Let's start with the bad news:
Something broke.
Was driving home from work and went over a bad bump, but nothing out of the ordinary. Then I felt the car feel wobbly; I initially thought I got a flat, but I definitely noticed it in the rear left.
Drove a bit more, went over another big bump and the wobble was very evident. Parked on the side and turns out my RUCA broke.
After getting a chance to take things apart, it was a design flaw on the rod end
Ordered a replacement rod end GKtech and they definitely beefed things up:
New one on the left, old one on the right
On the flip side, I felt I need some OOMPH to my audio so I finally picked up a 10" sub
I later was able to find a smaller enclosure that gave me more luggage space, and it worked better since it matched the sub's cubic volume requirements.
I paired it with a matching 600W amp also from Alpine to simply things:
Major progress on the rear valance as well!
Piggy-backing off my last update, I covered finished shape with flash tape which is not ideal, but it worked okay for me:
Fiberglass layup, then trimmed up molds:
Pop out the old foam, fit up the mold and lay up the inside:
I've had peel-ply for the longest time but never used it until now. But man, I'm gonna use it on everything I can!
Rough, but it's one piece.
Next major hurdle is doing a finalizing the sides to get them parallel with the body lines and my rear overs:
However, I reckon moving the exhaust cutout will be the final boss of this project:
100% worth the effort:
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