Last post for 2009

Christmas has been and gone and now we are a mere four hours and twenty minutes from 2010 and so the question is what does the new year have in store?

The primary objective is to get pROJECT mAYHEM finished off. In my last post I mentioned that there was a surplus of bass in the sound system and there still is but I have since discovered that it is only the two 6.5" speakers that are causing the huge amount of bass - the sub is not even working!! Now this just proves how frighteningly good the Infinity Kappa range of speakers are really but as usual I digress. I am guessing that the sub isn't working because either the wiring to the sub speaker is wrong or the amp is not working but regardless the amp is getting replaced. The simple reason for this is that I have inherited another amp which is not only bigger and better but I also know that it works and as an added bonus I have wiring instructions for it. Therefore the first jobs of 2010 will be to get to remove the bass\amp enclosure, swap out the amp, rewire both amps so the fuse box is on the outside where it will be a lot easier to access, run in a new earth wire, set the high pass filters on the working amp and then start what is likely to be a rather extended play with settings to get the sound right. After that it will be getting the rear speaker enclosures built and wired in and then play with the settings some more no doubt! Nothing like an easy start to the year eh?

After that... to be honest the above is enough to think about for now so in short get that lot sorted and all the rest that needs doing by the end of April and then the trad season starts...

Anyway here's to climbing like a punter and more importantly getting off the hill to a pub which awaits us with a pint of fine ale. Once there we shall revise the day till we finally sound heroic (to non-climbers at least)!! Happy New Year.

More bass than you can shake a stick at...

For the last couple of days I have been wondering why the sound system in pROJECT mAYHEM has been producing such a huge amount of bass and today I figured it out. Somebody (who coincidentally might be the author of this blog) forgot to set the High Pass Filters on the main amp and so I have one 10" sub and two 6.5" speakers all pushing out sound below 80hz instead of just the 10" sub which is how it is meant to be running. I am a bit annoyed at myself for such a dumb mistake but at least I have finally figured the problem out as it was confusing me quite a lot to be honest. Still it provides a much needed excuse to stay out of the pub for a couple of hours over Christmas and while I am fixing that I can sort out the earth lead problem at the same time I suppose. In fact it's almost a win-win situation...

The Final Push II

Well the list of five minute jobs turned into a list of five minute jobs, a lot of lost skin trying to get the head unit to fit back into its hole with all the extra cables that are now running out of the back of it and a major panic when I powered everything up and no sound was forthcoming! The problem was eventually traced to the earth cable having come detached from its terminal so that is probably going to have to be rectified next year but for now it can wait.

In summary everything I set myself to get done by Christmas is complete - even the lock up got swept out and all the tools got put away which was nice - it's been a bloody hard slog at times but it is all starting to come together.

The Final Push

Today went rather swimmingly if I am honest - tweeters fitted in the dash, 6.5" speakers fitted in the doors, speaker cables run and wired up and it all worked first time! The only slight downer was the door card on the passenger side has not gone back on as it should but I can live with that for a couple of weeks.

Tomorrow will be finishing off the odds and sods (of which there is a very long list but they are all five minute jobs if that) take some photos for the random people who follow this blog to look at and maybe say nice things about and that will be it with regard to pROJECT mAYHEM for Christmas.

To say I am pleased as Punch would be an understatement on a massive scale - I am absolutely ecstatic about it.

Three good days...

Thursday, Friday and Saturday marked the turning point on pROJECT mAYHEM - the van is now insulated, carpeted, panels fitted and lino on the floor. A few shots to give you the idea of what has happened in three days but I am pretty bloody pleased with what has been done so far - it makes the hard work I have put in so far seem worthwhile now.

One thing I haven't got any shots of is the amp\bass enclosure in place but that is in and wired up which required grovelling about under the van in the freezing cold today to run the power cable. As it stands currently the passenger side seat has been taken out so that I could run the RCA cables in yesterday, the passenger side door is in bits and if it ever stops snowing the replacement speaker will get fitted in there and the tweeter in the dash. Once that has been done then it is the "simple" task of running in the speaker cables, putting the door back together, channelling out a run for the power cables and then bolting in the seat before doing the speakers on the drivers side.

I think it's fair to say that tomorrow is going to be a busy day and just to add a bit of interest there is also the small matter of not buying a single Christmas present yet and I am also working nights from tomorrow night.

Texts from last night

Regardless of what goes wrong in your life there is always Texts From Last Night which provides insights into a world that is even more screwed than mine. It also has the added advantage that it's cheaper than buying a copy of The Sun just to read the problem page...

• I misunderstood what a threesome is. Please come pick me up.

• she likes to give head while listening to britney spears, getting blown by a girl with headphones on is a nice level of separation

• so we were having anal, both very very drunk when he started shouting his roomates name

• He told me his condom was going to expire tomorrow and he needed to use it. I can't believe I fell for it.

• i feel as if last night was a right of passage. to officially be an adult you must have a drunken one night stand with a co-worker and go to work the next day still drunk wearing yesterday's clothes...

• Her underwear doesnt even match. If youre going to be a face book whore at least have matching shit.

• she asked me what the final straw was. i had to tell her i caught him jerking off to digimon porn. i don't know what i'm more upset by, that he was masturbating to cartoons, or that he was masturbating to sub-par cartoons

• Best walk of shame ever. Not only did I not remember his name or the fact that we fucked, they all watched as I tried to get into 3 cars that werent mine
  
  Oh and I threw up on myself...

• Good luck! Who knows he might be a stallion in the bedroom! or it could be like having sex with a crayon

• Last night was epic. Hooked up with Emma Watson, found twenty bucks, and then passed out on my floor.
  
  No you didn't. You drank unbelievable amounts of 151, passed out in someone else's bathroom, and we carried you back to your floor. Nice dreams though.
  

• my dog ran away and came back with a marajuana plant. what are you doing tonight?

Making progress

All of the panels have now been carpeted and so tomorrows job (and likely Friday as well) is to apply the under-carpet to the passenger side and side door and then fit them. The rear doors will have to wait to get the under-carpet applied as I don't have enough to do those at the minute but it will hopefully be a reasonably straight forward job compared to the sides. Really impressed with the carpet that I got from MegaVanMats I must say - the stuff will stretch for miles - just apply heat with a hair dryer and and it is possible to do the sides and cover the wheel arch without cutting a thing. The result I got on the drivers side (once I got how to do the job figured out) was pretty good even by my exacting standards and would have been even better if I didn't have the floor base in place. I had removed the floor itself but had left the grid in place so couldn't get to the bottom as nicely as I wanted but I will just console myself with the fact that nobody will see the couple of wrinkles that are there once I put the floor back.

It is amazing just how much difference the insulation and the under carpet make to road noise as well. Driving to Nottingham last weekend to see my brothers new baby the difference in noise levels from the carpeted side to the non-carpeted side was massive and the effect will only be increased with the carpeted panels going over the top of that.

To paraphrase the Alien tagline "In the van no one will hear you scream!"

Two steps forward, one step back.

As ever the path of pROJECT mAYHEM never runs smooth - after finding myself woefully short of speaker cable I decided to get the insulation finished and proceeded to stick the roof insulation into the roof space. It was only when I had completed this and tried to put the roof panels back on that it became apparent that it was not going to be a success - the insulation just wanted to take up too much space and the end result was a roof lining that looked like a fat bird in Lycra. Roof lining out, insulation out and a trip to the local D.I.Y. centre to buy some silver backed roof insulation and a short while later the roof was done and looking tidy.

Next up was the speaker cable runs - the original intention was to mount the high and low mid range in the rear doors - something that seemed eminently feasible from my investigations into one of the rear doors. What I hadn't taken into account was the largest piece of metal since the invention of Christendom in the other door which forms the locking\dead bolt system - it is HUGE to the point where it fills about 75% of the lower half of the door!! Obviously no chance of getting a speaker in there let alone two so now I have to make up some speaker housings to fit these but if done right the end result should be a better solution. Also I won't have to run the speaker cables in through the doors now which saves me a few metres of cable and a fair degree of trauma so I can live with the set back.

Other than that I have got the two panels for the rear doors ready to carpet now (holes drilled and in the correct places first time) and hopefully tomorrow the rest of the panelling will get done ready to be put into place once the cable runs are finalised and the under carpet gets put into place.

It all sounds so simple...