Not much has happened with the car the past few weeks other than getting it dirty from back country roads. It is the time of year that other things have to be tended to before the heat of Summer is here to stay. I did take care of a few things that needed attention, or at least things I wanted to attend to.
This will hopefully be the last iteration of the rear speaker box for a long time, while I have enjoyed the challenge of designing something that functions and doesn't take up a lot space, I believe this design will do what I want.
I rebuilt the rear speaker box, it sounded great but was still taking up more room than I wanted. I rebuilt the existing enclosure to have just two small cubes mounted to a back board with the amp upright between the cubes. I needed a way to get the 4 gauge wire to the amp and still allow the back board to fit as close to the rear wall as possible while not putting any sharp bends in the wire as this can cause the wire to come loose and a direct short is not a pretty thing to see. I mounted the cubes on 5/8" stand offs so I could pass the wires behind the cubes, giving a straight shot to the amp. I need to do the same routing on the input side but haven't had the time to do so yet. You may notice the EQ gone, no more blinding blue LED's. Before the design change I had 16" from the waterfall to the box for luggage, now I have 22" in the center section which is a huge improvement. Mid-bass did drop slightly but it is hardly noticeable.
I went ahead and replaced the head unit, the cheap Android unit worked beautifully, it was fast, smooth and the graphics were good. The problem as discussed above is it was downright dangerous to operate while driving, the screen is too small to glance at and trying to change the volume meant you could easily also change the song as the screen layout isn't ideal. While parked it was an awesome unit, but while in motion it isn't. I had replaced the head unit in the Yukon as the old Kenwood was starting to have issues. I used one of those floating screen units because the wife liked it, and honestly, it is a great improvement, so far. I hope it is durable and gives at least a few years use. I really didn't want a double din in the C4, I know it can be done. What I really wanted was a flip out 7" screen unit but I could not find anything but the cheapo units or older name brand used units, but then I would be using another old unit that could fail at any time. On my old F350 I bought a cheap Dual flip out unit from WalMart and used it for 5 years or so before I sold the truck, it worked fine. I decided to try another one, but an updated version. As a company, Dual makes cheap crap, or at least that has been their reputation for decades. The floating screen unit in the Yukon is a Dual and it impressed me, at least initially. With most lower tier units you either get one that works as intended or you get one you have to replace quickly because it failed. If it makes it 6 months it will probably last years. I took the gamble.
It does give me some advantages, I don't have to cut up the bezel to fit a double din and the screen is larger, it has six 3 volt pre-outs so I can ditch the EQ and have full control from the drivers seat, it has two USB slots, one on the detachable face and a Micro SD slot behind the face and it is really easy to pull out if I have to replace it. I have a CD/DVD player and you can operate the unit with the screen retracted.
On to another issue that cropped up. The bezel that I replaced for the top/door junction broke, more specifically, the pins that hold it on broke. I have no idea how I did that but I did, the pins are hollow and not very strong at the junction where they attach to the bezel. I suspect part of the problem was the bezel also attaches to the door trim by a screw that helps keep it in place but the drivers side piece of that trim was broken off. I need to repair that first.
The problem, a missing piece of plastic. I cut a piece of ABS to fill in the missing piece that the screw goes through.
Glassed into place with two layers...
The finished product... (This piece is mostly covered by the bezel so no need to change the color.)
Now to work on the broken pins since I am not buying another one of these fragile covers.
The vulnerable area is where the pins come out of the bezel, too weak, so I cut some copper wire that fit into the hole in the middle of the pins, heated them up and buried them into the bezel to give better strength and glued them down to hold them for epoxy application. The force on these pins is in shear, the coper while soft will give strength in a shear application rust, certainly more than just the brittle plastic and it won't rust. I cut up some chop mat glass into about 1/8" pieces and mixed it into some 5 minute G-Flex epoxy and used it to reinforce the joint. I did this many years ago on the pins that broke on the bezel of the Yukon and they have held beautifully. I cut some slices into the pins to give the epoxy/glass something to firmly attach to. (Note, this method doesn't work well if the pin fits flush to the piece it fits into. Fortunately there is enough room on this bezel from the rubber gasket to allow the increase in thickness to not be an issue.)
I didn't get as much on the base as I wanted but with the missing screw in place it should be enough.
Time to put it all back together... (I hate those push nuts that go on from underneath.)
The seat back and seat belt cover this area so no one would ever know it had been repaired.
The A/C in the shop is holding it's own but I need to finish insulating the roof which will help greatly.
