August 2005
Trick or Treat
Paul Hartsock - Photos by Robert Ortiz Photography
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People who study bugs will tell you that spiders are literally all over the place. In fact, you’re never more than three feet away from a spider, even when you’re sleeping. Most of the time they keep themselves hidden under furniture or wherever else they can find a crack, but a few months ago, as Jason Scarvalas of GS Audio Wurks in Hudson, N.H., was trying to find some inspiration for his latest systems design, one spider decided to come out and make himself seen.
“I drew up a bunch of tribal designs trying to get something that I liked,” said Scarvalas. “Then I saw this spider walking across the floor and got an idea.” Add spiders to a dark orange Nissan with black interior, and you’ve got the perfect Halloween car.
Web of Wood
The idea that four-year installer Scarvalas was looking for had to do with the system’s sub enclosure, specifically. Having made show cars for years, he knows leaving things plain will get an automobile zero attention, and he definitely wouldn’t want to do a slipshod job on this Nissan 350Z, considering it’s his own.
With all the aftermarket-unfriendly vehicles on the road, it’s becoming a bit harder to get custom install business. While Scarvalas himself has put together some show cars for friends, he says GS Audio Wurks’ biggest seller is the remote start category rather than custom work.
To design the web that surrounds the sub, Scarvalas first hand-drew the pattern. “I figured that would be the most difficult design to do, since you have all those little cut-outs and you have to sand everything,” he said.
Some told Scarvalas to use Lexan for the web, but he felt wood would be easier to work with, considering the complexity of all those tiny cutouts.
“The spider web’s actually finished plywood, and then once I had it all cut and sanded to what I wanted, I dipped it in a fiberglass resin to harden it,” he said.
Scarvalas saved the Lexan for the mirrored amber background behind the black web. “That’s probably about an eighth of an inch thick,” he said. “It’s got a sticky back, just cut it to where you want it and slap it on there.”
The car is so Halloween, it even has candy inside. The 10-inch sub is from Audiopipe, part of its Eye Candy line, originally in cherry red. “I taped off everything and sanded it, because it’s an aluminum cone,” he said. “And the edge, too, I sanded that all down, then primed it, sanded that down again, and painted it.” To match the sub to the exterior of the car, Scarvalas used paint left over from when he added his 350Z’s Nismo wing.
Not Much Elbow Room
Of course, before Scarvalas started any of the sub or amp work, he had to figure out a place to put it all — not an especially easy task in a car with so little interior room. “There really wasn’t any room in that car. If you’ve ever seen one open, it just has the strut bar. You can’t really put anything in it. I wanted something to fit under there.”
He found just enough space in between the trunk area and the cabin storage compartments.
When it came to picking an amp, Scarvalas went with an MA Audio M1886i, surrounding it with black vinyl. “I just used that amp to show the insides with the glass top. I thought it was kind of neat-looking,” he explained.
MA Audio, along with the other brands found in the Z’s sound system, are all sold at GS Autowurks.
“I didn’t stick with one theme, one manufacturer,” he said. “I wanted to show off everything that we sold.”
Next to the amp, Scarvalas added another artistic touch with two more spider cutouts, using the same black finished plywood / amber Lexan combo as he used with the spider web.
Putting a sub box and amp rack into such close quarters required a little cramming. “The box goes straight and angles down at the same angle that the spiders are, then the amp screws to a separate board on top of the box enclosure, which countersinks the amp down,” he explained. “Then I put in the sub panel. “The spiders are just resting against the strut bar and the rear seat,” he said. “I’ve got little pieces of wood in there and it basically just rests on top of it.”
Suck In the Guts
Now that Scarvalas had created a great look for the system, he needed to find the right sound, supplied by a set of Pioneer source units. He found he wouldn’t have to recreate the entire dashboard; in fact, the finished product would look much the same as the original. But one of the units he wanted to use was a Pioneer touch-screen nav unit, which he found was wider than the pocket he wanted to fit it into. So instead of modifying the dash, he modified the unit.
“I took apart the whole center part of [the dash]. I actually had to modify the touch-screen to fit in back of the space up there.”
Taking apart the unit, Scarvalas trimmed down the casing around the screen — being careful not to trim the guts — and custom-fabricated some brackets to fit the unit back in.
“I measured where the actual opening is, where you can see, because it goes probably about a quarter inch on each side,” he said. “I taped it off and then I used a cutoff saw there to get a nice clean cut. But I had to make sure that the guts would actually fit inside, because you can’t really trim that — it’s the circuit board.”
The result is a dashboard touch-screen navigation unit that looks like it was born there. “But it was more work, actually, to do something in the back where everything’s already pre-molded rather than starting from scratch and molding it yourself to whatever you want,” he said.
Other dash features included a single-DIN CD player and the single-DIN disc reader for the nav screen. Scarvalas removed the OEM double-DIN radio and took a 350Z head unit kit from off the shelf.
“I had to get something with a pocket, cut that, make it work,” he said. “I painted it to match the radio, because the radio’s actually a shade off.”
Rounding out the job, Scarvalas traded out the OEM speakers for four Blaupunkt Overdrive 6.5-inchers, set in the factory locations.
Now that his Nissan is equipped with a wing, rims, and a custom sound system, Scarvalas plans on adding an exhaust and intake system and hitting the show circuit.
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