Month: May 2019

Upgrading Speakers while Retaining the Original Trim (Speaker Housing)

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I’ve been using a portable Bluetooth speaker in the Airstream, but with as much time as I’m spending in there these days, it’s time for something a little more “serious.”  The 5.25″ speakers from 1972 are unlistenable, and I really wanted to keep the original trim (the speaker covers), so I hopped online to  research car speakers that would work.  I didn’t need anything “crazy,” and was happy to find a set of Infinity car speakers (REF-5022cfx) with great reviews for $50.

When they arrived, I placed them in the original speaker housing, and while the diameter was a perfect fit, the “tweeter” portion of the speaker protruded too far from the “woofer” portion, and thus pressed up against the grill of the housing.  This was a pretty easy fix, but it did take a little while to scavenge the perfect objects to use for stand-offs/spacers (rubber grommets).  I tried both plastic and rubber, and rubber was definitely the way to go.  Not only does it have some give, but it also helps reduce vibration between the speaker and housing.  I also ended up using rubber washers to replace the original nuts that hold the speakers in place.

The new speakers were already quite a bit deeper than the originals (larger magnets, deeper cone, additional tweeter component, etc.), so I knew I would need to cut away quite a bit of the insulation behind the speaker housing to accommodate the new speaker depth.  I cut away the existing 1.5 inches of polyiso insulation, then TremPro’d a 1/2″ sheet of polyiso panel to the exterior skin behind the speaker hole and sealed everything back up with 3M foil tape to make sure there wouldn’t be any drafts from behind the speaker grates.

Because all this insulation is foil-faced, and since I used foil tape to seal everything up, I made sure to cover the posts on the speaker with electric tape so there wouldn’t be any metal-on-metal contact.

Before placing the speakers back in the wall, I hooked them up to take a listen, and was extremely disappointed by the thin sound, especially since so many of the reviews specifically commented on how great the bass was for these 5.25″ speakers.   I realized that actually placing them on/in the wall would increase surface area and create more vibration and reflection, but I didn’t realize just *how* much of a difference placement would make.  They actually sound great!

So now I have permanent front speakers that I can use with my temporary audio set up (a 12v powered Bluetooth receiver/amp that I feed with either my phone or the television) until I decide what I will be using for the whole-house media system.  (More on that in a future post!)

 

Creating an Exterior “Pass Through” Box

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When I dry dock in the driveway, I usually run a Cat6 ethernet cable directly from the router for the television rather than rely on wireless signal (wireless sometimes drops out when I’m that far from the router).  I also have a 12v wireless router set up in the Airstream, but I usually only use that when I’m traveling (it allows me to run a physical ethernet line directly from my host’s router, so I don’t suffer from signal drop when I’m parked in their driveway/yard or on the street).  I’ve been passing the ethernet cable through the small window next to the door, but that’s a pretty inelegant solution to something that I do fairly often.  I also don’t like that routing the cord that way will eventually deform the window gasket, not to mention it pinches the cable.

My original thought was to place an outlet box with ethernet and coax ports on the outside of the Airstream, but the more I thought about what the port could be used for, the more it made sense to simply create a “pass through” hole.  Sure, the ethernet and coax ports would look more “pro,” but coax is pretty much obsolete already, and I assume ethernet will be there in the not-to-distant-future, so why not do something a little more future-proof?  Plus, I can think of plenty of other things that I might want to pass through the Airstream wall from inside to out or outside to in (extension cord, gas line for portable grill or heater, 12v power, etc.).

So I started by cutting a heavy duty plastic outlet box down to size (depth) so it could fit snugly in the wall between the inner and outer skins.

Trimming an outlet box to fit between the skins.

I then drilled rivet holes, drilled to mark the corners of the opening on the exterior skin, and then cut a  hole using a 4″ cut-off wheel.

After cutting the hole, I put TremPro 635 on the back of the outlet box to secure and seal it to the inside of the exterior skin, then riveted the box from the outside (so the rivets look good on the exterior).

Finally, I used butyl tape around the outside edge of an aluminum weather-proof outlet face plate, and riveted the plate in place over the outlet hole.

The inside will be finished with another spring loaded, weather-proof face plate, but could also be completed using a keystone face plate for dedicated ethernet, co-ax, etc. ports.  The box is below the deck of the dinette seat, so it won’t be visible, thus I’m just going with the spring-loaded door for more universal use.

Mounted box ready for interior face plate.

 

 

Laminating the Dinette Kick with Salvaged Aluminum Skin

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Today I put the finish on the dinette kick by laminating salvaged aluminum sheet (interior skin) to the front surface.  I’ve found that the 4×8 1/4″ “utility panel” at Lowe’s is the least expensive substrate I can find, and it’s actually a pretty decent product.  It’s readily available (always in stock), plenty strong (especially once you adhere aluminum to it!), and in a pinch can even take a coat of stain and look acceptable on its own.

I cut the new kick panel to size from a salvaged ceiling skin, and then adhered it to the face of the kick plate with DAP contact cement (used for laminating countertops and available at any big box/hardware store).  Because of the inner curve of the dinette corners, it didn’t take much to clamp the aluminum sheet in place (it basically stayed there on it’s own, but I clamped the upper edge to be sure it was nice and tight).  This was fortuitous, as I was not looking forward to building clamp plates to hold the sheet where it needed to be, especially at those inner corner radii.

The salvaged aluminum sheet had some rivet holes from it’s previous life as a ceiling, so I shot rivets through those existing holes to further secure the skin to the utility panel since the holes would need to be filled anyway.

I will eventually paint the skin to match the rest of the Airstream.

I think it came out looking really nice, and it is definitely a strong and sturdy surface that I don’t need to worry about when it gets kicked and banged over and over again for the next hundred years!