I am going to build one next week for my truck.

half wood, half fiberglass. no hard and fast design yet.

also, cool new forum.

if anyone has any personal fiberglassing tips, let me know them please!

[Shane N]

Regular or extended cab?

extended cab.
the wood portion will slide under the rear seat (only 5-6 inches of clearance)
there will be an mdf ring/baffle setup that positions each woofer in a forward/ever-so-slightly upward firing position, the front face of the box will then be fiberglassed.

at least that's the plan...

oh, forgot to mention, the nine.2 and nine.4 will hopefully be going under the rear bench in the center section (with a sub box on each side). A support/mounting bracket for the bench prevents me from making a box the whole width across.

Also, I've had this truck for about...oh...3 weeks, so I'm not gonna go hacking her up just yet...

[black300zx]

Originally Posted by alpha

if anyone has any personal fiberglassing tips, let me know them please!

once you start laying glass on a section, keep building up till its as thick as you want. its alot harder to start layering it back up once the first few layers are dry.

cut up the fiberglass into workable pieces before you even start mixing up the resin. it will keep the scissors clean. its a pita to handle 'glass once your hands are gooey.

DONT use cheap plastic dixie cups. they can melt from the heat. walmart sells 1qt mixing cups for ~$.60, and they have measurements on them in ounces, plus you can crack the resin off once its dry if you really want to be cheap.

use LOTS of release agent

get a big box of latex gloves, and lots of cheap BRISTLE brushes. i find 1" wide ones to be easy to work with. when you're laying the glass, change gloves and brushes when they start getting a little gooey. it makes everything go alot smoother.

give yourself LOTS of time so you dont have to rush

[Shane N]

I agree about the brushes. If you really want to be cheap, put them in laquer thinner the instant you are done and you're as good as gold.

I don't use gloves. I rarely get any resin on my hands. But I usually do small chunks at a time.

[blitzdemon]

(when did this section get added?)

how do u not get any resin on ur hands and my pants get covered in the crap?

I would just like to reiterate what I saw in a previous thread:
http://www.eagerplastics.com/glass.htm
seems like a great place to deal with. It's also great for me because they're only 2 hours away. I called, had my entire order placed in under 3 minutes. They were even able to tell me what kind of resin I'd be best going with. Prices seem reasonable (to me at least).

I went overkill (I think) on the matting, figure better to have too much lying around than not enough.
I got 3 yards (50"wide) of chop mat and 2 yards (also 50" wide) of cloth. The cloth will most likely be used for another something I'm working on. The design I'm looking at building is only gonna have fiberglass on roughly 1-2 sq. ft of the box, so even taking into account ridiculous numbers of layers for thickness, I should be dandy. Plus this way, I can fiberglass all kinds of neat stuff.

Also got a gallon of the resin, again, hopefully enough, or close to it.

[el_bob-o]

I'm sure you already know this but it is one of the most important things in glassing, curves are your friend.

thankfully due to space constraints, it isn't physically possible for me to have a large area of flat fiberglass. I'm still working out the exact details on how to deal with even those small areas, but we're honestly talking about 5-6 inch width for the area that could possibly be flat.

good call though, definitely important advice.

oh snap. I think I could fit ported boxes if I really wanted...
hmm...

or maybe I should build them sealed first and see what i think then build ported ones later? I've never had nor even been in a car with ported subs...

decisions decisions