James Cotta's passion for big rigs started after he got behind the wheel of one at the tender age of 14. Needless to say, he knows a lot about big rigs and how to drive them.
The first truck he drove is the same one you see here. The difference is that his father bought it back in 1975 for only two thousand dollars. Since the truck was about twenty years old, it had seen better days. That didn't matter to Cotta who received his Class 1 license when he was sixteen. He drove the truck every time he had a chance to. After a few years, the truck finally started to fail. It just couldn't take it anymore and it was laid to rest in Cotta's hay barn.
Another passion James has is car audio. For a little over a decade, Cotta has always had a "system" in at least one of his vehicles. The synergy between his love of car audio and his passion for the Mack were always evident and he vowed to himself to build the Mack into a show truck one day.
When it was finally time to rebuild the Mack into a show truck, Cotta knew exactly who to take it to for the audio system. In 1989, Cotta purchased a Crew Cab Dually and just walked into Lodi Auto Stereo in Lodi, California not knowing much about car audio. This is where he met owner Gary Patteson. "I was leaving for a ski trip and just told him to do it up. Well, I didn't give him much time and he exceeded all of my expectations," recalls Cotta. Ever since that time, Cotta has brought all of his vehicles to Patteson's shop.
Something Different
Patteson knew that the Mack was not going to be one of your "run of the mill" installs. It would have to be as outrageous as the rest of the truck. Patteson and his team including Manuel Arisman and Jason Bishop saw it as an enormous honor to work on the show truck. They didn't even hesitate in saying yes and were up for the challenge. They knew that attention to detail would not be the only factor in the installation. The sound quality had to knock your socks off as well.
The truck presented many challenges during the installation. The first challenge involved mounting the source unit and equalizer. By design, the firewall protrudes into the cab where the newly constructed center console resides. The reason for this is to accommodate the rather large engine Cotta had installed. Well, this is where Cotta wanted the Clarion DRX6675Z head unit and Arc Audio PEQ 7-band parametric equalizer installed. The team has to dismantle both units and apply ribbon cable to both components. Although, it was a tedious process, Patteson wanted to make Cotta happy. Hand-made billet bezels were fabricated for a unique cosmetic appearance.
Money Is No Object
Rainbow Reference Series CS260.30 components (6-1/2" mids and tweets) were used up front to provide the mids and highs. This series of speakers comes to you from Arc Audio. Hand-made in Germany, they provide accurate sound reproduction. The cost is a measly $7500 for a set. The installation crew fabricated a set of kick panels for the components. They started with a stick frame followed by cloth, resin, body-filler, and more resin. Body-filler was again added and sanded smooth. The finished kick panel was then painted to match the exterior color of the truck. Positioning of the speakers was just as important as the perfect finish of the kick panels; so two lasers were used for exact placement and positioning of the speakers.
A set of Rainbow mid-bass drivers was also installed in the doors. Kustom-K Fab fabricated the doors from scratch and before installing the inner door skin (the one that faces the interior of the cab), Lodi Auto stereo added Dynamat Extreme to the inside of the door. Then a baffle made of MDF was constructed to hold the 6-1/2" driver and bolted into the steel frame of the door. Then the inner door skin was fastened into place. A hand-made polished billet grill hides them.
Due to limited space, rear speakers were not used. Only subwoofers were installed in the rear of the cab. The construction of the subwoofer enclosure was performed in the same fashion as the kick panels. The enclosure (also an integral part of the amp rack which will be explained below) features two Rainbow SW300's 12-inch subwoofers. Each woofer is in a sealed enclosure of 1.5 cubic foot of air space.
Arc Power
Three amplifiers are used to power the system. The first is an Arc Audio 2500-CXL. Providing 1050 watts to the subwoofers, this amplifier has enough muscle to put out full tilt without breaking a sweat! The last two amplifiers are a pair of Arc Audio 2100-CXLs. One amplifier powers the mid-bass drivers in the doors while its twin, located in between the subwoofers, powers the components in the kick panels. Each amplifier sends 200 watts of power to the doors and kick panels. An Arc Audio MX-1 electronic crossover ensures that the drivers in the door receive the proper frequencies.
The amplifier rack (including the subwoofer enclosure) was completely assembled outside the vehicle. Weighing in at 250 pounds, four guys had to lift it into the truck, being extra cautious to not damage the yellow pearl paint. The front portion of the psuedo rack containing the subwoofers and two amplifiers is inside the cab, while the subwoofer amplifier and crossover networks for the components reside outside the cab, just beneath the rear window. In order to do this, the cab was cut; however, great care was taken to make the cutout look natural. The rear components are protected with a door that completely seals all the components from the outside environment.
More Components
Wiring in the vehicle is from Arc Audio. This includes 4-gauge power and ground, speaker cable, and interconnects. Other components from Arc Audio used in the installation are: Distribution blocks, 150-amp ANL fuses, and 1-farad capacitors featuring status meters.
Between the cab and rear wheels on both sides of the truck are motorized doors that open up like wings. One side is a mirror image of the other and when open, two 680-amp Delco commercial batteries are revealed along with a polished aluminum fuel cell. The front doors have electronic seals to keep the truck airtight. "The system sounds like one gigantic pair of headphones! It is loud and extremely clean," states Patteson.
For kicks, a 5" monitor mounted in a custom billet aluminum bezel was added to the glove box door. A Panasonic DV1500 DVD player sitting below the passenger seat provides video signals to the monitor.
Protecting the truck is an Ungo MS2007 security system. Besides providing security for the truck, the four-button LCD transmitter helps Cotta activate functions such as the remote motorization of the entry steps and the fuel and battery access doors.
Eight Long Years
Although the audio system took only three months to build, it was an integral part in finishing the "Millennium Mack" which took in total, eight years to finish! All of the bodywork on the truck is hand formed steel and aluminum. No fiberglass (Cotta was explicit about that in the interview). That's one of the reasons why the truck is so unique! The old motor was replaced with a 335 Cummins. The fuel pump is "hot-rodded" a bit and it has enough torque to pull a tree stump out of the ground. The frame was extended to give the truck a stouter appearance and the frame was completely assembled on piece at a time. Custom one-piece forged wheels at an astounding size of 22.5" makes the truck spear like a land speed cruiser. Even the suspension was completely redone as Cotta added air suspension to it (not available in the 1956 model). It is difficult to write down all the modifications to the truck (we do have to show other installs in this issue), but you should get the picture.
The whole project has many people that helped out, but for this article (pertaining to car audio), special thanks go out to the guys at Lodi Auto Stereo for a fantastic job, Demitrios and Chris at Arc Audio, and finally his wife, Debby. For now, the truck will be touring at various events, including the 2001 SEMA Show and 2002 CES show, both in Las Vegas. There is more to the "Millennium Mack" than what you see here. To truly appreciate it, you must see it in person. It is certainly "one of a kind."