well i finally finished the box. i ended up taking the plans posted here and modifying them because i needed a lot more airspace. instead of having the entire back of the box flush, i made it so it wraps around the hatch pulldown to utilize the space on either side. made the whole box a bit taller. ended up with about 2.8 cubic feet without the speakers, and about 2.54 with them factored in. these rl-ps arent broken in yet, and i have MAJOR charging problems, but mother of *** is it LOUD. i'd said right now its about the same as my 2 jl 10w3s and 2 12w3s were in my old camaro. granted the 12s were just in a plate down in the well and the 10s were in a rearward facing sealed box, but 2 12's hanging but with 2 10s and 2 12s that had twice the power is impressive no matter what. if i had to guess i'd say im already hitting 140 or so decibals.
now for the charging... today im going to redo my alternator to battery, and battery to engine block in 4 gauge. i got an awesome deal in a group buy on caraudio.com for a 200 amp alternator from excessive amperage for 250 bucks. (sorry, today was the last day, just found out about it myself yesterday) and i got a used optima yellow top 31 series battery, and 20 feet of 0/1 gauge wire coming now. so by next week i should have my electrical crap sorted out, and the woofers should be broken in, so i'll let yall know how that turns out.

btw, there is no engine block to chassis wire right, just battery to block?

 

Pics would be nice......

 

right now its just bare mdf, probably going to have a shop do the carpeting, only carpet job i've done before looked like hell. it will look really nice once its done though. gotta do something about my amps though, they're just screwed down on the platform there in front.

 

Don't usually post in this forum, but there should be a ground strap at the back of one of the cylinder heads that is screwed to the body of the car. Check the passenger side head first. The **** is way in the back and a real PITA to get to.

 

can you give me a general idea where it grounds to?

 

The wire is around six inches long. It grounds right straight to a screw that is screwed into the cowling area... It may be right next to the heater box...

 

thanks a lot

 

I can get you a pic if you still can't find it, providing the batteries in my dig cam are still good...

Oh, there is more than one wire in that location, where the ground strap bolts to the head. Just thought I'd let you know.

 

i know where it is, i've seen it. but where i read about the big 3 on soundsolutionsaudio.com, it said some cars have the negative battery terminal directly to the block instead of to the chassis. so i was thinking it would only be block to chassis, was thinking the head ground was for something else. (dunno what lol)
kind of ignorant when it comes to electrical if you can't tell

 

Yeah, but you still have to have something to connect the engine block to the chassis. Think about it. There is a solid block of rubber at every powertrain mounting point (trans mount, engine mounts, exhaust hangers, shock bushings), so there has to be extra wiring connecting the block to the chassis.

:edit: You might be able to get away with making the negative ground a bigger gauge wire, but I would do both that wire and the engine block wire just in case. Your negative battery cable should have a ground wire coming off of it somewhere...

 

you're talking about the actual block now, not the heads? its pretty cramped at the back of my engine bay but i couldnt see any block ground, do i need to get under the car? i did find wires on both of my heads, but i could barely even get my hand on the drivers side, which had 2 wires. the passenger side was a flat copper wire, grounded about 8 inches above it. is this the one i want to do in 4 gauge, or do i need to do both, or both and a block ground or what?
my negative battery terminal to block is already 4 gauge, as is my alternator to positive terminal.

 

Yeah, the flat braided copper wire is the one you want to supersize. I think the others are for ECM related components and the like...

 

k i did that, and it helped a lot but didnt quite fix it. rpms still drop just the slightest bit, but no more jerking. voltage still drops to 12 or maybe a little lower when it hits.

 

Are you running an underdrive crank pulley? That might be a problem, the alt not turning fast enough to charge properly. Also, you can try upgrading the negative battery ground to help things a bit. There should be two wires at the negative battery terminal, the big one going to the engine block and the small one getting connected to a nearby ground screw.

:edit: Also, I would make the negative batt cable a 0 or 1 gauge wire, since it is pulling all that extra current through the engine block. The smaller the wire, the less current can safely pass through it before it overheats.