered a set of wheels that I was told by the manufacturer would clear the calipers. Turns out they were wrong- the spokes rub the calipers. It's been nothing short of a nightmare getting that straightened out. So- for the time being it's still on the stockers. I guess it doesn't matter too much though- the car doesn't get driven much.

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/w...r&linkid=link5

 

Very nice!! How does it sound?

 

the more i listen to it- the better it sounds. the more burn in time i give the tweets- the more they mellow out. the midbass is fantastic- you can feel it in your chest depending on the music. the sub is quite nice too- never heard one that can get that loud but stay sounding soo clean. i'm not a bass head- i love sq. but, i let the sub pound for a bit to see if i could find any rattles in the trunk. apparently MB put together a solid car and i did a good job with the deadener- didn't find any rattles so far.

certain parts of it sound better than my rainbow audio setup i have in my focus. but there are other parts that are better on the rainbow setup. i will save any final judgements until the speakers get another month of burn in.

 

looks great! I can't believe you did all that yourself, and it turned out that good

 

sick my friend. great job =).

 

wow

good job

 

thanks everyone.

you can get one heck of a deep midbass in the front doors w/o modification to the metal. there's a lot of space between the metal of the door and the window glass (when the window is down), no to mention the interior door panel is very deep too. that midbass that's in there is pretty much a 7" driver too.

hiding the cables was pretty easy, aside from taking the interior out, but i had to do that in order to do the sound deadening. there's a channel/condiut running under the door sills for the length of the car- perfect for the speaker wire and power cable. the rca's were ran on the driver's side along the transmission/driveshaft tunnel. if you have well made (expensive doesn't always mean good) rca's- you can run them right on top of the power wire with no problems. however, i already had the carpet out- so running them away from the power wasn't an issue.

i didn't even have to drill any holes for the ground. on the sides of the trunk there are little "storage holes" for lack of a better word. there a little rubber plug (at least on the passenger side) that i took out which revealed roughtly a 3/8" hole. cleaned the paint off that spot, grabbed a 3/8" stainless nut, bolt, and ring terminal and did it up. i then put a touch of silicone around both sides in order to prevent rust.

 

How long did the whole thing take you?

 

i don't really know- it's hard to say. i did everything over a period of about 5 months. i did all of the exterior/suspension mods- then drove it a couple times to make sure all was fine. then it got parked again to start the stereo process.

i work a lot- so i didn't always have time to work on the car. it's also not my daily driver- so i did't have to be in a hurry. i bought it new a year ago july- in owning it a year and a half- i haven't put 3k miles on it.