1999 Lexus GS400

 Chris is a cool guy who was looking to upgrade the sound in his super clean Lexus GS400.  This car is in great shape, and is a nice luxurious sedan, even at 10 years old!

Here is a decent photo of Chris' car when it first arrived.  Carl did much of the work on this car, with help mounting up door speakers from Charles and Tony.  I (Rod) ran wire and installed the headunit, but Charlie had already mounted up the deck to the dash assembly making the actual mounting of the headunit cake-like.

Sure, this looks like a normal door.  This is before we got all nutty with some Roadkill Extreme dampening material, 5 square feet per door, blanketing just about all of the exterior sheet metal with mat laid around the bracing on the inside of the doorskin.  The toughest part of this installation is actually the door speaker mount.  The original speaker mount consisted of a 4" Pioneer speaker in a special ported enclosure.  Our buddy Chris wanted some nicer speakers so we installed Hertz Mille 165 high end component speakers in the front doors.  The tweeter was a custom mount, but nowhere as tricky as the midwoofer.  We built custom plates to mirror the outer dimensions of the factory enclosure, with mounting points intact.  We made an opening and stacked spacer rings along with dampening mat and gasketing to achieve a solid, airtight mount to the door.  The grill in the factory door panel needed to be modified, so we did a bit of custom fabrication, employed some grill cloth, and the end result allows the speaker to move freely without interference from the door panel-which still looks original.  I think that this is what sets shops apart.  'spending the time, effort and materials on the midwoofer mount in these doors to get the best results, so Chris can get his money's worth-and more... 

'nothing exciting here-yet!  Carl is about to get down and funky, he's wrapped the bumper and quarters to keep them clean and scuff-free while he massages a little custom flava with a hint of "stealth" into the trunk of this GS400.

Carl worked until 1 am one night, seein's that we're super busy and trying to keep up.  Thanks go to his fiance and son for being patient and allowing him to get some work done without uninterruption (after hours, no phone, no showroom traffic)....  This is what the rest of us saw when we came in the next day.  He had fully constructed the box, mounted up the amplifier and had some wire routed.  These are the super-hot new Hertz HX250 subwoofers, they've got some "trickle down" technology from the esteemed Hertz Mille line of subwoofers, like the V-Cone and some tricky engineering.  These are beefy, stout like a JL W6 (also a very nice subwoofer) and have the great 3 year warranty from Elettromedia/Hertz/Audison.

Sorry, this picture has glare on the indash unit.  If the flash had been off on the camera this would do the scene justice.  Now our bro Chris has a nice, clean, high end Kenwood Excelon KDCX693 indash headunit with 24 bit D/A converter, with direct Ipod control and display features.

Here's a good shot of the completed trunk. Carl built the box and wrapped it in black carpet, then he created a panel that would highlight the box, yet match the trunk in color and fit.  Chris still has plenty of trunk space, and the amplifier is on the back of the box, staying cool and out of the way.

One parting shot of Chris' car.  So with the Hertz Mille MLK165 front stage, no mids/highs in the rear of the car (Rod's preference too!), the dual Hertz HX 10" subwoofers in the perfect sealed enclosure, and an Audison LRX5.1k (!) amplifier-Chris has some great sound, and with all 4 doors extensively dampened, he's got a quieter ride!

Thanks Chris!