CoastieRon's Progression of Idiocy journal & BS

Audio 16

So, I was stll having issues with my sub's response, so I started looking at other subs that would work with my sub box. Before following through on buying a new sub (which I'm still considering) I filled the box with polyfill



Still did nothing much for improvement. So I did what @Mr Marv suggested, I swapped my sub output wires at the amp.

So maybe, just maybe, I had the wires incorrect for the sub (those were the only ones I didn't label)....

The response is completely different and much MUCH better...

 

Still playing with incremental changes on the amp.

In the meantime, I changed the USB plug in my glovebox to handle the iPod and USB


Then I put in a longer charger for my phone and rerouted it

 

looking good! Semper P!

 

Just realized i have an iPhone 6 not in use, so I'm going turn it into an iPod so I can continue to use my Apple music downloads...


Stupid DRM music

 

Holy crap what a pain in the ass this is turning out to be. Because I use Apple Music, every single song I have shows up in my library. So I have to go through my whole catalog and trim down/download only what I want. My Grateful Dead and Phish collections are ridiculous in size. I think I will take the USB I have and fill it with just Pink Floyd, Led Zep, Grateful Dead, Phish........

 

Audio 17

Going to try something a little different today when I get home:

 

Audio 18

Installed and I can tell a difference. There is a crispness going on. Need a few commutes before deciding.

JL 10TW1-2 on left, Audison APS10D on right




I had to cock the Audison just a little because the holes didn't quite line up



Current amp settings

 

How do you like this? Debating on it myself, but not sure who all makes something similar.

 

It was a brutal winter, so I liked it a lot. I found d that I can see my truck from one of the conference rooms in my office, and it is about 500 steps away, and works just fine (I'm on the second floor).

Install really was a breeze.

 

Audio 19 - Update on subwoofer:

Everything I say is subjective in regards to how I feel the subs compare to each other, so first, I'll lay down some data from each manufacturer:

The JL Audio model 10TW1-2 is a one - 2 ohm voice coil driver that can run at 75w - 300w continuous with a peak of 600W. It has a mounting depth of 4.36". It requires 0.35 NET cubic feet of air in a sealed box. 0.35 net equals a box built for 0.42 cubic feet before the subwoofer is installed. Because the subwoofer speaker displaces 0.047 cubic feet, you get 0.35 cubic feet of space in the box.

Audison APS 10D is a two - 4 ohm voice coil driver that can run up to 400w continuous with a peak of 800w. It has a 3.46" mounting depth and requires 12 lr or 0.42 cubic feet of air in a sealed box (no such displacement aerobics here, just build a box that has 0.42 cubic feet of space before you put the driver in).

The amplifier I have and has been connected to both drivers (at different times of course) is an Arc Audio 850.5 XDi. The subwoofer channel produces 225w RMS at 4 ohm and 400w RMS at 2 ohm. The JL subwoofer is a 2 ohm voice coil driver, so it falls into the 400w RMS setting. Because I ran the Audison's dual 4 ohm voice coils in parallel as per the manual, it also ends up at 2 ohm falling into the 400w RMS setting.



So now for the butt dyno:

I had some tuning issues with the JL. The bass felt muddy and the timing was off. So after a lot of back and forth with @Mr Marv (who by the way is a treasure trove of audio information), the amp settings were changed multiple times in small increments until I ended here:



The tic marks on the dials are 20hz intervals. That said, the crossover point for the front speakers is 90 hz, the rear 100 hz, bass boost is 6dB and the sub is set at 60 hz. These sounded to me like the best settings so far, and I am rolling with them for at least a month before I change. I ran with these settings on the JL for two weeks before the Audison was installed.

Also, for timing, Marv suggested I switch the wiring on the sub to the opposite of pos - pos, neg to neg. His explanation from text:

This actually made the JL sub sound much better than it had in weeks, projecting the kick closer to the dash and not into my back. it made the front stage sound much more full, but it only seemed to sound good for a couple of genres: Rap, Country and Pop. The problem with that is I'm a big fan of Progressive rock/metal, Metal and Hard Rock. Trying to find that happy medium is difficult.

Doing a ton of research, I put out the following question on do it yourself mobile audio: http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum...t-my-car/398594-10-sub-0-42cf-sealed-box.html

That's where I found the Audison for sale, and found that the specs were perfect not only for the sealed box, but also better suited for the amp.

The Audison is wired to the amp the exact same way (except for the voice coils being run in parallel). The timing is perfect, and the bass is great for everything I'm listening to right now, which is a range from the following:

Opeth
Umphrey's McGee
Snoop Dogg
NWA
Porcupine Tree
Spock's Beard
Megadeth
with some Pink Floyd and Grateful Dead thrown in for good measure as well as Kenny Chesney.

The bass response in definitely quicker and more defined. I don't get any flat bottoming out with metal, especially with Metallica's Master of Puppets (this one seemed to beat up the JL). I am running the same music I ran through the JL and there are noticeable differences.

In conclusion, if you are looking for a clean sounding, shallow mounting, not needing a huge sealed box subwoofer driver, don't be afraid to look at Audison. It is a comparably priced subwoofer (in my case, I spent $229.99 on the JL from Boomer McLoud's in Merrimack NH, and $225 from a member on DIYMA, shipped).

 

And now here is the towing post!

Yesterday we finally took delivery of our new camper. We had decided last year to trade in our Zinger 286BHS for multiple reasons, the biggest one being that only my wife sleeps in it. Me and the kids hammock camp at every single opportunity, even up at our property. If the weather gets too "weird", the kids go up in the loft of our barn house garage, which is set up as a guest room with bunk beds, couches and a flat screen.

Knowing that we were trading in the camper is what allowed me to trade in my 2009 Tundra TRD Offroad. There are a good number of posts on this site that argue that the 3rd Gen Taco can't tow for shit. I disagree. I have towed more camper with less truck, and had no issues downsizing to the Tacoma because of that. This is our 3rd camper, and I have towed boats and campers since I was 19, so I'm pretty confident in my abilities as well as what equipment should be used.

The new trailer:



This is a Coachman Freedom Ultralite Express 192RBS. You can see from the floor plans in the link, that this is for the most part, the Queen's Castle. Us surfs got to sleep outside.

Weight stickers:



Here is much of the same from the website:



OK, so the trailer is a bit on the heavy side with a stickered dry weight of 1883 kg, or 4152 pounds. Dry weight isn't necessarily the whole picture though, and I'm willing to bet the trailer, as set up driven off the lot, was closer to 4500 pounds, probably a little heavier.

Which brings me to gear. As I posted quite a while back, I installed a Redarc Tow Brake controller, so I have the stopping part covered. What about the hitch part? The one thing I always want to make sure of over the last 2 trucks and trailers is not to sink my ass end. That said, I have owned a Reese Straight Line Weight Distributing hitch 10,000 system for over the last 15 years, and it has done me extremely well. I thought there was no sense in changing that up.

I had the camper dealership install and ensure that I had minimum sinkage:



I was pretty satisfied with the hook up, I think I might have sank about 1/4" overall.

Looking good, and ready to drag the trailer up to the property, I headed to the house first to test the breaks, make sure that I would be good to go for a longer ride (the camper dealership is only 5 miles from the house).

Redarc impressions:

Holy crap that break controller is sensitive. I had to dial it down from the setting of 5 to 4, then down a little bit more to 3.5ish to get the response I was looking for. The controller has no issues with the trailer whatsoever, so I felt pretty good about it. I had always used the slide controller type brake controllers, so the was a little learning curve, but it was very minimal.

Got to the house, grabbed a water bottle and hauled up to the camp.



Our property is 59 miles door to door. I live in New Hampshire, and the roads and highways are not exactly flat. I travel up the F.E. Everette to US 93, then on to Rt 4 for the remainder of my drive. I towed the trailer in S4, and had to downshift 3 or 4 times myself (and the truck shifted down at least 5 times as well). I had the ETC on the whole time. The trip was a little over an hour with speeds varying between 60-75mph on the highways, and between 35 and 60 on Rt. 4. I averaged 10.8 mpg for that trip.



In order to get the camper onto its pad, I have to enter through a gate, pull a huge u-turn through the yard, then back the camper between a tree and the garage, bank towards the driver's side at a 90* along the water facing side of the garage, then bank 20* to the passenger side onto the lot. Here is an old satellite photo (please pardon the crappy drawing on it):



The Tacoma handled this chore very well. I usually have a spotter with me when I move the camper around, but yesterday it was just me, and I only needed to adjust my approach around the corner once. Nailed it:



Of course, when the queen gets there she'll probably have me move it or something, so I hooked up nothing. Your eyes are seeing correctly, we have a 30/50 amp hook up as well as two dumping stations that go into our septic system. We purposely designed our system to handle 2 campers and a 5 bedroom house (in the future).

Final thoughts:

The truck did just fine. Could I feel the camper behind me, damn right I could, but I never had any real concern of anything going wrong during this evolution. The truck is quite capable of pulling up long grades in fourth gear if you are already at a good speed. I shifted down to third a few times myself just to keep with the flow of traffic. During those times I never got above 4000 rpms, and I was comfortable with that. I believe this truck to be well suited enough to hit any campground within my area, but this camper will, for the most part, only see one other campsite this year, and even that is a stretch. We kind of like to just hang out where we are (and I think you can see why). Any place I would take this trailer would be within 100 miles from where it sits now.

That said, would I do any long distance trips hauling this trailer? Hell no. I would be stopping for gas every 170 miles if I did, and it would get boring really friggen quick. I certainly wouldn't be making the multi thousand mile trips that some folks on this site seem to like to make, that's for sure. But the real question is, can the truck do it? I believe there is enough evidence to say yes to that with a trailer as heavy as this.....

 

Nice write up!

 

Thanks. I'm kind of data driven when it comes to "big mods" and like to share experiences.

 

Im the same way. The more info out there, the better. Thats what makes TW so great

 

Some follow-up and BS:

Sound:

All of the speakers continue to operate well and I believe they are still breaking in. I try to listen at different volumes with different sources to ensure that I am breaking everything properly without over-stressing the cones to early failure. The Audison continues to outperform the JL. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, as the Audison was made for that box, and I believe the JL could have benefited from a little more room than its manual prescribes. I would imagine that once that driver is fully broken in, it's going to be even better.

Lift progress:

I still have not gotten my little lift put in. The spring has been busy and I haven't been able to line up my schedule with my cousin's schedule. This coming weekend is a bust, I'm going to see Slayer's final tour at Mohegan Sun on Friday, staying overnight, then golf on Saturday. The weekend after that is camping with the scout troop, then I just want to go to the damn lake and relax. I'd love to get that off my bang list, the sooner the better.

Wheels/tires:

I've been thinking lately on either going with the TRD SEMA 17" wheels in the graphite color:



or the 4Runner Trail 17" Trail wheels:



and I can't make up my mind right now. I really like both of them, and am honestly leaning more towards the TRD SEMA wheels. I can get them ordered through the dealership for $177.33 each. I think that's a pretty good deal honestly, and I won't have to deal with shipping.

I can't justify doing the tires until right around November-ish, but I can probably get away with doing the wheels with minimal damage from the ruling class at the house.

Other items:

I've been noticing a good amount of random scratches in the paint and have been "erasing" them with McGuire's Scratch X. Yesterday I gave the truck a good washing and quick detailing. I ordered some F-11 to give a try for the hell of it. F-it, why not, right?

I hate the OEM bed cover, and I think I'm going to just sell it. It's heavy and I've taken it off the truck.

 

This weekend I had the opportunity to wash the truck and give it a once over with the F-11 Topcoat spray. The application is extremely easy, spray on, spread, buff out. I'm not entirely sure I believe the whole "lasts 6 months" claim, but I'll roll with it, and probably put another coat of it on next Sunday after camping. I will say this, it sure does shine up the truck nicely:



Talked to my cousin Saturday. We are finally all set to install the lift on June 21. We're going to work on it over night to get it done. Shouldn't be too much of a nightmare, as the truck just rolled 10k miles. Like mentioned before, it's a small-ish lift, 5100's all around, 1/4" spacer on the driver for lean, 1-1/2" Rogue Offroad AAL in the rear, OME 884 springs in the front. That will give me a better rake (I don't like the level look) and a better ride while on my meager off road excursions while camping up here in New England.

To that point, I have also remembered to not skip leg day, and ordered 17x8 Level 8 MK6 wheels with 0 offset in Gunmetal with black lugs wrapped with Falken Wildpeak A/T3 265-70-17s. Those should be in right around the time the lift gets done.



Very excited to get this all done!

 

Awesome write up!
Did you get a chance to use the redarc to manually brake the trailer? I’m curious how well that function works compared to a proportional controller with the slide lever manual function.

 

I did. It works well. It's pretty sensitive, and I feel as though when you press and hold, it's at about the same sensitivity as pressing the brake.

I didn't have any oh shit moments while towing, but did test it while leaving the camper dealership, a couple times at highway speed, and once while backing. There is a learning curve using it that way, but it works....

 

Woooohooooo! Wheels and tires are in! Appointment for Monday afternoon for install,....

 

subd