Wow, were to start with this.. Time to really rack the memory banks here and go back 9 years to come up with the methods to my madness on this install. Here we go…

I bought this car brand spankin new from the Pontiac dealer in April of 2000. For those not familiar, the Firehawk was a Trans-Am or Formula (Formula in my case) modified by SLP Engineering, similar to what was done with the Camaro SS (being a car modified above a base Z28). Modifications included the fiberglass hood, 17″ chrome wheels, different suspension, and exhaust. My car also has a different posi in the rear end. This car was number 448 of 741 made that year.

And yes, I modified the be-jebus out of it!

 

So here’s the result of a solid 6 months of install work. Up front, we got an Alpine 7949 cd player, with the stock trim panel filled in to wrap around the single din unit. For the front stage, I went with the Focal Utopia 3 way set, with the 6″ mid in the door, 4″ mid in kick panels, and replaced the tweeter with the higher end Audio TLR, installed on the a-pillars. These ran off the included passive crossover.In the rear well, wiring distribution was installed on the front wall of the well, behind a fiberglass trim panel wrapped in vinyl. On the back wall, was a massive amp rack assembly that housed to Butler Tube Driver amps, leaving just barely enough room for the t-tops to fit. A JL Audio 12W7 was installed in a sealed enclosure on the passenger side, and the right side housed an active crossover for the sub amp to front stage amp separation. And among my personal favorites are the custom rear side trim panels that wrap around a pair of Audio Control EQT equalizers.

Now on to the build…

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First step was the complete removal of the stock “Monsoon” system, which was pulled and sold. Next was the install of an alarm. This was my first alarm install, which included remote start and remote windows, and took me nearly a week to install.Yes, I created a rats nest of wire, which I later pulled and redid completely in a later install.

 

		With the interior all pulled, I moved on to sound deadening. In addition to covering the car in several bulk packs of Dynamat Extreme, I covered the under dash with 1/4″ foam and black tweed, to reduce hard surface reflections from the kick panel speakers (does it work ? I don’t know, seemed like a good idea at the time..)

For front stage, door speakers were mounted on an mdf baffle, and then I played with different kick panel and a-pillar angles. (unfortunately, I cannot find any build pics of my kick panels.

 

 

For the hatch area, My goal was to keep the stock lines of the interior as much as possible, keep T-Top storage, and keep the back seat, and avoid building an amp rack over the gas tank area. I used two Tube Driver amps that I had left over from a previous car. The beauty of these is that I was able to remove the “guts” of the amps from their chassis, and still have them be fully functional. I wanted to mount these on the rear wall of the trunk well, yet take up as little space as possible. machine nuts were fiberglassed into mounting

 

 

Also in the rear well area was an active crossover and my wiring distribution. The crossover was mounted in a fiberglass panel that went in the driver side cubby hole, where many people install their “stealth boxes”. On the front wall of the well, I created a panel to hold my fuse holders and wiring distribution, and built a panel to cover it all. Here you can see the process I used for nearly all trim panels ever made, including the ones I made today. First, using fiberglass, mdf, cardboard and fleece, I built a form of the trim panel. Fleece with resin alone is brittle, and fleece with fiberglass reinforcement is unnecesarily heavy. So I take that fleece form, take a mold of it, and use that mold to create a new trim panel out of fiberglass cloth. Most of the time, including this example for my distro trim panel, I use epoxy resin for the final part, as it is lighter and has a little bit of flex to it.In addition, I build a relay network for the remote turn-on’s for all the equipment. Each device had it’s own relay. Overkill, and unnecessary, in fact, looking back, I can’ remember my logic for doing it that way.

 

Here are some more shots of the trim panel build process. First, the fiberglass replica’s of the original trim panels. Then test fitting an mdf trim ring that fits around the eq. Next is more fiberglass prior to shaping the piece. Once the part is shaped, I make a fiberglass mold of it, and use that to build a fiberglass copy out of epoxy resin, with the final part not having any mdf.The side trim panels were finished with texture spray, and painted to match the stock panels.