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In the few short months between Perry 97 and the 97 IASCA World Finals TheWarbird underwent a major transformation. While it was still a shadetree install, we had the backing of beer, fiberglass fumes, a potato gun and router bits that launched their bearings at flesh faster than a glock 9. This was the final install that ever graced the bird, a 4th install was begun in 1998 but due to a reassment of my financial obligations to Visa, the funding dried up. The system was dismantled and sold off piece by piece.

Amp Rack This is the centerpiece of this install. It took about 3 million man hours to sand down, even though probably only 100-150 hours were spent on the actual tub that went in the car. As this was our first attempt at a major fiberglass piece we started off building a reverse mold that we intended to pull a casting off of. When we realized we needed to put the crackpipe down we came up with the plan documented here (that the rest of the free world uses.) BigBob got to do all of the painting while I got dicked into doing the vinyl work because he claims I wasn't any good at sanding, I think it's because he liked the tigher grip he developed from all the sanding action. If you really wanna see something amusing, set a piece of 1,200 grit wet/dry sandpaper in BigBobs kitchen, we kept him from eating for a week once.

Headunit Having outgrown the Clarion 9175, I opted for the new Clarion 9375. I'm here to tell you that I'll NEVER buy a headunit without seeing one in person again. The first time I powered it up a 747 tried to home in on me thinking the display was an airport light beacon. Why Clarion decided against a night time dimer circuit is beyond me. I also got crafty with the install instead of using a plain ol metra kit. The headunit and trim ring are now in a Firebird somewhere in Indiana.

Battery and Cap Bank A plexi cover was crafted to protect the battery and a new Tiff Electronics cap bank was added to the system. I only hosed one piece of plexi trying to bend an edge with the heat gun, however, I hosed 3 or 4 fingers grabbing it like a dumbass. Once again credit BigBob with the sanding and painting of the cap bank, he built it to fill my hole left by the Bass Processor and Accumatch in system #2. .... something about that just doesn't sound right....

Kickpanels By this time I finally ditched the horns idea, but beings we were in a pinch for time we had to opt for Q-Form kickpanels so I wasn't much better off than I was with the horns. But with the addition of the Diamond Audio speakers and Clarion 9300 EQ, the bird officially started to sound like a competition vehicle. She could peg a perfect RTA using only 12 bands of EQ and I had sound judges that knew the car well swearing it wasnt mine. Alas, she was still way off pace with the PROs.

The Subs Basically the same setup as system #2 with the addition of a colormatched beauty ring to hide the missing.. er, the screws in the subs. And a pretty spiffy grill that I designed all on my own.

The Fuse Panel Another little brainchild of mine (BigBob made ME sand the damn thing). This tub holds 2 Tiff Electronics fuse blocks and a distribution block that acted as a meeting point for 1/0 from the battery, 1/0 from the cap bank and 4 guage to the fuse blocks. Copyright ©Russell A. Hatfield, 2001-forever This site is designed for a resolution of 800X600 or higher.