This is a pretty boss video: Two animated characters take to the streets with some pretty twisted music playing in the background we see their adventure in a little RC car. Even has a dog attacking them.
The Pana-Z – (Roadster Porsche Panamera)
The Pana-Z – A convertible Nissan 350z, converted to a Porsche Panamera. Built by a BodyShop Kikuta. The bodykit (originally built for the Porsche Panamera) – BodyShop Kikuta then fused the kit with the actual Porsche Panamera panels and.. here we are today. Looking at a Convertible, 2 Door Porsche Panamera. The interior of the car was crafted by NEWING of Hyogo, Japan. Vast expanses of white leather cover almost every surface, including the doors, dash and seats. The shifter and parking brake are adorned with Swarovski style decoration by T-Factory.
The audio system in the Pana-Z advances the split-personality theme and is comprised of gear from Bewith of Japan. The Mirror Media MM-1 Digital Audio player heads up the system and is built around a custom rearview mirror that will accept a compact flash card. It features premium 24-bit 96kHz DACs – very cool. On the split side, when Kameda is competing in an SQ competition or just wants to kick it old school and pop in a CD, he switches up to the Pioneer Carrozzeria DEH-P940. Signals from the MM-1 are sent rearwards to a Bewith State sound processor that is equipped with crossovers and equalization, which allows for fine tuning. The Bewith State connects directly to the MM-1 through a proprietary digital cable.
The six output channels of the Bewith State feed six Bewith Accurate A-110S 100W monoblock amplifiers. Each amplifier is connected to a single Bewith Confidence series speaker. At the top of the doors are C-50II 5cm tweeters, while C-130II 13cm midwoofers are located at the bottom. The rear ‘parcel shelf’ is home to a pair Confidence series woofers which are mounted in sealed enclosures. The midwoofers and subwoofers feature illuminated perimeter lighting which makes them really stand out.
The Pana-Z, as Kameda calls it, rolls on 22-inch VIP Modular wheels. The 10-inch wide wheels are VXS210 models in the rear and VXS110 in the front. Mashup: 2005 Nissan 350Z Pirelli PZero Nero tyres connect the car to the ground. Underneath the massive wheels are 430mm (~17-inch) rotors in the front and 400mm (15.75-inch) rotors in the rear. Clamping the massive rotors are the huge callipers from the CSD 16POT Ultimate Brake system. The suspension utilizes stock shocks with a complete high speed air suspension system. At the touch of a button, Kameda can drop the car to the ground. Bumping power output from the VQ35 is an HKS supercharger.
The majority of the 350Z guys hate it, but as 350z owners ourselves it actually looks kind’ve good! – Would love to see it up-close though.. photos are hardly ever do justice on a car especially when it comes minimalist imperfections.
Here’s a nice video of it by LoonyGarage
Tyler Dirden, One of the most realistic Honda CRX Del Sol owners we’ve come across, looks for the affordable and realistic solution to what he wants & needs, posts about it and is quite well known on the HondaTech forums.
To begin, I started with a goal of “least intrusive” enclosure. Bass tubes and boxes are way to intrusive for a car this small and take up alot of usable space. The interior has remained entacted and unaltered for a very clean and modest look.
The enclosure began life as a 20 gallon air tank with a 14″ diameter. This is the largest diameter that can be used without major rear subframe rework. The sub enclosure fits underneath the spare tire which is only raised 2.5″ for this particular installation. The enclosure was meticulously designed to preform with this sub and has the exact reccomended sealed enclosure volume of .8 cubic feet. This sub was chosen for it’s excelent reviews on Amazon and youtube. It also has a very small enclosure size requirement as stated above.
In the pictures below you will see the type of fabrication needed and COMMITMENT that you must have as you are altering the car permanently.
After the tank/enclosure volume is calculated fabrication begins by trimming the end off of the air tank and a small section off the other end. I used a 3″ cut off wheel which took a long time and effort. A plasma cutter would make a very good and fast cut here if you have one. The opening for the sub was cut out of the end of the short section and measured carefully for trimming and forming. The edge for the sub was hand formed with a large dolley and hammer by slowly rolling the edge over to form the speaker mounting flange. You must cut small slots as seen in the rolled egde to make the edge roll flat. I carefully divided the circumfrence of the hole by the speaker mounting holes and came up with an accurate slot placement. This takes time, don’t be in a rush. The final edge can be ground very flat and even when the roll is accomplished.
A hole was marked directly from the tank section in the spare tire well in the exact location (direct center) and cut out with a 3″ cut off wheel. The edges of the trunk ARE NOT level, flat or ready in ANY way to accept the sub flange. I used a floor jack and a large metal block for a stationary dolley under the flange and a regular hammer to form the trunk floor to a perfect flat, round feciever flange. This is simple if you take your time and don’t get hammer crazy.
It was determined that a 3.5″ protrusion underneath the car would be the maximum without becoming the lowest point of contact. I set this enclosure in at 3″ below the spare tire well and it looks fantastic. Making the flange to mount it with was difficult with a cut off wheel but turned out excellent here. The flange is 1/8″ thick steel, like the tank/sub enclosure and is much thicker than the cars metal. The rear of the enclosure has two long fingers that extend from it that tie in the rear tow loop/bumper brace to the rear subframe suspension forward of it. This effectively makes a very strong connection between the two and a SOLID foundation for BASS production without unwanted resonation (buzzing, rattles). I spent about 20 hours building it after everything was designed correctly and sourced parts for the build. 20 ss bolts and lock nuts are used to mount the enclosure here.
The finished enclosure will be rubberized on the inside for dampening. The round shape will not produce harmfull harmonics on the back side of the sub that boxes generally do. The round sub enclosure promotes clean compression and de-compression of the sub structure. The spare tire here is a 15″ rim that will sit nicely on the top of the sub and doubles as a grill! With only a 2.5″ raise of the spare, some jumper cables etc., can be stored underneath if properly secured.
You may be thinking that just because I went through all this trouble I would give a biased review; wrong. I will tell you the truth. Without this sub for the last 6 months, I really thought my forward system was loud (mid/highs) and was craving bottom which it never delivered. Even though the doors have massive 6.5″ mid woofers by Lanzar which took a very long time to get into the door without interfering with the window; they have no rear sealed enclosure to bring out the bass they could make. They have like 5 lbs magnets on each one. Again very loud but not much bass.
When I got this sub up and going for the first time on low settings (nothing on the levels are maxed) I don’t abuse amps, this changed the whole dynamic. It is scary how much bass a single 12″ sub can produce in the proper sized enclosure. It will bumb a kick drum on rock music sooo sweet and clean. It will pound a boom boom from bass favorites that is clean and undistorted. It hits the entire car out well and without rattles from handles and stuff in doors that buzz. The sub is solidly mounted to the floorpan and rear SUBframe (haha) of the DelSol and produces great bass in the seat of your pants. Subs mounted in the trunck don’t have that fuzzy cabin bass like some love because it gets dampened a bit but ALL the solid hits come through without a hitch and resonance bass too.
I am going to have to install more mid and highs up front to get the ballance of really loud and clear I want. I really like to immerse myself in a big song and dissapear into the noise for a moment, like soo loud you can’t be distracted by anything in life until the volume drops. A cocoon of sound, concert level and clean. I will give more updates with the next amp and forward equipment. This has been a very rewarding install and worth every moment to me. The few people that have seen it so far are blown away at the spare tire location. At first when the bass was low, the spare tire rested well on the edge of the sub shell. But when I bumped it up the tire bounced! I mean bounced and moved around. I had to raise it off the sub shell a half inch or so with a pool noodle to keep it put. This full size spare weighs 22 lbs and it was bouncing around. It stays put now and is dampened by the foam support underneath. It also makes a very clean grill to protect the sub that looks great.
The big ass hole in the dash is for the future air ride accesories and active crossover unit. I will fab a nice pocket out for the regulators and gauges etc and make a cover that will keep it sorta low key like the SRS bag that was there once.
As far as roadsters go, they’re cool, some fun, some handle, some speed, some drift. But how about pumping up music in your roadster? Let’s all be honest, it does kind of make you look like a “doosh”. Nevertheless when we’re alone, cruising or even just in town driving with the girlfriend and you can’t be bothered listening to her wind lol. We all need music, (some may disagree).
We all know there are several kinds of convertibles, let’s start off with the typical 2-Door sports coupe roadsters/spyders, Take a look at this Mazda MX-5 Miata – NB
These things have very little room for car audio, we did a fair share of experiments with this. Now first off the NB actually came with a “BOSE” system and NON-BOSE system, of course if you have the BOSE system it’s not really a good idea to change it. Others kill to have it, also they work with 1/2 or 1 ohm i believe, making them quite un-modifiable, in order to improve it in anyway, you’d have to replace everything! – Including the head unit (there’s a work around for this), the amplifiers, speakers & tweeters.
This particular model has been through a fair share of setups, now at first we thought why did they decide to put small-ass on the windblocker? You can’t hear them unless the roof is on, and even then.. they just aren’t clear. So why not upgrade them? Well we had a spare wind-blocker to experiment with, we just cut it up to see how we’d go with the sound but came to the conclusion that regardless of how you tune it, that “rear” fill-in just doesn’t work right in these cars. It’s just too close your ears – of course this would be driver dependant – The driver of this vehicle was quite tall, therefore minor “tall-guy” modifications had been made, keeping the driver a little further back then the average MX-5 driver.
There’s basically no room for a subwoofer as you’ll see in the gallery, the padding under the carpet is quite thick, but when removed honestly does cause a lot of road noise (which is not easy to get use to after driving in a Mazda) – If it were a Honda or something, it’d be much more acceptable. A subwoofer in the boot does work just fine, you’ll see on the Miata forums that a lot of people do actually install subwoofers, even though it rattles like crazy. Dynamat does help dramatically.
Like all roadsters, the MX-5 needs bass in it’s doors, but of course at the end of the day it’s a door, it can’t handle a massive subwoofer, but a mid-bass driver will do just fine. Keep in mind the MX-5 has 8 inches of room to make your ears jizz! We experimented with 2 kinds of speaker setups, the Rockford Fosgate 6×8″ and Clearwater CWC-8 (9 was not available at that time). The Rockford Fosgate speakers work just fine, they get the done job and for a reasonable price. Also they provide a significant amount of mid-bass. We tried using some left over dynamat we had, it actually made a huge difference in terms of quality and rattling. We tried 3 different kinds, all provided some kind of improvement.
All the images below are all captioned appropriately. – the caption should appear above the image.
In conclusion, if you’re looking at building a sound system for a two-door roadster – We at Scream Garage recommend getting yourself a decent set of door speakers, aim for speakers that can provide a fair amount of bass – in the MX-5 you can fit an eight inch – some cars aren’t so lucky. In terms of bass the CWC-8 clearwaters were great! Of course any set of speakers that provide a realistic amount of bass will need to be backed up by a nice and powerful amplifier – Unfortunately in the world of amplifiers there are a lot of fake statistics – We recommend going for brand-names.
- Kicker (classic models KX ZX)
- Rockford Fosgate
- Vibe (stick with the high-end models) – this applies for both speakers and amplifiers. Vibe’s low end and high end speakers actually have a huge difference.
Definitely invest a decent amount in sound deadening or dampening material (Dynamat), our pictures are not an example to follow we just used what was left over, take a look at this installation here
Rear speakers, don’t help or let alone work. Depending on the vehicle for example if you’re thinking of a Nissan 350z a subwoofer in the rear helps, also the standard bose system actually provides a subwoofer as well as “rear-fill-in speakers” but in all honesty it isn’t all that. One of the best standard sound systems I have heard was in a 2012 Mazda CX-7, again they went with bass in the doors (of course being a really large vehicle, it has the freedom of building a mini sub box in each door). In a roadster it’s quite hard to get the same sound.
Now when the roof is down, bass changes everything – If you’re dealing with an MX-5 Miata or an S2000 a subwoofer just does damage. Some people find it necessary but in all honesty if you get the right set of speakers it provides more than enough bass with and without the roof. (If you have a hard top, a subwoofer does work fine. Moving back to the 350z the seating position is much lower and the body of the car is much taller, this means you have a higher cabin and it feels larger because in terms of Square Meters it is! and this means it has a dramatic effect on sound. A subwoofer in a 350z works wonders however an aftermarket subwoofer is too much, as it’s been placed right behind the driver seat (Australian Model) – It causes your “lungs” to rattle regardless of how long it’s set.
Head unit wise, in all honesty it is just depends on taste, this is not something that could be debated or called “the best” – All work fine with convertibles, keep in mind our vehicles will experience a fair share of sun, so if you buy something that looks like it’ll screw up from the sun, it’s probably better to play it safe and get something more durable. The LCD (Calculator like) screened head units work just fine, they can handle years of sun damage.