jontoads whips

the clear was hardened and cured enough to install the paint matched tailgate ram head today. man what a difference. i love the body matched look on it.



before and after emblems.

Huge difference, I like it

Holy crap man! The truck looks great!

added a tailgate shock so i don't have to hold it when it goes down and i can open it one handed while i have tools in my other hand or whatever.



and got my Bakflip F1 folding hard tonneau installed. looks nice and flush and matches the color of the tops of the rambox toolboxes. because of that from a distance you almost can't tell it has a cover on it. this cover can support up to 400 lbs on top of it (so i can stand or sit on it if i want to) and folds up so you can use the full bed. it is one of the few hard covers you can use with the rambox bed and still be able to open the toolboxes when the tonneau is closed.

Bad ass mods bro.
Tailgating truck for Bears season!

Shawn1112 wrote:

Bad ass mods bro.
Tailgating truck for Bears season!

probably will get Bears or Cubs plates.

thinking of Bears with "BRR DN"

jontoad wrote:

Shawn1112 wrote:

Bad ass mods bro.
Tailgating truck for Bears season!

probably will get Bears or Cubs plates.

thinking of Bears with "BRR DN"

FUKGB

Finally got the Charger back together fully today. with the new paint on the front end i am going to have to be super careful to avoid rock chips until it cures enough to put the 3m clear bra back on.

also took the time to put in some new JL audio dash speakers and a bluetooth audio playback kit so i don't have to deal with aux cords anymore.

i did change a couple things up from before.

- went with slightly tinted fog housings (nice amount of tint. not so dark that it looks like a base model with no fogs. lol. they look darker in the photo below than they do in person.)

- installed OPT7 LED headlight bulb kit (found the mounting tabs was cracked off on one of my old HID bulbs) i haven't got a chance to use them at night yet.

- used brilliant black vinyl instead of tint on the corner marker lights.

overall i am very happy with the front end now. there was a lot of imperfections that bothered me before. there was too much flake in the paint before and it made it look silverish instead of deep black. now it is that dark black with flake again like it should be. the old paint did have some runs in the clear that made flake bunch up in spots too. now it all just looks great.

while the front end was apart i had a chance to sand down the edges on my carbon fiber grill to get it to actually inset and fit right like it should. i also had a chance to re do all my wiring for the halos and lighted badge in order to hide it behind the front crash bar so you can't see any wiring through the grill or near the core support. i was able to hide the inverters for the halos too.

the hole for the tow hook i was lucky enough to drill spot on this time so it is a smaller hole round hole and looks cleaner and more professional.

i did notice i made one small slip up though. the front lip seems to be a bit higher at the point than it was so i was a little off on drilling and installing that. the good side is that it has more ground clearance at the point, the bad is that it somewhat gives me forest whitaker eye when i look at it now. i adjusted it down more with the support rods which made it much better, but it is still a tad high in the center. i'll leave it for now and see if i like the ground clearance more or not. it still looks good though.



old kicker speaker on the left, new JL audio on the right. (it is much clearer to make out all the vocals and guitar parts now. i like them a lot.)

this was how it was on Monday. lol.

nice. did you wrap the corner lenses yourself, and if so, do you think it would work on the windshield moldings? I don't have any experience with vinyl, so I'm not sure what I can and can't do with it, but I'm tired of those fucking moldings turning white. I too have one of those tow hooks and it is indeed a bitch getting that hole right on, mine is about an 1/8" off and that was taking a long, long time messing with it.

bill

Yea i wrapped them myself. I don't know how it would stick to the molding. Doesn't hurt to try.

funkpolice wrote:

nice.  did you wrap the corner lenses yourself, and if so, do you think it would work on the windshield moldings?  I don't have any experience with vinyl, so I'm not sure what I can and can't do with it, but I'm tired of those fucking moldings turning white.  I too have one of those tow hooks and it is indeed a bitch getting that hole right on, mine is about an 1/8" off and that was taking a long, long time messing with it.

bill

the hole turned out good. much better than the square shaped hole i had in the old bumper.

I didn't know you had a square hole. That's the kind of thing probably nobody would notice, but can really bug you. mine is about an 1/8" too far to the left.

well... you went for only slightly bigger than the hook shaft. i wasn't trying to be that precise. lol.

especially cause i knew my mount lines it up with the top edge of the bumper.

Pics look great. Looking forward to seeing what you did in person.

the first time the kids are both clean and presentable at the same time for a family photo.

further along the sound system refresh. (every time i replace a set of speakers it sounds so much better i just keep ordering the next set to replace. lol. the rears are the only ones i have left to do now.)

i installed new front door speakers on Saturday. i wanted to stay all JL to match those new JL dash speakers since i am so happy with them, but the JL 6x9's of the same series have way too big of a magnet to fit the doors and i want to keep the factory look instead of hacking up the doors. so i found crutchfield recommended these Kenwood 7 inch round speakers. they are a speaker system designed to put in a 7 inch round driver to fit the biggest speaker you can in a factory 6x9 spot while not having a deep mounting depth. they come with brackets to be a direct bolt on into the door. it sounds way better than the stock 6x9's did. i do wish the doors were a full range speaker instead of a mid bass only on chargers, but it sounds good.



right after i put these in i ordered the 2 other JL speakers for the rear. so those should be here any day now.

so update. after putting the new rear speakers in last weekend i created a new problem.

the dash JL C2-350x 3.5's and the rear JL audio C2-690tx 6x9's i got are too good and make the fact that door speakers don't get a full range signal from the dodge interior amp and headunit really stand out. (dodge, why the fuck did you make the door speaker signals on the high end systems bass only? so stupid)

simply the doors need to be full range instead of mid bass. i have good full range speakers in there, they just only get mid bass signals from the factory head unit and amp. there is no cheap way to make them full range. it sounds good enough that i could call it a day and stop there, but the fact that i have new and good full range speakers in those doors makes me just want to go further and get them to their potential.

i have an idea thinking outside the box on how i can get a 4 channel amp for the interior speakers and try a trick i think will work without a "clean sweep"or signal summing device to get the doors to be full range.

i ordered a 4 channel kicker kx400.4 so we shall see how this goes.

a lot of you are probably saying just buy an aftermarket head unit and bypass all the factory crap, but i like the interior look of my factory nav headunit and carbon bezel. i have already come this far on the audio system while keeping it.

Ya bro, I'm one saying fuck that stock head unit. Might not need another amp if you had replaced that stock head unit. Aftermarket deck really wakes up the speakers. Or you could have eliminated factory amp and went with a 5 channel aftermarket amp. Either way I stand firm on that stock head unit being absolute garbage when your trying to add speakers and amps.

Interested to see your "trick", and really want to hear it when your done.

any head unit i would want would be expensive as fuck. i would need a new or custom bezel too. trying to avoid all that. already have a sub amp so i just ordered a 4 channel.

i might some day get a new deck and a 5 channel amp and put the other amps in the truck or something. but this is just a mild system, not like the ones you have had. lol.

to be honest, before i ordered the 4 channel i had no idea they even made 5 channel amps. i had never heard of them before.

Yeah bro, agree that head unit is expensive. I just hate adding to the shitty stock head unit because your so limited on what u can do.

Don't think you would need custom bezel bro.....iirc to add a double din you use your existing bezel and the dash kit is just 2 side filler pieces that work with your existing bezel. At least my 08 Jeep was like that.

5 channel is the way to go with a mild build, Alpine makes a bad ass 5 channel!

finally installed the new interior speaker 4 channel amp yesterday. i replaced all the speaker wiring from the amps to the speakers in the car with monster cable brand high end wires, added some dynamat in the doors, and installed that amp under the trunk floor.

splitting the rear signal pre amp to use for high level RCA inputs for all 4 channels (door speakers and rear shelf speakers) worked to get my front doors to be full range instead of bass only and now the system sounds like i wanted it to.

i am really happy with the audio system now. i have the gain's turned way low on the amp so the dash speakers don't get drowned out but i can still turn it as loud as i want and there is no distortion and it just sounds clean and powerful (i do have the gain turned slightly higher on the front doors than the rear shelf though, cause those JBL 6x9's in the rear are so damn powerful i had to balance them out a bit).

it was late at night when i finished last night, so i need to make some cables shorter and hide or loom the wires better. but it's under the trunk floor so honestly it doesn't really matter i guess. the trunk still looks pretty factory besides my older big ass kicker sub amp.

new amp, rca splitters, and speaker wire to RCA converter. used the converters to change the rear speaker wires out of the factory amp to RCA high level inputs, then used the RCA splitters to have 2 sets of full range RCA high level inputs to the amp.



installed and working (but needs wires hid and cleaned up a bit)



running new monster wires from the cabin, through the plastic connector and rubber wire boot into the doors for the door speakers.



trunk doesn't look any different than it did, but i lost my hidden storage compartment to the amp. oh well.

Daaaaaaaaang.

Nice job bro!
What did you use to mount the amp so it isnt sliding all over when your driving?