After a brief break to study for and write their exams, Car Club and SHSM students are back in room 114 to continue our rebuild of the BR Spirit Car.
We are making some excellent progress with Project Eclipse and are right on track towards our scheduled unveiling date of May 18th, our annual school carnival.
Over the last two weeks, Car Club students have helped finalize details of the massive trunk-spanning subwoofer box. By taking various ideas from Mr. Mule's design tech class on speaker placement, we decided to build a sturdy sealed sub box from the ground up that would house four ten inch Kicker subs. With the final steps underway, a few senior students helped complete the top portion of the fibreglass enclosure before adding some bondo and putty to smooth out any rough spots and help seal the box.
Once smoothed, we decided to carpet wrap the heavily contoured box in order to cover any construction flaws and give it that classic upholstered look. The wrap process was slow and tedious, leaving a few spots behind that one piece of carpet could not cover.
But with a careful hand and a razor's edge, Mr. Da Silva and the students helped wrap the affected area with minimal flaw to the seams in the wrap.
The finished box looks much better and once the subs are in place, the unit looks ready for its new home in the Eclipse.
When the system was tested a couple of weeks ago, we noticed a few air leaks around the base of the subs as well as at the holes where the speakers were connected.
Time to fix that, as buzzing much degrades the speaker's sound quality...
First we drilled out the initial speaker wire through holes and replaced them with form fitted spring terminals...
Now the sub box has the proper wire terminals for connecting the subs to the high power 1200 watt monoblock amplifier.
While some Car Club students readied the subs for securing into the sub box, another student crawled into the back seat area of the Eclipse and secured the remaining pivot bracket below the TV monitor actuator assembly. Now the TV will rise and retract to the correct angles.
Back at the sub box area, two senior students prepared the wiring and spade connectors for the subs, while two junior level members installed new foam sealing gaskets around the back of the sub baskets so that they will not leak air during their operation in the air tight box.
The subs have been wired in a way as to fall within the amp's resistance load. This way, we have optimum sound, but do not overrun the amp's power output.
Once back in the trunk, the carpeted box fits quite snugly in its new home and with the TV motorized out of the trunk, the vehicle looks ready for any special event at BR!
...but we are far from finished, so we focus next on building a "flying frame" to encompass the TV when it is in the fully retracted position. In order to build a sturdy unit that can withstand the vibrations of the subs, we welded steel ribs that attached to the old rear seat supports. From there, we extended wood brackets and secured them to the contoured wings that we cut on the band saw.
With a cross piece in place, the flying frame is quite rigid, and will be carpeted once the rest of the mid-section (the panel that holds the twin amplifiers) is constructed.
The TV now has a defined base which to retract in and out of.
By the end of this week's car club, we rig an amp and battery to the subs and give it a dry run using a music app on the vehicle's on-board tablet.
Although the Kicker sub amplifier has over 1000 watts of power, we don't want to resonate the TV to its destruction. However, Mr. Da Silva and the students were pleased to find that, at half power, the sound system pumped clean sound throughout the vehicle...and had enough thump to vibrate the rear-view mirror!
With our work closing in on the completion of the sound system on the BR Spirit Car, we are looking forward to the day when we can roll out the mighty Eclipse and park it at school events, throw open the door, crank on some tunes and enjoy the day!
It won't be long before Project Eclipse is complete...Join us at the finish line and help celebrate the shining achievements of Student Success at BR!
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