1996 Honda Accord - Endless Possibilities

1996 Honda AccordIt was 1996 when Chris Shipley met Jeff Mclntyre, who at the time was having a car built to compete in the IASCA Pro 301-600 watt class. After attending a few shows (including The Spring Break Nationals) as Jeff's co-pilot, Chris was hooked on car audio and its possibilities. Work on his own car began almost immediately; unfortunately half way through the install Chris experienced every enthusiast's worst nightmare: a car accident. It left Chris injured and his project totaled. Remarkably Chris was able to look at the situation as a positive; he bought a brand new car and used the time recovering from his injuries to have the first install done in the 1996 Honda Accord seen here. After the car had been on the IASCA circuit for four years, Chris felt it was time for a new look and some fresh equipment. Chris contacted Doug Potter, owner of Glassswerks in Laurenceville, GA, in 2000. The big factor in the decision to go to Glasswerks was that it's a one-stop shop. Chris needed a single place that would take care of everything from designing, fabricating to painting.

Signals and Sources The factory head unit was removed along with the pocket below the radio, the cigarette lighter and the ashtray. An Alpine CDA-7863 CD player and an Alpine DVA-5205 DVD player were ISO mounted using custom machined and polished aluminum brackets to hold the two units together for mounting in the car. An MDF ring was machined to fit around the units for the proper openings along with another MDF ring to hold an Audiovox 6.4-inch TFT color monitor. Both pieces were then fiberglassed to the factory dash piece, which was filled with plastic body filler, sanded, and sprayed with custom matched Dupont Interior Dye to match the top part of the dash. The new dash still uses the factory mounting tabs to snap into the center console. The overall appearance looks very factory. Finally for ergonomic purposes, the wireless remote for the CDA-7863 was flush mounted into the factory armrest. Underneath the armrest is a custom built console which contains four switches for fan cooling, neon, power inverter for the PlayStation, and the Audiovox monitor. Behind the four switches are the plug-ins for the PlayStation controllers.

EQThe system signal is routed via Tiff RCA ends with custom made twisted pair cable, color-coded to match channel wiring. The car is equipped with two Precision Power DEQ-230's. These are used as a left and right channel. First the faces were removed from the brains and drilled for mounting. Then the brains were relocated underneath the sub enclosure on an MDF panel. A fiberglass "TUB" was fabricated to hold the two faces and an FRX-456 Precision Power Active Crossover. It was then reinforced with more layers of fiberglass and painted to match the car using PPG base coat/clear coat. It was all highlighted by blown blue neon from Tony's Neon mounted above and on the sides of the enclosure, giving a blue glow from behind the seat.

Front StageBefore the addition of any components the car's interior was sound deadened with Dynamat products. Then the doors were removed from the car to run the TIFF speaker wires and covered in Dynamat Original for sound dampening.