Project Rabid Spaceback

[Defblade]

Just bought myself this car a week ago; it's supposed to be sensible and to last me a few years, but I'm sure I will have a little play with it as time goes on - some styling and probably some ICE upgrades.

 

But I have already done the first, subtle, mod.... when I realised that the Rapid and Fabia badges shared the same font

Apologies for it being filthy, I have driven it nearly 500 miles in the week I've had it, in filthy weather, but I've had no time to give it it's first big clean/wax yet... the only clean bit currently is this corner of the glass!

 

 

[JLawson90]

unique mod, I like it

[edwards]

Reminds me of those replacement Land Rover decals you could get with 'Strange Lover' on them or the golf 'GIT's you used to see around....

[Defblade]

Funnily enough, I had one of these: https://www.derangedvehicles.com/new-ford-ranger/ go past me on the motorway the other night with, labelled "DERANGED". Seemed to fit the same sense of humour (tho I think their budget may be a little higher than mine!)

Edited 15 October, 2019 by Defblade

[camelspyyder]

18 hours ago, Defblade said:

Funnily enough, I had one of these: https://www.derangedvehicles.com/new-ford-ranger/ go past me on the motorway the other night with, labelled "DERANGED". Seemed to fit the same sense of humour (tho I think their budget may be a little higher than mine!)

Just like my old F150 but about half the size. Nice for mum's on the school run I guess 😄

Edited 16 October, 2019 by camelspyyder

[Delberthot]

I modified the badge on my Rapid 136 with a junior hacksaw and some glue to read Rabid as well.

 

I'd thought about doing this as well but didn't know for definite if the fonts used were the same - now I know 

[Defblade]

Second mod

 

 

Longer post to come later as I've finally had time to wash the car vaguely properly! 

[Defblade]

[NB, cross posted to Recently Cleaned]

 

When I bought the car, what I at first thought were numerous fine scratches in the paint tuned out to be fibres from the valet guy's towel, caught on all the tiny raised imperfections on the paintwork... I knew then that the car was going to need a good bit of attention sooner rather than later!

 

It's taken a bit longer than I'd have liked, between busy-ness and lots of rain, but I finally managed to shower-dodge long enough to get the washing and drying done outside before pulling the car back into the garage for the rest.

The products I use are mainly Meguiars, with AutoGlym when I can't see a Meg product that suits. Meguiars stuff always seems to give me good results and so I tend to stick with them... they're not silly expensive, either

 

Having said that, this time knowing that the paintwork has a lot of contamination, I thought I'd try the AutoGlym Magma as an early step to getting it clean.

 

First off, I did the wheels... turns out they're not just black, they're a lovely metallic black with plenty of flake (I suppose everyone here knows that already!).

I think I may invest some time and money in taking them off and cleaning them properly, then using the Gtechniq C5 wheel armour (which I've found worked well on my motorbike wheels in the past)... a project for deeper in the winter maybe.

 

Next, snowfoam.

Then the Magma. It definitely found plenty to work on:

 

However, it was a swine to rinse off (great cling/dwell, but still...) and I used more than half the bottle. As I clay anyway, I don't think it's a step I'd bother with again, except maybe, like here, the first time on a secondhand car.... even then, probably not.

 

Then a 2 bucket wash using plain car shampoo (the last of my Zymol...) and it's actually quite clean at last:

 

 

Drive back into the garage and out of the sun, dry it off a bit and whack the heater up full (don't tell my wife  )... come back next day.

 

The to do list (AG tar remover missing from the pile):

 

Went around the whole car looking for those little black specks to hit with the tar remover (my head torch has high CRI LEDS, which give good colour rendition, it really helps picking up spots, scratches, etc)

Cleaned the glass inside and out (Turtle Wax cleaner not great, lots of effort... need some Meg's!)

Clayed the whole car, including the 3 big glass sections. Realised the spoiler is also very metallic black, like the wheels. I think any add-ons to this car will have to follow this theme...

Polished the glass on windscreen, roof and tailgate with the AG glass polish. (The glass running front-to-back is such a part of the look of the Sport that I wanted to prep and protect it as well as I could)

Applied Meg's glass sealant - another product that's a swine to mop up the excess - used up a lot of microfibre clothes to get it done!

Turtle Wax nano wheel sealant sprayed on (also not in pic above...); Meg's tyre gel applied (which smells amazing! Black grape  ).

A light polish to every panel, concentrating on any scratches... there's a few, mainly around the bumpers and load lip. Not loads, and nothing terrible though.

Finally, the Meg Ultimate liquid wax on all over and then buffed off. I love this stuff, so easy to put on and take off, always with excellent results which last and last.

Treated it to a new pair of wiper on the front, too, now the screen is clean and sealed.

 

I'm afraid continued rubbish weather meant I wasn't about to take the car out for pictures (not that the light would have been much better outside anyway!), so you'll have to make do with rather cramped angles and LED light (cheap bulbs plus my high CRI torch). There aren't any noticeable scratches on the spoiler, so that mark at 4 o'clock from the LED highlight must be an artefact of some sort... I'm not the greatest photographer... Still loving the flake though

 

[Defblade]

The ICE install is still waiting on time and choices to be made... in the meantime, a little tweak:

 

 

Gone are the scabby, covered in dealer adverts, out-of-date-as-EU plates; in with plain decent quality ones... with dragons on. Because Wales

[Defblade]

ICE install... umm... rapidly... approaching. 

 

Got the main boxes together now and the appropriate patch lead; put it all very crudely together on a breadboard this weekend using a mash-up of odd wires and chocolate blocks, to check that it's all working as expected...

 

 

 

... and yes, it is just fine

There will be loads of setting up to do once it's all in, but I'm looking forward to ripping out half the interior now!

Although the next job is to make a false floor for the boot, as most of this will be living under there.

 

Just trying to decide where to mount the sub at the moment -

- it could possibly go under false floor, pointing up (acoustic carpet over... I've done similar before, you have to hoover bits out of the come every so often, and carrying stuff muffles it quite a lot

- in the classic against-the seat backs... in which case, it might also be possible to cut it into and drop it through the false floor, so it takes up a little less space

- in the rear seat driver's side footwell... I hardly ever carry more than 3 people plus the dog, and the dog goes behind me and doesn't need the legroom   (I can run a second set of wires to the boot to put it in there if I do carry more people).

 

I quite like the last one as it's not the loudest sub ever; and it would take less boot space as I'll lose some volume with the false floor, also it'll already be out of the way when I drop the rear seats for tip runs etc.

[Defblade]

Big and small cables turning up every day at the moment   

[1874joe]

I know I'm a bit late to your post, but any further mods you have done?

 

Pick up my Spaceback SE Sport on Thursday and just trying to get a heads up on somethings which I could do to it!

[Defblade]

42 minutes ago, 1874joe said:

I know I'm a bit late to your post, but any further mods you have done?

 

Pick up my Spaceback SE Sport on Thursday and just trying to get a heads up on somethings which I could do to it!

Not really, life and budget have got in the way too much. I'd like some good quality seat covers, and a sprinkling of the boot and sill protectors, juts not gotten around to any of it. I've got the bits for some DIY LED DRLs as well, again, I haven't been bothered enough to make the time.

It's working too well as pleasant, straight forward, nice car to want to mess with much more (eg, engine/suspension/brakes/wheels etc)... but I do like a good stereo system, so now I've got some time and money spare, that's what I'm doing :)

The ICE install content will be appearing as it's done and I have time to write it up. (I spent this weekend in the boot with some old sheets of MDF... not quite finished yet, waiting on some glue)

[1874joe]

Oh okay, sounds good. 

I was thinking about doing that with the daylights myself, but was planning on just putting a Xenon Effect bulb into them and the main headlight. 

Yeah the car seems solid and a good choice to be honest.

Have you had any problems with it so far?

[Defblade]

No real probs at all, touch wood. (Except maybe that even as a sensible car, it's still too low to drive onto my ramps for its oil change!)

The boot light only comes on if it feels like it, and the little red flag that pops out of the driver's side back seat won't go down, even though the seat back is properly latched. So hardly major issues! I guess it shows how well the rest of it works.

Thinking about it, I did put Philips Extreme bulbs in the dips as they were a bit poor as standard.

 

The DRLs are a filament inside the same bulb as the high beams. They seem to be a slightly unusual design; there's not a lot of choice and they are horrid yellow next to the Extremes, I couldn't find any "whiter" options... so I turned them off (I don't want to have to buy new posh bulbs when they burn out the DRL filament being on all the time, either). My DRL thoughts involved LED strips mounted by/around the fog lights.

[1874joe]

That's good to hear!

Did you find anywhere that sells the DLR bulbs, would you be able to link them here for me? As you say sounds very strange the design of them, why aren't they just a separate bulb! 

Picked my one up today, not drove it much but you get a lot for your money in the SE Sport model IMO!

[Defblade]

They are H15 bulbs, google says there's a few choices around, but they are a bit expensive for what they are in my book... 

[1874joe]

On 10/09/2020 at 23:33, Defblade said:

They are H15 bulbs, google says there's a few choices around, but they are a bit expensive for what they are in my book... 

I come across these on Car Enhancement UK. For the H15 bulb, £18.99 for the pair.

https://www.carenhancementsuk.co.uk/collections/x-ceuk-lighting-drl-bulbs/products/illuminite-h15-drl-main-beam-upgrade-ice-white

[Defblade]

False floor build:

 

 

First off, template out of several layers of cardboard:

 

 

Actually, I'd already done more by the time I remembered to take a snap of the template as you can see - a better shot of this below. The flat sheet behind the seats is for mounting the amps, DSP, distrib blocks etc. Then a divider in front to keep my junk off the amps, and to stop it sliding around. Tyre compressor, straps, gaffa, etc etc in the Cars bag (seemed appropriate!)

 

 

The off-cut is there as a strut to hold the floor itself up. All this is built from (IIRC) 12mm MDF, so fairly chunky/heavy. Almost everything used for this is old/offcuts/rescued/recycled, so there are holes and marks etc over most of it, but carpet (the only new bit) will cover many sins

I put window sealing strips along the places boards touch each other to stop rattles. Note the divider has dips cut out to help give some airflow for the amp section.

At this point, I intended the floor to lift as one piece for access to these areas:

 

 

 

 

...but then I started playing with the sub box, and found it fits just perfectly up against the driver's wheel arch. So much so, that I can see it living there most of the time, rather than behind the driver's seat as per my original plan. Easy to lash down a bit running  a strap from the isofix bar down to the rear lashing point on the tailgate. (I may take the wheel arch trim off completely, and pass straps through that instead to give a neater/better fixing... depends if I need to take it off during the wiring, and how time goes).

But if the sub lives there, lifting the whole floor will be a PITA, so a separate hatch is needed... not my first choice of hinges, but they are what I had spare in the garage (over-ordered building my own shed 18 months ago):

 

 

 

 

Happy with that, so on to the carpet. I didn't try and match the grey exactly because (a) it'd be hard to get an exact match, (b) plain black is cheapest, and (c) it's the boot, so I'm not that bothered!

It's been a long time since I tried to carpet anything, and the curve on the front did cause me bit of a wrinkle on the bootom of the hatch, but otherwise, it's... well... acceptable

 

 

[Defblade]

On to the install proper...

It's due to rain through a fair bit of this week, so as it's not quite possible to fully open the doors both sides in my garage, I wanted to get the front speaker install and pulling out the various bits of trim done on the drive while the sun is out.

 

First job, back seats out and free up the boot trims and cill covers.  I'm not running the big wires today, but I wanted to do this with easy access all round, and to see if there were likely to be any problems running them. All seems fine. There's a handy earth point behind the boot trim on the c-pillar, and as that trim is free, I will cut it later to run the sub box straps through it.

 

 

 

 

So, on to the front doors. The speakers I have are Focal Access 165AS 2-way comps with passive cross overs - the bottom end of properly nice, in my book; I've had them in 2 cars previously and so I know I like the sound

I used just over a dozen sheets of Dodomat altogether (I've got some left over that may appear around the boot). I found the Dodomat was very easy to use - cut well, the backing pealed easily and it took shapes well.

 

Slightly surprised to find that Skoda had rivetted on the woofers, so had to drill those out before going any further.

 

I didn't cover every square inch - there's no need, despite the temptation  -and actually, the Rapid's doors have far fewer holes in than many I've done in the past. First off several chunks on the outer skin behind the speaker and also through the big plastic access hatch. Then one around the mounting hole so the adaptor gets a good seal, and the immediate area is damped:

 

 

 

The adaptors I bought were marked as "Octavia rear subs" (I'd just chucked them on the pile when they arrived, without really looking) so I did panic for a moment, but they turned out to fit perfectly. I used those (don't know the proper name) bent spring clips that grab screws inside the door to hold the adaptors down. You can see the mat bulge slightly as they press in to make the seal.

 

Then mat across the rest of the door - those big plastic access hatches look like prime rattlers to me, so plenty across them:

 

 

I also added mat to the inside of the door skin - there's more than you can see here, tucked under the insulation.

 

 

I added some acoustic foam behind the mids to help absorb the back wave:

 

 

 

 

Then on to the tweeters.

Again, the OE ones are sort of rivetted on - mounted on plastic pins, which are then melted down, so out with the drill again. The Focal tweeters slotted in just nicely, with the pins removed and even the slight bulge they made removed from the inside of the raised mounting section. A dab of superglue, then some more dabs of hot melt around the outside for luck.

 

 

 

Careful examination of the door card showed there was room to surface mount the crossovers towards the lock side, on a line between the middle mounting popper and the lower door handle screw. BTW, as I won't be pushing silly power, I'm perfectly happy using the OE wiring (which turns out to be a reasonable gauge anyway) for that 'orrible job of getting the signal from the car body into the door. If I ever go active, guess I'll have to run  more wires then (or move the tweeters somewhere off the door!).

 

 

So, nearly there... the only other thing I wanted to do was because I had noticed from the OE mountings (when I was seeing what was what with a torch) that there's a lot of space in front of and around the mids in the door card. As I had more acoustic foam available, I thought I'd try copying the Fast Rings idea of channelling sound to the cabin:

 

 

 

Then put it all back together... I didn't take a pic of that, it looks 100% standard!

 

I have had a quick play with these just from the HU... they rock! The mid-bass is particularly strong, just as it should be. It does point up though how much the system now needs a sub. I'm really looking forward to getting these amped up

I'd almost go as far as saying that I'd have been quite happy if I'd have just done this as an upgrade and left the rest standard, but it would take some fiddling with tone and the HU's standard processing effects  to disguise the lack of sub... and then I suspect you'd lose a lot of the benefit. 

 

More soon

[Defblade]

Yesterday's job: power into the boot.

 

Starting with this mess of nice silicone coated 4awg:

 

 

I looked long and hard for an easy, or even not so easy, way to get the power into the car via existing holes. I couldn't find one, so I had to break out the drill. First off, as the signal wires will be running down the passenger side, I took the power around the engine bay. A few holes drilled in the slam panel let me cable tie it along there, then I unscrewed the metal panel above the headlight and ran neatly along under there. Any metal edges the wire goes near get several layers of gaffa  applied around them , just in case. Then through the the hole in the foam (presumably for the bonnet release cable on LHD cars... I can see there's a grommet there for the cable, too, but I just couldn't find it up above/behind the dashboard on the inside to use it :( ) and following other wires down behind the wheel arch liner. The run is tidied up a little from the "in progress" pic below

 

 

 

Then down to the hole I drilled, which comes out behind the driver's side kick panel. The hole is grommeted, the wire extra wrapped with tape and the whole lot sealed in with glue/sealant. Running power through my own holes makes me nervous,so I tend to go a bit OTT..

 

 

The wheel arch liner sits a little further out -  the wire's too thick to sit completely flat - but it's well clear of the tyre.  Some of that spare sound-deadening mat comes in handy as a big sticker

 

Then a series of cable ties to attach it under the run of other cables down the cill:

 

And it appears in the boot

 

 

I haven't secured/protected that end yet as I'm not 100% sure exactly where it'll all run without being a problem for the seats etc; those little diagonal intrusions at the sides of the boot do make it a bit more difficult than it needs to be. I suspect I'll run the cable forward of the seat belt mount (rather than behind, as above) and have it come out past the end of the diagonal bit - and much the same the other side with the signal wires.

[Defblade]

More progress today... lots of soldering!

 

First up, my secret weapon - 8 core wire:

 

 

Which as I need to do 2 runs of, and there's wires under the cill on the passenger side as well, I was hoping I could fit 2 runs above the cill but still under the cover. So sacrifice a few inches just to check before I start:

 

 

 

... sits fine and the cover clips back over  Time to crack on...

 

Played with wires and positions for the various bits on the amp board. sadly due to space and where the connectors are, I couldn't separate the power and signal cables completely.

 

 

The amps are screwed down with space below to allow airflow over the carpet.

 

 

Then 2 long wires to make up. The cores of this wire are usefully numbered (except for the earth, but that's easy to spot!) and so I wasn't having to check continuity with every connection, at least. I decided that rather than solder directly to the Bit10's harness, I would add an extra ISO connector, which will make it much easier to remove the whole board if I ever need to (it'll be remove main fuse, undo main power and earth wires, pull this connector, undo the speaker outs from each amp. Not too bad.). So the wire that brings the signal from the HU has ISO each end to go from the patch lead to the DSP; the other is just using 4 cores for now for the fronts - ISO back into the patch lead at the front and forks to the amp output at the back.

 

 

And the proper wiring building up on the board. You can't really see here, but there's 2 sets of wires off the JBL sub amp so I can change where the sub lives easily.

 

  

 

Then put those 2 into the car (patch lead loose in the footwell)

 

 

 

When I fit everything together, I think I'll need to take a few lumps out of the "hinge" at the back of the boot carpet to give the big wires a clear run.

 

 

 

 

 

And finally today, I did some quick eye measurements, gulped a little, and took a gas hot knife to my boot trim to make slots for sub straps. Came out OK (after the first one, which was a bit messy) - a single smooth melt gives a neat rolled edge to the hole. I also added a sheet to the Dodomat to the inside of these trims on both sides of the boot.

 

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow is finishing off, put it all together, plug it all in and cross fingers nothing explodes/smokes/burns #gulp# 

 

 

[Defblade]

Not quite finished today, but really just setting up the DSP left to do.

 

I've spent lots of time with the live wire, and none with the earth, so I ran that today. There's a handy earthing point on the c-pillar behind the trim that I had to pull off anyway.

 

 

Then I limboed under the dash to get the patch lead and the feeds to and from the boot plugged in. I couldn't push it all up as high as I would have liked, as there's a heater flap up above it that needs the room to move. So I kept everything and flat and out of the way as I could, and cable-tied the hell out of it! This pic is looking up under the glovebox.

 

 

With that all done, time to connect the power

 

 

Then I could connect everything up and test it.

 

 

... no sound from the sub. No idea why. I ended up getting another amp out, and another sub (this one is 1ohm, so I can't connect it to most amps)... nothing. Swapped all the RCAs around, used different speaker wire, even wired the 2nd sub into the working Profile... still nothing. Then I put it all back to where it started and just plugged the JBL amp into channel 3 (rather than both 3 and 4, or 5 - the sub channel) ... and bingo!  Don't know if I had a poor connection somewhere to start with, or if the dsp gets upset with a bridged connection across channels, or what... I'll sort this out tomorrow when I get a laptop hooked up and can tell the Bit10 what I want it to do with each channel.

 

Lost a good hour messing about this all that.

 

Anyway, then it was time to start putting the car back together. Despite my checking that the cill cover would fit on over the 2 8 core cables, it didn't actually want to sit quite flush where it meets the kickpanel, so I pulled it up again and cut off the little reinforcing struts on the clip towers. In the picture below, I've cut off the LH one, the RH one is still there.

 

 

I guess those were there for a reason, but it seems plenty strong enough still and the most it'll cost me is a new trim piece... and it just makes enough difference for it to sit and join completely right again.

 

 

Then, putting the rear seats back in and all my extra bits together. I added a paracord handle to the far edge of the false floor, as it's a heavy old lump to move about and I don't want to be dropping it onto the kit!

 

 

A quick peak through the flap shows there's a good bit of room around the amps still and plenty of chance for air to move about.

 

 

 

[Defblade]

Well, not a lot to say today!

 

The sub problem tracked down to poor connections at the box itself, so I've ordered some proper plugs to sort that out.

 

I was able to set up the Bit10 really very simply... it was all straightforward and I have to say, it's an impressive little box of tricks

 

 

 

The first time American Idiot slammed in with the drums, I got the most enormous grin 

 

... then I spent a bit of time with an RTA and the Bit10's graphic equalizer... I've lowered the bass somewhat in the interests of balance now... even if unbalanced is fun

 

Staging is a little clustered at the edges, especially towards the left, which I guess may be improved by fiddling with the time alignment, but may be inevitable due to the tweeter locations, so I'm not going to worry too much.

 

I do have a few bass-heavy sub test tracks; they're not really appropriate to my little 10"er; but I do like to run them to see what happens... the answer is, at max (unclipped) volume the door cards rattle/buzz somewhat under that sort of provocation. Luckily, I don't listen to that sort of music (I'm a rock/metal kinda guy... it's more about the mids, for me) so no need to take them off and beef them up for me. (I'm not sure I'd start with a Rapid if I was building a bass/SPL monster anyway!)

 

 

Overall, I'm really really happy with the results.

The sound is so clear, you don't quite realise how loud it is until you try and talk

My last couple of installs have been ... ok, but not great. So I put in the time and effort, along with as much budget as I reasonably could, into the fitting and I'm sure I'm going to be happy with this for a good while  

 

 

If there's any info or details I've missed out that would help anyone else on a similar project, feel free to ask!

Thanks for reading

 

 

 

[Taz1987]

How did you get on with the DRL bulbs?