Andy Warhol came close with his declaration that everyone, in his or her lifetime, would get 15 minutes in the celebrity sun. If TV and tabloids are accurate indicators, certainly any schmuck is capable of an audience under the bright lights - it just may last a little longer than Warhol could have imagined.
Thus we have the Cult of Celebrity Installer, a trend sparked and stoked by shows like Pimp My Ride and Unique Whips, and magazines like the one spanned across your fingers. So we're always impressed when we meet an installer who expends great effort to cover his tracks and make himself invisible to all but the most discriminate and trained eye.
Meet Matt Turner and Randy Lively, two custom installers tapped to build a project Dodge Charger SRT-8 for CA&E and David Wheels' David Fowlkes. Fowlkes, president of Davin Wheels, asked only this: Give me good 5.1, keep as much of the trunk as possible, and make it look like Dodge did the work. "I like it when you get in the car and see everything, but start to notice the details afterward," Fowlkes says. "It's not so in-your-face. Those doors - you'd swear to God those are factory until you start to look at them."
Fowlkes chose his craftsmen well. Both men made their bones at Hi-Fi Buys in Atlanta's tony Buckhead area, where routine jobs involved custom, stealth systems in Porsche and Mercedes S-class models. The irony is that both Turner and Lively used the Charger to descend back under the radar. If you saw the Chrysler 300M that ran in CA&E a few issues back, you know that these guys have nothing to prove to anybody anymore.
The first order of surgery called for mounting the double-DIN Eclipse source unit flush in the dash console. "It's not that I don't like flip-outs, but they don't look factory," Fowlkes says. "I wanted that integrated look, like it was meant to be there."
The solution: disengage the flip-out motor and push the monitor back on its tracks about a half inch, and then fab up some brackets to keep the touchscreen from wobbling when pressed. A 1/2" piece of silver-painted acrylic surrounds the new head unit assembly, which also required moving the climate controls south 3/8" and relocating switches for traction control and hazard lights forward of the armrest.
Turning their attention to the system's 5.1 demands, Turner and Lively found placing the 2" center channel speaker more of a challenge than expected. A small patch of plastic under the forward section of the dash ruled out a recessed center channel and tweeter install. Faking it was out of the question.
Turner says that instead of doing something that looked "tacked on, where we would've just cut a hole in the dash and put on a grille," they removed the dash entirely and used it as a jig to cut a whole new 3/8" MDF top piece. They included vents for the HVAC system and holes for the tweeters, while the center channel speaker sits, recessed in front of the Charger's light sensor.
That also puts it near the base of the windshield, a potential acoustic nightmare. But both Turner and Fowlkes say that if there is any compromise in the fidelity, they don't hear it. "I don't think it compromises the sound, especially with the [Eclipse DCU-105 5.1] processor's time alignment and EQ," Turner explains. "I think I brought down between 400-630Hz a bit. Also, it's a midrange speaker, so it's not playing any super high-end information. It's got good centering and there aren't any tonal abnormalities." Certainly the customer is happy. Fowlkes says he has no complaints about the 5.1 playback, and even prefers the "outdoor theater ambience" that the center channel lends to standard stereo recordings.
Led by Fowlkes' need to keep his trunk functional, Turner and Lively drew up a simple plan calling for dual 10" Eclipse subs in the large cavities behind each wheel well. Each 1.25ft3 enclosure is made of 3/4" MDF, polyester fleece and fiberglass mat and resin. Trim panels made from the same recipe and wrapped in Softside vinyl cover the enclosures for the length of the trunk. Suede inserts similar to those used on the door pockets add detail.
Under the trunk floor on a 3/4" MDF rack sits the 1,100 watts powering the system. A single Eclipse XA4000 4-channel bridged down to two runs the subs, and dual Eclipse XA2000 2-channels drive the front components and rear coaxials. The center channel pulls power from a small mono amp included in its package.
For final measure, Turner fabbed up a vinyl-covered panel to cover the underdeck - the sheetmetal, wiring and rear deck speaker magnets - to complete the seamless, factory integration look everyone wanted. Fowlkes testifies: "[Their] attention to detail and quality is impeccable."
The job took three weeks with both guys working on the car full-time, Turner says, and he knows that almost no one will understand the time and effort put forth. Other installers will notice, yes, perhaps even summon motivation to step up their own game. But for Turner, it's more about the professional gratification. "Doing a lot of work to a small area, but not looking like you did very much, is more challenging than pulling out some big painted fiberglass thing. That's a lot less difficult because you're not really constrained by anything."
Spec.Dock By 2point5
"We were basically hand-building so many of these," Matt Turner says of his and partner Randy Lively's iPods mounting solution. Responding to the requests of several deep-pocketed Atlanta customers, Turner and Lively spent a year working up the silicone molds and plastic casting that eventually led to spec.dock.
Put simply, spec.dock is an elegant way to mount an iPod in your ride. Depending on your car, 2point5 has cradles that work in ashtrays, coin pockets and cupholders. "It's an enhancement to any existing iPod interface," Turner says. "It basically relocates that cable and gives the iPod a nice place to sit, so you don't have to fiddle with some bracket hanging off the side of your dash, or the iPod Velcro'd to your dash."
2point5 (the name refers to the width of a standard iPod) offers 14 applications for spec.dock, many for BMW, Porsche, Volkswagen and Dodge/Chrysler cars. Choose from three packages: a stand-alone unit that plugs into an existing interface; a unit that offers an auxiliary input; and a unit that comes with interface capability. Prices range from $149-$229. Check out www.2point5.com and email for more info.
Driver profile
Fowlkes is no stranger to CA&E, but his 2006 Charger is a new addition. Fowlkes wanted something that he could drive daily, as well as take to shows and showcase his new running gear from Davin Wheels. His Charger, laced with Mopar intake and custom exhaust from Alex's Exhaust (Bridgeport, PA) puts down 435hp, and rolls on the newest addition to Davin's Speed series, the SP3. Available in 19", 20" and 22" diameters (those on Fowlkes' SRT-8 measure 22" x 9.5" up front, 22" x 10" in back), the SP3's can be ordered through Davin's website using the Total Customization System. TCS allows you to select size, rim width, custom color (using three color bar sliders) and accent trim. Though not on the website, Fowlkes says custom offset is also available. A flexible manufacturing system based in California allows for this customization, a trend we'd like to see more of rather than simply being forced to pick from a range of models made overseas.
Davin Wheels, Eclipse and CA&E partner for a 5.1 project by Matt Turner and Randy Lively.
Creative relocation of climate and traction controls allowed Eclipse AVN-7000 to sit flush in the ample dash console. Note the center channel speaker directly above, near the windshield and the tweeters on the flanks.
Eclipse 6 1/2" SC8264 mids make home in custom door pocket panels (made from SMC, Fibertech short strand and Rage Gold fillers) wrapped in Softside vinyl and trimmed with suede inserts. The theme carries over to the speakerless rear doors. Rear fill comes from deck-mounted Eclipse 6 1/2" SP-6500 coaxials.
Eclipse's BEC105 rear-view camera connects to the AVN up front.
2point5's spec.dock seamlessly cradles a 60GB video iPod in the ashtray. During car shows, Fowlkes can route clips and slideshows from the iPod to the 7-inch monitor. Adjusting climate control is as easy as lifting the iPod out, twisting a knob, and setting it back in.
The sub enclosures suspend each 10" Eclipse SW-8000 in 1.25ft3 of airspace and attach to the Charger's sheet metal with three 1/4" bolts. Turner wanted to ensure they wouldn't jar loose in a collision.
Mounting the three amps in unison meant rotating the battery 90 degrees, which then led to extending the taillight harness, moving the vent hose and creating a new ground point. All cabling: Tsunami (10-gauge for subs, 12-gauge for cabin speakers, 4-gauge power and ground for amps).