Fixing shoddy speaker install

Hey! After long time isn't it?

Anyways, Rosemary got an ECE recently. A Sony head unit and a set of 4 JBLs. Two of these went into the rear parcel shelf.

Even thought the installer was known around the city as among the best ones, more than one flaw met my eye. Checked out with friends and came to know that this is how it is done everywhere. That argument was not satisfying so in the back of my head I kept on thinking of the ways to fix it. I share the very fix here.

(You can click on the images to open in high res).

First of all, the flaws:
1. The cuts on the parcel tray were not exactly oval or to-the-size as was needed. Reason, lack of proper equipment. Lack of equipment at a professional installer! Strange.

Poorly finished edges

2. Protruding screws. The screws that were used to fasten the Speakers to parcel shelf were projecting beyond the shelf into the storage area. I got pricked by them a couple of times while manipulating stuff inside. Not done!

3. Shoddy connections. The speaker wires from the Head unit were simply twisted around the speaker terminals. That is so not acceptable. Got to fix that also.

Yukk!

 4. Difficult to remove. The clips that they installed were supposed to be removable. When it came to removing these, I was out of luck even after using all my strength. Imagine if a lady had to remove the shelf for some reason. Should be easy.

Those clips never came of manually. Were supposed to!

5. The biggest issue, my cricket kit won't fit in there anymore because the speakers hanged 3 odd inches into the storage compartment. I was serious about reclaiming my storage space. Also, running the risk to speaker damage from the stuff there.

Compromised storage

6. Rattle, the speakers weighed on the hinges and increased weight caused the shelf to bounce up and fall down with a big thud even on relatively small bumps. Earlier, the shelf was lighter and did not make that much noise. A fix was needed here too.

Now that all the issues are known, I thought for a few days and following is what I came up with.


Purchased some scrap cuttings from a sub-woofer enclosure manufacturer. Got these cuttings for one fourth the price of new board so it was a great deal:

Scrap pieces were perfect for my 9 X 6 inch speakers

10 of these for 100 INR.  I estimated like 400 for raw board. Now that is a deal

5 of them add up to approx 3 inches, enough for my application (Flaw number 5 above)

Next I traced out the outer shape of the speakers on a transparent plastic sheet (sourced from an old strip file):

Simply took the cover and marked the outline

 I wanted to give the setup a bit conical shape narrowing upwards, as my circular peices were bit larger then the speaker's longest diameter, I decided to make another line wider than the actual speaker size.

Carefully made 1/4-th of an arc of the larger oval on a plain paper with hand

The 1/4 th outer side traced on plain paper

 This quarter of an oval was good enough to be used to trace all the 4 quarters on the trace by twisting and turning it over and around. So the overall shape of outer oval remained symmetrical.

From paper to original transparent sheet.

Complete oval after 4 traces (each for one quarter of the oval)

Now for the inner side of the trace. Measurements from the speaker's lower side were taken and used as a basis for inner oval shape.

Paper's marks are based on measurements from speaker's underside

This fitment was used to create oval by connecting the 4 dots above. Worked nicely :-)

Cut the inner part to create the hollow that should now match the speaker

Size check. Its an A-OK!

Primary school tricks: Tracing inner oval to the final template. The line marked X is not to be used.

Next step was to patiently trace the above lines with a craft knife and cut out a template for use in rest of the project. I placed a piece of glass below for perfect cuts. Here is the cut out template:

We will soon see that it was worth creating this template.

Now I had to create symmetrical ovals that will together act as spacers for the speaker. So, markings were made and the ovals were cut for further assembly.

On your marks!

All marked. Template ensured exactly same sizes.

Drill a starting hole for the cutting out the inner hollow

Enter: my Dad's Jigsaw cutter

Takes some control and patience to make those cuts

One done. Nine to go. The width is equal on all sides. Apparent difference is because of camera.

Cutting those ovals was not easy, the Jigsaw had to be guided precisely along the cut line and takes some effort to guide a running motor on the line as well as push it forward at the same time. Also had to replace blade three times with new ones as the adhesive used as binder in the board wears out the regular wood blades. Luckily, had exactly three of them spare with me. :-)


Once these were done, next came gluing them together with wood-glue to make a set of 2 equal to height of 5 rings stacked one above the other:

Joining them: Step 1

 

Joining them: Step 2

Joining them: Completed

A bleak glimpse of the future :-)

Now for the fine work, because we used a bit oversize outer diameters, now we had to get rid of the extra material and shape them into nice looking towers closing in on the top.

Markings first. I used the speaker cover to make the marks. X sections will have to go

The first three will also be tapered down

Took away bigger chunks with a Hacksaw

Then used a carpenter's file purchased especially for the purpose. 125 INR

Closer to perfection. Filing the inner side as well

Done. Have a closer look!

Both spacers are ready for next steps

For scale, that is a 6 inch long Square. All debris created by filing! Lots of sweat.

Filing them down was the hardest step and took most labor. I wish I had a portable Belt-Sander or something to work this out. I had aching triceps and wrists the next day. :D

I did not told that an upholstery cloth was also purchased from the same vendor that provided the board scraps. This was to be used along with Synthetic Rubber glue to finish the spacers with some elegance.

Apply glue to the first surface

Apply glue to the second surface (cut out from the cloth with some margin for sides)

Margin for the sides to wrap up around

Apply, let dry, paste the sides too

Cut the excess

So what next? Remember the shoddy wiring? Here is the solution:

Bought the stuff, soldered together to make these connecting wires

Now, even a child will be able to connect-disconnect the speakers :-)

Affixing the speakers to tray needed some new holes in the tray. I used the same template to make perfectly spaced holes:

Red mark is a placeholder for a screw. Total 8 screws were added. 4 each for diameters and diagonals

Attached the template with marks and attached securely. Then used a drill to make holes for the screws

.

The spacers were now  secured to the already sandpapered holes in the shelf using a C-Clamp (again, bought specially for this purpose). Fixing the screws was a piece of cake with the spacer already in correct place.

Fixing the spacers temporarily. This is the underside of the tray. Note the holes and spacer held below the holes.

Gypsum screws were used for maximum bite into the soft board

Nice!

Protruding screws all gone! That makes me happy enough :-)

Rest of the work was related to attaching and screwing the speakers to the other side of the arrangement and connecting the wires:.

Following images are pathetic. Please bear with me.

Nice looking connections. The other side will be plugged in to the wires from Head-Unit

Storage space reclaimed

Finished product: View 1of 2

Finished product: View 2 of 2

Last issue was shelf rattle on road. That one still remains. Maybe a task for this weekend!
That was all.



Questions/Comments are welcome.


Good night,
-Akashdeep

PS: The above actions were not performed by a professional. Feel free to try these at home :-)

Cool Tool #1: Water gun

Hi,

Welcome to the Cool Tool section of Musings of  a Tweaker. Today we have a look at a water gun (don't know the exact name but that one suffices I suppose).

Water Gun. Its pretty sober for its name though :-)

I spotted this at my favorite mill store when I was collecting some drill bits (a tool for another fix I plan next weekend). 

I almost instantly felt that it can be used to wash my car instead of using a bathing mug and a bucket. 

Yes, I wash my car myself because I don't want those paid boys mark Rosemary with spiral scratches all over the paintwork with their soiled rags.

Having used once, some pros for this tool are:

• No more trips to the tap to re fill the bucket (usually 3-4 times per wash
• Wetting the car with bath mug wastes lots of water. Excess water is used than needed. So water saving.
• Time saving. No more trips to refill the bucket. No more fill-the-mug trips to the bucket. No more hauling the bucket around.
• Control water flow and the shower type to suit the need. It has many types of flow patters switchable by rotating the front panel.

5 types of flow options :-)

Just hold the water gun  in one hand and a mitt in the other and go around the car once and you are done.

One thing of course went wrong. I took home 6m of compatible hose but that was too short so had to extend the hose by another 5m.

Hose jointing nipple

Used a hose jointing nipple and then fastened the joint with a wire tie. Neat and secure.

Wire ties to secure the hoses. Also cut the long end

Now I need to find a box to store this apparatus so that it is not lying around in the balcony or porch!

Thanks for reading this post.
You can subscribe to all the posts by clicking here: Subscribe

Update 20-Sept-2011:
The tool has really helped me to save water and time. Almost one fourth of the water that I needed earlier. This I noticed from the little pool of water left on the pavement now as opposed to earlier.

On time, I was able to free myself in less than half the time, with lesser labor, and used the extra time to wipe and clean and clean and wipe.

Highly recommended. Ask me where to get it.

Drawer organizer

Which household does not have stuff? Stuff here and there and then you decide for more storage. Soon you find that stuff-virus has plagued every nook and cranny of your house.

All we can do is to keep that stuff organized enough so that we do not loose track of the Stuff. Last weekend I found and interesting subject on the topic. Enter, the big drawer:

The drawer was a recipient for almost anything.

So decided to partition this drawer so that at least some sort of organization is possible. Went out to shop and brought home the following:

• A sheet of craft cardboard
• Couple of sheets of wallpaper grade paper(preferably matching grain with the veneer)
• Some wood glue
• A blade

Plans first. So I asked the stakeholders (mom and sister) what kind of partitioning  they wanted. Based on that, a scale drawing was made:

Top: Measurements. Bottom: Partitions drawn to 1/10 scale (1mm : 1 cm)

Then it was time for measure and cut:

Measurements had to be accurate to a millimeter for a perfect fit

Cuts were made using a standard guided -cutter method

So based on plan, we have identical pieces. Diff lengths though

 One problem I found was that the cardboard was too thin and not so rigid. So I decided to double them up and cut another set of identical partitions and glued them together:

Apply glue

After some wriggling of the pieces

Note one trick here. I applied the glue in a different pattern on both the boards so that when they are joined. The complementary empty spaces get the glue from the other side. Compare the two images above for number of horizontal lines of glue.

Put some pressure. This time books cause physical pressure :-)

 Now we have two sheets thick cardboard (craft-board) partitions:

Partitions ready

Next came the installation. For that I decided to slit the partitions and wedge them together at 90 degree through he slots in each partition. For this, each partition should have slot exactly equal to the width of a partition halfway through. So I measured the partition by putting all three together and then divide total width by three (a middle school trick used to find thickness of a sheet of paper).

I also have vernier calipers but those would have been overkill for the job :-)

Measure thickness of three to find out thickness of one

Drawings of slits to fit into each other orthogonally. The shaded part will go away.

Patience was needed for this. I used scale as guide and carefully cut them. 

All three partitions ready. Note here a slight wedge in the lowest partition. This makes the edge.

Testing the slots. Now you got the idea! :-)

Perfect! But not done yet.

After test fit was okay, next comes the aesthetics. So I used a good quality decorative paper to cover the partitions and then re-fix them back:

Was lucky to find a pattern matching the drawer face and cabinet

Must glue around the edges

Folding the edges took some more patience. I had to hold the edge to provide some time to the glue to stick on.

All done!

Now for the final fit and fruit of the effort:

Looks cool. Fit was really snug. No glue at this point.

Assembled and commissioned :-)

Another view

Finally, in use.

Another view

Addresses the my concerns pretty well. The whole deal took a couple of hours and less than 100 INR!

Thanks for reading this page.

-Tweaker