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COBI! does a fake fade-away motion

5/31/2018

Pedals n Pints brought in their third crazy contraption for me to work on....the COBI bike.
This is a 6-person powered pedal bike.....technically 7 if you could the driver.
This badboy can actually rip if you get enough people on it....not so much if it's just you trying to move it around the shop!
They've had this bike for a little under a year and it barely had any lighting and no audio....that needed to change.
The Front lighting consisted of 2 small H1 powered halogen bulbs in tiny reflector pods and the rear brake lights 'used' to be T20 powered housing...until they stopped working....so when it showed up they had 2 handheld flashlights duct taped to the sides of the bike......obviously not Trax Customs standard!!

Front Lighting
So, i just happened to have the perfect LED modules to retrofit the front headlight housings.....I used my Morimoto DRL.1 modules and they fit with relative ease and looked as if they belonged....then I used my Morimoto DRL.5 module for a lower center light for some foreground illumination.

Rear Lighting
The rear was an issue....since this bike isn't the biggest of the 3 PnP brigade, I wanted to make this thing obnoxiously bright for on-road use so they wouldn't get hit....so used 3 of my Morimoto DRL.5 modules as 'running lights'.....since there isn't a 'brake' circuit....
I retrofitted the 2 existing locations with the pods and then mounted a 3rd center pod lower by the rear wheels....they are blindingly bright....so...you're welcome if you're ever behind this thing...because your retinas will hate you!

Under Lighting
I custom soldered up a 6-circuit 16' 'web' of codeable/controllable LED lighting that lights up the entire underside of this twisted metal mobile sculpture...and it's all controllable via a wireless remote.....it's not 100% noticeable as the 2 other bike bars....but i didn't want the LEDs to be seen....I just wanted the 'glow' to be present....which is achieved.....I saw this thing downtown a week or so later and it pops!.

Sound
The Orange bike bar had a Wetsounds sound bar installed before I got my hands on it....which I swiftly removed without prejudice.....but saved it because I knew we'd possibly be reusing it!
So it came time to add audio to the bike......luckily the wetsounds bar is the 20" version...so it BARELY fit between the drivers legs....which provides easy control over the sound controls...which is perfect!

All of this needed to be powered...so I fabricated a nice little removable battery rack and installed the biggest battery possible without impeding on the pedalers cycling motions. So far so good from the owner...they've said the system will run a few tours without a charge needed....so that's as good as could be expected when doing a hybrid system like this without having hardly any room to mount anything.

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GMC Sierra with Rough Country, Fox Shocks, SOTA Wheels and Nitto Ridge Grappler Tires

5/30/2018

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2016 Gmc 2500
Rough country 3.5 lift
Fox 2.0 shocks
34" nitto ridge grapplers
20x9 sota anthrikote wheels

Client brought us this 2016 GMC Sierra 2500 for a bit of an upgrade.
Wanting to stuff some larger wheels and tires under it while maintaining a high quality ride, we upgraded the suspension as such:

We installed Rough Country's 3.5" lift kit and swapped out the shocks with Fox 2.0s to provide the ride the client wanted.

We were then able to squeeze in some 20"x9" SOTA Anthrikote Wheels wrapped with 34" Nitto Ridge Grappler tires.

As you can tell by the photos....this changed the look of the truck just enough so it'll get noticed while on or off the road!

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Taco gets a front end make-over

5/29/2018

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Customer brought us his Toyota Tacoma for a front-end update.
He purchased some smoked headlights and foglights and a new grill.
Pretty straight forward upgrade....headlights bolt in with no issues...just needed to make sure they were aligned properly as to not blind oncoming drivers.
Fog lights....same thing....simply swap out the factory ones and align them correctly as well.
The gill was a bit more work to get to fit...but with a dremel and some patience, it looks like it belongs from factory.

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Just a Jeep doing Jeep Thangz

5/20/2018

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Return client brought back in his Jeep.
He'd purchased this a while ago and brought it in to get some necessities up and running.
now...this go-round was for the fun stuff.

He'd already had the top led bar mounted and wired...but it wasn't 100% perfect.
This time we get that thing wired up....as well as the fender pods, the hood bar and the new bumper pods.
All of these are hooked up to Rough Country's new 6-switch accessory control unit.
This is a nice jeep-specific unit that allows you to have 6 switches (30a) perfectly mounted up high and out of the way...fully hidden wiring and plenty of room to expand if you don't use all 6.
I wired the top bar, fender pods and hood bar all on their own switches and the bumper pods were tied together on their own as well.
That left me with 2 more switches...which were for the funner part (love using that word)

The jeep previously had an air horn installed...but it was not working (compressor was fried)
He'd purchased a whole new kit with identical horns in hopes everything would swap out......well....we were able to retain the existing horn, mirror the mounting, paint to match and then figured out a spot clear in the back under the rear floor to mount the compressor/tank.
So now, the 5th switch is the compressor power and the 6th switch is the "GTFO My Way" button.
The quad horns are quick impressive for how small they are and they hide nicely behind the upgraded grill.

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Man Van with some man bass

5/19/2018

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Now THIS is the kind of projects I love.
Client brought in his 'Man Van' for some embarrassment-inducing audio upgrades!
He basically wanted to embarass his kids when he picks them up from school...also...eargasms for himself.

Easy-peasy!

Here is what I installed:

Sound Deadening throughout
Pioneer AVH-200EX w/ bypass module
Digital Designs D4.90 4ch Amplifier
Digital Designs DM1000a Mono Amplifier
Digital Designs 6.5" DC6.5 Component Speakers
Digital Designs 6.5" DX6.5 Coaxial Speakers
Digital Designs DD712 Redline Series Subwoofer
Digital Designs 'z' wire rca cables

I'd previously sound deadened the entire floor of this van about 2 years ago...so this only made sense to finish the rest of the car....front doors, rear sliding door, rear quarters and rear lift gate. I've never done sliding door before...WHAT a PITA....but it definitly made a noiticeable difference.....which is good.

The dual amp setup fit nicely under the front passenger seat with access to the settings somewhat easily after you remove the side seat cover.
Installed the bass knob in the hidden pocket in the dash....that's now the 'boom knob'.

The pioneer unit is a basic headunit...just wanted better controls over the audio and BT/Aux/USB....so that was achieved.

The new speakers added the much needed highs to compete with the sub-stage.

The sub-stage.....that's where the magic happens.
I used a standard ported enclosure because it needed to be removable, within budget and not take up a chunk of room.
For a small ported box...this badboy hits!
It's a nice clean pounding bass and paired with all the sound-deadening....it's a nice tight bass.....but you can still tell it's no basic setup.....this will be heard from a block away....just enough time for the kids to start covering up their faces as pops rolls in with an ear-to-ear grin!

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Pedals and Pints - Bike Updates

5/18/2018

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Hammered out some Audio and Visual upgrades for the gents down at Pedals n Pints again.

First up was their new Orange bike.
This thing came with nothing but 2 side led strips that weren't waterproof and I informed them last year they wouldn't last....and they died almost right after I informed them....so....that meant upgrade time.
Now, we did this build over the last month-ish....first it started with me adding the upper Coded-Addressable LEDs to the top of the canopy...then the gents over at Eidetic created a very unique reflective wrap to cover the entire thing....so all the white/silver parts POP when it's hit with headlights at night.....since the main thing with all of this was to be seen and heard at night.
Then, after it was wrapped, I came back with our gnarly Quad 6.5" Tower Speaker system with a 300w amplifier and waterproof Bluetooth controller.
It's the perfect solution for these guys.....PLENTY of power to blast everyone's eardrums within a block or two and easy use of the controls for the driver or even riders/pedalers.
This is definitely the bike you wanna ride!

NExt up.....Ol Red!
Now...you may recognize this beast as it was the first in the fleet for this company....I retrofitted some custom speaker pods and headunits over the years...and that turned out to be somewhat of a failure....mainly because it was somewhat complicated to use and started out with "I have these speakers a buddy gave me....can we use them?"
So...now that we have these sweet amplified tower pods...they are the go-to for any weird audio needs down the road.
I ripped out the 6 speakers and custom fiberglass pods, as well as the regular radio....and installed the exact same setup that the Orange bike got...so now the bikes are identical audio-wise.
As you can see, the speakers also have RGB accent lights, which go with the existing LED strips; which were on an ancient LED controller...so that's been removed and converted over to Bluetooth as well.

If you see these bikes rollin' downtown....give em a try sometime...they are a good time!!

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Vermont CTS-V now has headlights that'll get all the attention

5/17/2018

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Customer from all the way up in Vermont sent me his Cadillac CTS-V headlights for a bit of custom lighting upgrades.
This one followed along the lines of our SEMA build we did for XS Batteries...but with an additional upgrade.

First off, stripped all of the chrome down to bare plastic then painted everything Gloss Black.
Then moved on to the projector lenses....swapped out the frosted OEM lenses to Clear Black Series lenses with a custom SheDevil Vixen logo the customer wanted....the lens provides with a much sharper output and cut-off.
I also did a Black Resting Demon Eye Paint to make the lens appear more 'dark'....as we also painted the turn signal and DRL buckets to make them appear 'dark' as well.

Next, on to the lighting.
We did Multi-colored RGB Demon Eyes, as well as Halos and Tube Accent Lighting.
While the factory Tube lighting still functions...it can't even compare to how bright the new RGB LEDs are....but because of how the technology is with the 5050 LED chips, the diffused CTS tube casts different colors at different angles....so the White on RGB is mixed with spurts of Green and Blue and Red....but very hard to pick-up unless told (or read on this bloggity blog)

Next, we stole the idea from a past project of mine.....where the owner made up some custom bent Glass tubes and I set 2 switchback Strips into them.....this was done to carry the look of the top headlight tube down and into the bumper area via the factory foglight housing.....kind of like what Cadillac is doing now with most of their vehicles (Escalade, ATS, etc)

I'll upload final pictures once the client gets the lights installed and wired up on the car.

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Vettey McVetteFace is BAAAAAACK

5/16/2018

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Client didn't even last a year......his first system we put in was 'meh'......but he wanted louder and clearer!
First setup was a 5 Channel Alpine Amplifier pushing Polk Audio components with a Single JL Audio 10" subwoofer in a fiberglass box.
Client picked up some scratch and dent items off the web for a much better system.

Arc Audio 5 Channel XDi amplifier
Hertz MLK 6.5" Component Speakers
Dual 10" JL Audio Subwoofers
Dual 10" Fiberglass sub boxes

The main issue with having to replace everything on this system was that all the wires were planned out and ran into the side storage area the first time...which is now being filled by a subwoofer box......so they needed to be replaced and relocated......that, and the Hertz crossovers are MASSIVE...like the size of most newer amplifiers.....so I needed to make room for those as well.
My solution was to built a center amp rack and blend both of the boxes into each other.
I could have made a single solid cover, but budget didn't really permit......so I went with a filler section.
I molded in a corvette emblem just to break up the transition as well.

This system sounded MUCH better than the last one.....plenty more power and the sub-stage is MUCH more noticeable.....so, goal achieved!

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R32 gets a little closer to earth

5/15/2018

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Here we have a VW R32 in for some suspension upgrades....and by upgrades, we mean that we're droppin' this little guy to the ground!

Clients opted for the AirLift 3P Suspension kit...meaning that he can control his air-ride via the wired remote or via a Smart Phone app and it's all monitored off the suspension's air pressure in each bag.

This was a fun little install.....mainly because most Euro vehicles (well....all vehicles in general) aren't meant to be lowered this much....but since they are very compact, the cars frame becomes an obstacle that needs to be modified in order to achieve the desired ride height......so we needed to notch the front frame to clear some of the steering and suspension parts when the bags are decompressed.

Every aspect of this kit didn't make for an 'easy' install.....even the front bags needed some customizing in order to fit properly and align perfectly for future fine-tuning via the top dampening adjustments.

As you can see, the client previously removed the entire rear of the vehicle, as he hauls various items from time to time and needed the extra space.....so after we added the 5 gallon air tank, the air compressor and the air manifold, we covered everything in a simple false floor and finished it off with black carpet.....now he as more room than ever and it's level now.

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Sometimes simple is the best solution

5/14/2018

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Client from Florida reached out and wanted a set of 'simple'-ish headlights built for him.
Wanted to lose all the chrome and add a small touch of custom inside.
Here we painted everything black internally, then we painted over the factory Turn Signal area so that we'd have room to place a nice Gloss White 'Denali' logo over.....so since the turn signal area is blacked out, we obviously replaced the factory DRL boards with Switchback Boards so he's got turn signals still.....

These are going on a white truck so the Denali logo will match perfectly and tie everything together up front.

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Another Rainbow Unicorn Sierra in the books

5/13/2018

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Busted out another set of custom GMC Sierra Projector Headlights for a local dealership here in town.
The last set sold an already tricked out truck as soon as the client saw what the headlights could do....so when they showed another potential client what they could do, he opted to have an identical set built.

So we went with ALL black internals again (Triple Smoked Lenses with Gloss Black Paint)
Then we upgraded the factory Turn Signal bulb with a Switchback LED as well as junked the factory (White Only) DRL LED Boards and swapped in some Switchback LED Boards.
Then to give it that fancy-pants look, threw in some RGBWtf Rainbow Unicorn Triple Demon Eye accents.

These went on the truck and then it shipped out down to Texas.

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Lifted Dually has light from up high

5/12/2018

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Here was a fun little diddy we did on a dually!
Local dealership needed some custom mounting and wiring on a GMC Sierra Dually they had lifted and called us in a pinch.
They had previously setup their client with this GoRhino roof rack and a slew of Rigid Industries Light Pods and Bars. They just needed it call thrown up on too of this massive truck.

Since it was dropped on us over a weekend, Ryan fabricated some mount brackets and mounted that beast of a windsail roof rack up on top precisely over the sun roof and everything else that was up there....then I wired up all the lights.
This was a tricky one as there were so many separate light pods up in one small area, we didn't want 1 million wires running down into the cab....so I wired everything into a single Deutsche plug for easy removal and then ran everything up to a Trigger Controller 4-way wireless control module...so they can hook up additional light bars as needed with ease.
The only other obstacle on this one was that these light bars had accent secondary backlighting (Amber) that needed hooked up.....so I wired them into the parking light circuit that can be manually turned on via the factory lighting switch.

This isn't something most people would typically do, mainly because the hauling capacity of that roof rack is almost maxed out with all the light bars....but it definitely gives it a unique look...that's for sure!

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Camaro with Triple LED Upgraded Headlights

5/11/2018

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Love projects like these.....industry friends helping each other out.

Industry friend of mine El Stig sent a client my way after he'd purchased product from him in California.....the customer was more local to me, so i was able to help him out with the install.
Customer purchased RGBW Camaro LED Board Replacements, Demon Eyes and Halos....so I was able to get them installed.

This Chevy Camaro was already nicely equipped with many extras...so this only helps it stand out from the rest.

This was my first Camaro retrofit with the LED boards....and let me just say.....they are VERY tight and finicky compared to the rest of the GM family I'm used to working with.
The boards have to be installed just right with exact amount of pressure or else they will start to fail....which sucks because even at that amount of stress can occur from a solid bump or under normal driving experiences......but either way, I managed to get all 3 separate zones setup on this...and the customer can easily control them separately or together via his Diode Dynamics smart phone controller.

Overall, you can't hardly tell anything was done inside of these lights, minus the addition of the halo ring with the diffused cover to match the look of the OEM DRL strip.....but then once you turn them on, you can be blinded by the output.

Here are 200+ photos for you to see for yourself!

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Lifted Sierra with 800w of bass

5/10/2018

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Return customer of ours (we installed the lift, wheels and tires) brought in his GMC Sierra truck for a subsonic enhancement!
He got to ride in our other shop truck and loved the sound that these new sub/amp combos put out and needed it for his truck.

These are very nice packages and fit perfectly in trucks!
They are designed to contour to the trucks floor and underseat area so you get full use of the seats and won't take up any leg room. This particular design has a 'bump-out' in the woofer location so they can install their regular woofer instead of the shallow mount design.....and it still doesn't take up any leg room......we tested it :-D

I'm starting to love the installation process of these....I no longer need to remove the rear seat to install a sub-stage which cuts down about an hour of time....which is good....and everyone that hears these beasts say it's just the right amount of clean bass! You really can't go wrong with 800w of pure bass performance out of a 12" subwoofer in a tightly sealed bedlinered ported box!

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Another lifted Sierra with Plenty of BoomBoom

5/10/2018

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Return client brought in his New GMC Sierra Denali for an audio upgrade.
He listened to one of our demo trucks and was sold on the clean/clear bass output that these pre-packaged systems are putting out and wanted it for his truck.

Again...install on these is pretty straight forward and makes it nice that there is not amp to hide......tricky part on these is getting the wiring lengths just right to tuck nicely inside the box without crimping any of the wires upon final installation....but other than that, these sure are the bee's knees!!