Fresh&Minty Nissan Elgrand ~ Race Bus / Party Bus

First door card stencil cut. The door card will be made of two layers of 25mm MDF. This stencil will be for layer 2 and the line is where I'll cut to make the stencil the right shape for layer 1.



First positioning test...




Then tried the stencil in the car and realised the 10" would have been too low for the door step so raised that and the 6" up to bring them in line, so glad I found out at that point!



I also discovered that the cut outs from the sub circles are the perfect outer diameter to use as speaker rings for the 10" midbass so I put 4 aside, 2 layers per door...



Cutting of first door card piece for layer 2 in 25mm...







Test fit in bus...





Second one done with the 10" speaker ring in position...



Then I cut down the template so it was the right size to use for the first layer of each door card ...



First layer 1 cut in 25mm MDF and propped up in position ...



Layer 2 propped in position ...



Unfortunately there's a gap....



Now I've got 2 options, have an additional layer in the middle using 18mm MDF or cut a recess in the upper section of layer 2.

There's room for an additional layer and it would mean I'd get away with only needing one speaker ring in front of the main door car section.

I'll price up another board and have a think about it. That's me done for today any way.

More progress made and no setbacks but not quite there on the MDF front yet.

More soon.

Anyone know where the last 2 years have gone?!

Flown by too fast but feels forever and a day since I picked up the Elgrand.

A few before and after comparisons to mark the occasion...









And current spec list...

Fresh&Minty Nissan Elgrand Rider S Modification List

EXTERIOR

Tailgate completely smoothed of registration recess, badges, and boot switches

Central lower valance cut out to allow more lowering

Pink glitter vinyl wrap around the rear end continuing along sides to front bumper

Mint vinyl around sides onto front bumper and front splitter

Mint vinyl from under wing mirrors, underside of front windows and up along roof edge

Black vinyl A Pillars and front section of roof

Black vinyl on lower centre section of rear bumper

Rear number plate mounted on rear glass, removable for shows

Rear Lower lights tinted with pink film

Rear Upper centre light bar wrapped in gloss black vinyl

Rear Upper LED corner lights with black lens

Front Upper and lower grills sprayed gloss black

Black tinted Headlight covers

E6RND Private Registration on shorty plates

Offside Kerb Feelers

--------------
HANDLING

Lowered 60mm on BC Racing VM-1 adjustable coilovers

18" x 8” Extreme Offset Smoothie wheels in polished chrome finish

Chrome centre caps

235/40/18 Altenzo Sports Comforter 97W XL Tyres

--------------
INTERIOR

Dashboard plastics sprayed mint green

8 ball gear knob

Clazzio diamond stitched faux leather custom seat covers

Long pile black fur headlining

Chrome spike bolts on door cards

Self-built custom door cards

Self-built custom sub box

Self-built amp rack / enclosure

--------------
ICE

Pioneer AVH-X5700DAB Head Unit

VIBE CVEN 6 Channel amp

VIBE BlackDeath Bass 1 amp

VIBE BlackDeath Pro 4T tweeters

VIBE BlackDeath Pro 6M Midrange

VIBE BlackDeath Pro 10W MidBass

VIBE BlackDeath 12SPL Sub

Raspberry Pi PC with Retro games emulator and SNES Controllers

15” LCD TV housed in custom built CRT TV replica box for retro 80s theme

9" fold down screen with DVD player for rear passengers

8" Dashboard monitor for DVD player, reverse camera, and Front blind spot camera

8 colour phased mood lighting front and rear

----------------
PERFORMANCE

3.5 litre V6 VQ35DE Engine tuned to 240BHP

A morning of working out speaker positioning and drawing stencil outlines. Although the door cards are large there's only just enough space to fit both speakers in the gap above the door steps and in front of the seats.

Speaker surrounds positioned on the front layer and drawn around...





Inner circles drawn using marker, although the centre points are the main thing because I'll use the circle jig and router to cut those out...



And then with the rings laid in the equivalent position it took a bit of head scratching and line drawing to work out what could be cut out and what could be kept for layers 1 and 2....





I then drew the equivalent on a piece of 12mm MDF to use as a stencil to do the cut-outs on layers 1 and 2...



Next job was to draw a stencil outline for the tear drop piece that will be bolted onto the full size layers separately and the speakers will bolt on to that.

First I drew around the speaker surrounds with straight lines from the widest points to join the 10 to the 6...



Due to the offset of the cut when using the template guide I drew equivalent lines approx. 4mm inside of the original lines...

This is really informative. Usually the methods behind why things have been constructed a particular way is glossed over so it's good to see your thinking as well as the end product as you're working along.

Is all the green dust from the MDF?

More work on the door cards today, mainly using the stencils I build yesterday to cut the door card layers to shape...

Two offcuts...



Drilled at centre of each circle and bolts through the template and work pieces...



One piece cut...



Testing the size, slightly smaller than the rings which is what I'd preferred than bigger...



Driver's door piece cut too and both labelled...



Next was to drill holes in the template in the right place for the holes in the door structure so that I could drill through the template and get the holes in the same place on each layer...





Layer 2 cut...



Layer 1 cut...



Following lots of messing about measuring and losing bolts etc getting the circle jig set up for the 10W and 6M sizes I eventually got the holes cut in layer 3...





Placed on top of layers 1&2...



Holes cut in layer 4 and placed on top of layers 1,2 & 3...



Speakers placed in to check for hole size...



Two adjustments required.

A cut out needed for the terminals on the 6M...



And potentially need another spacer for the 10W but I'll test in the doors first as there may be enough depth without that excess fouling the window mechanism...

In my previous post I said "The good news is that there's enough room for the next layer to fit on" well luckily I did another test fit today and realised that the door step tapers in at the front end so only space for 12mm there.

Change of plan then, luckily as I'm doing it all myself I can do trial and error as I go.



With the new plan I save the depth on the lower half below the step by 13mm but also gain the depth where it's needed for the speakers by adding an extra layer of one more tear drop so now the 10W (the deepest speaker) will fit completely within the door card build.

I removed the upper door card trim so I could fold the waterproof lining up out of the way to do the other depth testing ...



I also decided I wanted to make bigger tear drops because I wasn't happy with how thin the wood was in the upper corner around the edge of the 6M.

Using the first tear drop size as a template to gain about 6mm overall (3mm on this cut and then a further 3mm using the new template) ...



New template...



An hour and 20 minutes later and four new tear drops cut out from offcuts and one of the original 25mm door card layers that i know longer need.



A package arrived this week from sickspeed...



A set of spiked wheel nuts and spikes for the wheel centres...




So then it was out into the sunny garden to make the wheels worthy of fitting the new setup...

13:15...



13:41...



14:06...



17:02 and still traces of rust in the recesses on the outer lip and the centre circle...





So 4 hours spent (felt a hell of a lot more) and I'm still not happy and that's just one wheel.

Now I need to decide whether to try and spend more time getting the perfect or going for black powder coat.

I really don't have time to get all this done and finish the stereo build.

Rechroming in U.K. is above my budget I'm afraid

After seeing a video posted on ElgrandOC I've setup a vinegar bath system and rearranged a rockery...

Ah yeah of course that build thread

Sorry I didn't recognise your username