tech today
Pinnacle Autosound and Gets Simplicity in Sound team up to 2 Mobsteel Suicide Slab Audio Makeover, Part finish a custom build on a 1960s Lincoln Continental. WORDS BY JOEY KNAPP
During the first part of this Lincoln build log, I was in Lake City, Florida at my shop, Pinnacle Autosound. I designed and fabricated grille inserts for door panels that Bing Xu had shipped to me from Simplicity in Sound in Milpitas, California. We left off with the panels being packaged and shipped back to Simplicity in Sound. The second part in this series finds me in Milpitas, at Simplicity in Sound, ready to pull back the cover on this big old slab. I had a meeting planned with the client for my first full day in California. He had some specific requests on space that would be available in the trunk. He planned to use the car for a bit of travel and wanted to make sure some luggage would fit along with the audio gear. I had stopped by Simplicity in Sound the night I got in to California to plan what I thought would be a good arrangement of the six amplifiers and four subwoofers. The meeting with the client went well. He liked the idea I had come up with, so the fun began!
Installing the Subwoofers Upon taking apart the pieces from the old audio installation, I learned the Mobsteel guys had built a one-inch square tubing frame into the bottom of the trunk floor. This worked to my favor, because
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it gave me a flat and level surface to build from. This subfloor would serve as a structure to secure my first project into the trunk—the subwoofer enclosure. The floor not only had a nice metal structure, but it also had a deep center area that had been added for the previous subwoofer enclosure. This gave me plenty of room to get the airspace I would need, and it also left room for some layers of trim. I was happy to learn that the Focal Utopia The enclosure and brackets passed a stress test! M 10-inch subwoofers did not require much airspace. That This 2 ¼-inch depth the box needed meant I could have a bit extra space for to sit into the floor was easily set by not cosmetic enhancement. mounting the enclosure to the floor, but Starting from the face of the encloto the metal subframe of the floor. In the sure, I planned a ½-inch layer with some first of many metal projects for this car, lighting along the perimeter, a ¼-inch I made a pair of brackets to suspend the layer to offer a smaller opening to cover enclosure 2 ¼-inch below the surface of the lighting, a ¾-inch layer that would the trunk floor. I left the top baffle off be white—for a bit of pop—and a ¾-inch the enclosure so it would make getting final layer to serve as the lip for the grille the enclosure in and out of the trunk to sit on when the floor trim was added. easier, and it would also give me access to
