How we built it!
Having discussed the West Coast Customs range of in-car entertainment with the Guys from MTV's Hit series PIMP MY RIDE, The stock was ordered and plans were drawn.
At 7pm on a warm Friday evening in May, the first batch of the New 2006 West Coast Customs Audio amplifiers, subwoofers and various speakers arrived at our busy workshops in Goring.
Our Aim
To have our demo car built, and ready to show off the exciting new range of WCC audio to the public, at our company's Promotional Event in Worthing's busy Montague Street the next Morning at 10am !!!
The Design
The goal was to have a demo car that sounds good with the boot and doors open when at a live event, and to sound even better when being listened to in normal use.
How?
Starting with a totally empty boot, the floor was lined with a sheet of 18mm MDF, giving a solid flat base to start build on.
To achieve a dual-functionality demo car, The BMW's Subwoofer enclosure was designed to operate primarily with the boot open so that the subs can operate normally 'firing' the music out of the open boot, but when the boot lid is shut, the bass finds a natural route through the very large port between the two subwoofer enclosures
and vents directly into the car through the ski-hatch, in the middle of the back seats. This was a bit of a calculated risk, which works really well, delivering a tight, crisp bass, without the normal characteristics derived when using a band-pass enclosure.
To help improve the mid-bass within the car, West Coast Customs 6x9's were installed in place of the factory fitted 13cm speakers in the rear deck, by using adapter plates to ensure that the sound vented directly into the car and didn't get lost in the boot.
The front speakers were also upgraded with 17cm component speakers, from the standard BMW 13cm components. In order for the larger speakers to fit, excess metal was removed from the standard kick-well speaker locations, we added sound deadening material to keep panel resonation to a minimum, and made up new panels to hold the new Larger 17cm mids. The replacement tweeters were then located in the original mounting location without much too much work being required.
New Directed Audio Power, Speaker and RCA Cables, along with the remote wire, were run through the car prior to the Amplifiers arriving, in order to help speed up the installation.
The first task when the equipment arrived was to located the Amplifiers and Power capacitor, so panels were made to hold these items in their desired locations.
Once the ideal location for each of the devices was decided, the covering panels were manufactured. The windows for each of the panels were also cut, but rather than using the 'normal', square windows, we incorporated the shape of the black grill, used on the front of amplifiers. So that we could stay with the theme.
Fibreglass filler and easy sand body filler were used to contour the trim panels so that a good fit was achieved. Prior to trimming with original BMW vinyl.
To add some excitement to the installation, we fitted intense Blue LED lighting behind each of the panels. All of the housing panels were trimmed with white vinyl to reflect the light.
The amplifiers were set into the spare wheel well, in order for the two 12" subwoofer to fit.
FINISHED
At 8am on the next Morning it was done! Having worked through the night, Highdown Car Audio's BMW Demonstrator Rocked!!
Blue lighting on the Directed Audio Stiffening Cap and Fused Power distribution Block add to the lighting effect.
Neil Jennings of J. R. Services, Mobile Valeting (Tel 07896 222831), gave the demo car a complete going over in no time, in final preparation for its Big Day.
then it was off to set up our display - we even had time for a coffee to help keep us awake!
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