Hello,
I have been in and out of the third gen boards and a while back a few people made fibergass kick panels. Does anyone make these anymore or am I on my own to make some. If so does anybody have links or pictures on how they went about to make them. Thanks Chris

 

I still make them. I'm building 2 pairs now, and in a week or two I've got another pair to build. If you're interested in a pair, give me a PM or an email and we can chat.

 

I'm running Jim's kicks because I love the way they look and because Jim makes good stuff. It was also nice to not have to worry about aiming all the drivers. If you’re feeling cheap you can make them yourself for well under $50 in materials. All it requires is some wooden rings to hold the woofers and tweeters, some fleece or an old t-shirt, and some resin. Granted, that is oversimplifying it a bit

 

anybody got any pics of these or some pricing guidlines?

 

I've got pics and pricing on my website:
http://www.iroczone.com/jim/motorsports.htm

 

Wow Jim nice kicks. I run CDT's as well. I'm curious, the kicks in the pictures are the 6"? Do you aim the woofer at all or just mount it flat? How about the tweeter. Do you aim up to the upper interior? I run a set of the Q-logics that I reinforced with fiberglass and sound deadener. I must say that with that and adding some polyfill in the kicks that sound is amazing. I ask about the angles because the Q-logic kicks have the woofer and tweeter angled up some. I really don't like the position they chose for the woofer and If I were to make some I would have done like you did and put it further back. I want to make a set for my 2nd gen T/A but the space is limited in the kicks. Mounting the woofer in the kick somewhat flat would really make the install much easier. I just wonder about how the sound would be as long as I could get the tweeter aimed decent.

 

I actually just made a set a few days ago... I'll go clean the car and get some pics of for you guys...

 

My kick panels are a sealed enclosure that screws to the existing kick panel. It took 4 hours to fabricate, I let it cure overnight, and the next morning I carpeted them and installed them. I'm using a set of 5.25" Zapco components, and my crossovers are mounted under the dashpad where the stock 4x6's were.

Pics as promised...

 

TTT!

 

The speakers in the pic are 6.5" CDTs. I'm actually building another set now with the exact same components. The drivers are aimed toward the center of the car to an extent, but not a ton. I'd say they're aimed at approximately 15 degrees. I'm really not impressed with CDT's lack of a swivel cup in their flush mount tweeters, especially because their design sets the tweeter back a mile in the cup. However... I'm not a huge believer that tweeter aiming is as critical as people hype it up to be. There is so much reflection in the foot well, that your high frequency imaging changes very little no matter how you aim your tweeters. In my old design, one of my tweeters wasn't even visible because it was obscured by the underside of the dash panel. In experiments, I've moved the tweeters all over the place. Yes, there's an audible difference, but it's much less noticable than I ever imagined it would be.

Here's what my most recent pair with those components looks like:

 

Thanks Jim. Nice set up. Glad you got the 6.5 drivers to work. I was always under the impression that the CDT 6.5 drivers needed alot of air space.

 

I'll take pics of my co-worker's '83 T/A Pace Car tomorrow. We did 6.5" components in the kicks and 8" mids in the doors.

 

why 6.5s if you used 8s in the doors? You could have gotten the better off axis capabilities and smaller packaging for better aiming with a 4" woofer as long as you had the 8s to do the midbass duties.

 

It's an SQ car, strictly goes to shows, rarely driven on road. The system is 5 or 6 years old now, but still sounds amazing.

 

The kicks are not sealed - they vent through a hole in the box. I say vent so that no one will think they're ported (that would be next to impossible to pull off with the extremely limited volume involved). It's just a big hole in the back of the plastic. This is more or less ideal because components are designed to be installed in doors. If the doors aren't sealed up with lots of deadening mat that means the speakers are running more or less infinite baffle, much like they do in Jim's kicks. If the doors are 'sealed' it's still too large (and leaky) of a 'box' to exert much of any kind of force on the driver so it's still running more or less IB.

lots of pictures
(Files titled finishedxxx are of my set as are the in progress pictures. The rest are another set Jim built for someone)

These things can hold some pretty large speakers. I'm running MB Quart QSD-216's in them. There's nothing exceptional about the woofer's size (6.5") but the surface mounting ring requires a 7" hole and is it's self 7.75" across. I think it looks really nice installed. I’m not really a fan of the CDT style grill that just ends with the speaker. The tweeters are flush mounted and there's room to spare there too. The only problem that I can see anyone run into is trying to install a speaker that’s too deep. Sure it can stick out of the hole in the back of the kick but there’s only so much room between the back of the plastic and the metal wall of the car.

I also love the way these sound but you can read about that here

 

Ok now I see. Well to tell you the truth a hole in the back works to my advantage since my install will be in a second gen. Right in the kick area there is a hole which is used for ventilation/AC. Kind of in the cowl area. So now that I have an idea of what's up I know what to do. Thanks. I'll post some pics when I get to them.

 

He didn't bring his car to work today... I left my camera at work so I'll post pics next time it's there.