How we doin?

It's becoming evident that trying to hit a July 4th completion is going to take a massive effort.  Impossible? No.  But as Jeremy and I both match up our schedules for the coming months and look at other commitments that will require us to be out of town, we will definitely have to make the most of the weekend time that we have to work on Carmen.  Yesterday, was no exception.  We spent most of the day working and made some good progress.  We started bright and early at 8am and worked straight through to 5pm.  A good day overall with some minor setbacks that kept us from having having an awesome day.  Here's the rundown:


We spent most of the morning working on the back speaker box which is being built exactly against our last design for the media wall facing the back.  The box went together pretty well, but truth be told the face of the box took two attempts as the cutouts for the subs were 1/2" too big on the first attempt.  Not a big deal on time, but with MDF at $30 per sheet it did cost us some extra dough.  That issue notwithstanding, the box went in on the first attempt and when we dry fitted the speakers we were pretty happy with the result.  See below and you can judge for yourself.  Notice the red and silver Sony Xplod speakers we sourced (not made anymore) to give it that Buckeye look:

Think this will make some sound??  We certainly hope so.  The whole box will be wrapped in black carpet that's typically used on speaker boxes.  If you remember on the design, the TV cabinet will be built right on top of this box and based on current measurements, the TV will fill almost the entire space above!


The next thing we worked on was installing a backup camera...this is where our productivity hit a snag.  The package says "Installs in Minutes!", which is then qualified with a "for most users".  I remember saying to Jeremy before we started - "We're not most users".  The reality is that the actual physical install went pretty well, but then we had all kinds of problems getting it to actually work.  The unit is wired into the backup lights so it only kicks on when she's in reverse.  You just wire it into the reverse lights and mount the receiver unit in the cab which receives a wireless signal.  Sounds easy right?  We never did get it working right.  It seems we have an issue with the reverse lights on the left side which is of course the side we used to wire in.  This will require some more investigation as to why the unit isn't getting power, but suffice it to say that the hour plus we spent working on this left us a little dejected considering that we didn't achieve a successful result.  See below for a zoom in on the installation of the camera which will end up being attached at the bottom of the license plate.

We spent the rest of the day, finalizing the prep in the refrigerator area (see last week's post), as well as pulling all the wires from the media center inside to the back media wall.

We will likely spend time this week trying to finalize all the infrastructure items which includes pulling wire, rough electric and any carpentry.  Once these items are all done we can actually begin finishing the inside which will be pretty exciting.  After that, it will be off to interior storage to work on the exterior and the cab.  Good things on the way.

Until next time...