enclosure

Systems

Anyone have any ideas for a speaker setup on an 87 crx si? I've tried boxes and seperate enclosures butn something always ends up rattling. I was thinking about plexiglassing the back inside and mounting the subs in that, but Im not sure how easy plexiglass is to work with. If you guys could give me any advice it would help. Thanx,
Jacob

dorokusai

You mean something on your enclosure keeps rattling? Are you sure? Any car with a generous amount of sub effect will rattle, and it will sometimes be a hard to get in area. Make sure that all your trim pieces above and around the enclosure are Dynamatted or similarily dampened for resonance. It was a problem for me in an older car, 2000 Prelude, and took a couple hours to find the small piece of trim under the rear deck, that was rattling.

Jstas

Rattling is a hard thing to fix and unless you built the enclosure(s) yourself, I can say with confidence that it is not the enclosure rattling. Your car is rattling.

Things to check:

- Make sure your rear hatch is sealing aginst the weather stripping properly. There should be rubber stoppers that keep the hatch from contacting the rest of the body. Makre sure that they are holding the hatch and contacting the hatch properly.

- License plates rattle all the time. If you only have 2 screws holding on the plate, you may want to try installing 2 more screws to properly mount the plate. Also, try rubber washers between the plate and the mounting surface to help isolate it. It should rattle less.

- Wiring. Some wires behind body panels may be vibrating against metal frame and/or body panels so they will may alot of noise. An easy soltion for this is to get the foam packing material sheets from an office supply store and some electrical tape and wrap the offending wires in the foam and tape. That will limit if not stop the virbrating against the panels.

- Interior panels. These vibrate the most. Not much you can do here. If it is a major issue, you can get cork or rubber gsket sheets from a car parts store and create your own gaskets for the panel mounting points. It's alot of work but it will isolate teh panels from the bodywork and keep vibration down. You can also get replacement panel clips and fasteners from car parts stores. Replace any worn or damaged fasteners and clips. They will secureteh panels to factory specifications.

Rattling is a vehicle specific problem. All kinds of things rattle. Just start listening to where rattling is coming from and try to localize the area and secure anything that might be rattling. Its the only way to do it effectivly. Given this, an 88 CRX will certainly have many more rattles and wear and tear than a 2000 Prelude. Why the comparison was even made is beyond me because it is a clearly apples to oranges thing.

Plexiglas will also get you nothing. It is not the greatest structural material and is a bad material for enclosure design. It won't get you anywhere so unless you are going for looks, I'd leaveit alone. It has dubious benefits beyond looks and is very expensive and difficult to work with properly.

Dynamat. It's great stuff! However, it is heavy and messy. While it can stop rattling, that is not its intended purpose. It was originally designed to keep speaker mounting surfaces from resonating and coloring music and to deaden sound interference from outside the listening compartment. In order to stop rattling with Dynamat, you will need to use alot of it and it is expensive stuff.