This boat was ordered as a '04 B-52 last July, "naked", without any graphics, stereo and a silver tower. After the boat showed up the owner had two weeks before Labor day to get the theme going and the stereo rocking. He started by having the windshield tinted 20% and the stereo logo cut out of red and chrome tint on the center window. The next day they started on the graphics.
The black stripe and outline for the 8 is over 15' long. It was not easy getting all of the black drop shadows to line up with the graphics and lettering. It was a very big project and Matt Clower of MC Graphics hooked the owner up. Since they had 6 weeks to wait for the boat to be built, they were able to get all of the stereo parts and wheels before the boat showed up. In one day, the weekend the boat got the windows tinted, graphics installed and wheels were installed as well; they also cut out patterns and installed the Gator Grip that very same weekend.
The stereo took some work. The owner wanted to squeeze in as much sound as they could without sacrificing too much usable room. As an experienced stereo installer the owner wanted this one to be perfect. The real problem was in figuring out how much power would really rock, but not take so much power that one couldn't enjoy the whole day. They decided to go with two different size woofers in three different areas of the boat, to ensure no that there were no dead spots.
So, they started out building the sub enclosures and the amp rack. The owner used the space in front of the rear storage, below the deck for the two Orion Pro series 12" woofers, one on each side of the boat. These are powered by an Orion 8002 800 watt amplifier. They cut out the wall under the driver's dash that was used to mount the factory subwoofer and built a very odd shaped enclosure to house the PPI DCX 15" subwoofer that is also powered by an Orion 8002 amplifier. They then fabricated a square tubing amp rack under the passenger side dash to hold the two Orion 8002's and one 8004 that powers the four pairs of Orion C63 mids. The amps fit perfectly in the compartment wall to wall. Further, they then fabbed an exhaust fan out of one of the top cup holders to vent out the heated air, and installed a four and a half inch intake fan pulling in fresh air in from the seating area. The amps can run at full volume and still don't shut down, even after hours of playing. The factory speaker locations in the back are at floor level which really isn't great for sound. So they decided to build custom mounting locations in the side cup holder areas for a pair of C-63's and cut up a set of Audiobahn grills to allow the tweeters to fit through and be adjustable, using the factory speaker location and grill, as well as another grill from the front speakers, as a vent to allow the bass from the 12" woofers to fire through! Without these vents you can barely hear the subs. They also put one of these vents right behind the driver.
The owner was able to use the front factory speaker location, but had to make a spacer so the speakers would be out a little further, employing another pair of C-63's with the flame grills and a pair of PPI tweeters on the dash for front fill.
With the speakers covered, friend Ryan Samuels helped the owner build the custom tower enclosure, with billet clamps and they installed two more pairs of C-63s to entertain whoever is riding behind the boat. While working on the tower, they also installed another pair of Batracks to hold a total of 8 wakeboards on the tower. Capping it all off was a billet tower mirror mount bent by a local machine shop to keep it from leaning in with the tower.
To supply the tunes they installed a Sony CDX-M850MP with a CDX-757MX MP3 CD changer. This changer has a 12 second buffer and it never skips. To have more control over the selection they installed a Marine remote on the transom and wired up a switch next to the driver to turn the remote off so it doesn't get bumped while the rider is getting ready for his set.
This owner also installed a Sony dome remote right next to the throttle lever for easy control of the sound, by feel, while driving. Right next to the driver is an adjustable gain for the bass amps.
To power all of this equipment there are three Optima yellow top deep cycle batteries, that get charged during and after every trip. This B-52 was ordered without the front ballast tank because they wanted the walk through bow, but still wanted the extra weight. They poured 250 lbs of lead shot into a vacuum space bag and sucked out the air. It formed to my floor and doesn't move. This is an excellent, clean way to add lead weight - take note!
This enthusiastic owner also has a Dale Jr. wakeboard from Hyperlite, a customized and repainted miniature version of a SAN RC boat that they painted to match and a pretty nice color coordinated tow rig.
We hope this project inspires you to work on a custom project of your own. Thanks again to John (Hyperryd on the forums). Please stay tuned for more fantastic boat projects like this in the months ahead.