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Background: One day I decided to clean out my trunk. I lifted the floor, and took out the jack and spare tire. Imagine my suprise when I saw the wasted space
under that spare tire! Wowee, I thought, you could easily chop that metal support out of the middle and build a hellava sub box. So, my first thoughts were to remove the tire support, replacing it with a custom
box. Then I also thought about building a custom windshield washer bottle to take up even less room, and leave more for the box Or, possibly even build it into the box itself. Then I came to my senses, and decided it
would be better to build a smaller box to fit in the available space and retain all the stock sheetmetal. So I began searching for a sutable woofer, figuring the maximum available box space would be about 0.6-0.75 cu
ft. (More if you feel like molding fiberglass!) I decided on the Dayton Thruster 8", for it's small suggested box size, relatively high sensitivity, vented 2" kapton voice coil, and power handling of
200w RMS/300w peak. Not to mention it only cost me $44 from Around this time I also decided that I would go with a multi-amp system. A relatively conservative 40w x 4 for the front 4 and rear 2 speakers, and a 100w x
1 for the subwoofer. Don't crack on my "brand choice" in amps, again this is NOT meant to be a competiton system, just a nice upgrade from factory. You guys who need amps you can weld with can just check out
my install ideas and leave it at that. I decided that the left "parcel tray" would be removed and replaced by a piece of 1/4 plywood, cut to maximize the space. The amps, crossover, and associated
wiring would be located on this board. It is a tight fit, but it all fits in and looks neat. Now on to the pics.
Here are three views of the entire install with the tire out. You can see the amp board more clearly, and the way the box nestles nicely right under the tire in the front. I will measure the
box and provide a drawing on here at some point soon. Pics of the box itself follow. It has some compound miters in it that are a PITA, but nothing a tube of Liquid Nails can't seal up.
Here's a pic of the box out of the car. Note how the angle continues around the corner in the box. That is the compound mitered piece that sucked to build. Lotsa glue...
Excuse the crappy carpet job, you can't see that part when it's in the car anyway. Final notes: In order to do this you have to flip the spare tire over and find a new home for the jack.
The jack is easy, just toss it under the spare tire on the washer side of the mounting bar. No problems there. Flipping the tire upside down gains you the necessary clearance to install
the box. However, it also rases the floor of the trunk about 1/2" above normal, so it is necessary to add 1/2" spacers to the underside of the floor so it does not wobble. I placed
small 2 x 2" blocks of 1/2" plywood around the rubber part of the tire, and on the right hand parcel tray and glued them to the underside of the floor. Where the amps are is much lower
than the original tray was, so that side needed more like 1.5" of blocking. I haven't finished this part yet, but I intend to cover the blocks with carpet pieces and make it
look nice. I might also simply replace the flimsy floor material with 1/4 or 3/8" plywood for a firmer feel. Sound? Well, I'm still dialing it in, but the improvement is VERY nice. It's not for you BOOM
BOOM rap guys, but for the rest of us I feel this is a nice, cheap way to add some punch. BTW, I also upgraded the front door speakers to 6.5" Polk dB series 2-ways, and crossed-over the dash speakers at 1500Hz.
Any questions or comments, email
Update: 5/13/1999 I did wind up making a new floor out of 1/4 plywood. This is just my preference and is not necessary, but it fits better and I like it more. I added the necessary "blocks" to the underside
and you would never know that my car is not stock. Till you turn it up. I spent the better part of a day dialing the system in - the crossover frequency of the woofer
was tough to judge without simply driving and listening and tweaking. I settled on a 12dB slope at 120 for the woofer, and 150 for the front speakers. The (stock) rear speakers are crossed at 160.
I also wound up pulling the box and filling it with acousta-stuff (fiberglass would work). Unfortunately, it is just a tad small for the woofer and it is a bit too mid bassy. I think carpeting
the entire spare-tire well will also help alleviate this. But I'm really picky, so most people would not even notice. Rememner too, that all this is with the stock CD head unit, if I added an EQ you could have
this thing exact in no time. (Might just do that...) Prices/part numbers to come: Had I thought ahead, I could have saved money by buying a lot of the little things, like zip ties,
hold downs, connectors, patch cords, and the like from Parts Express with the speaker and amps, but oh well... Most everything you'd ever want for speaker building (and lots of other electronic stuff) can
be found and ordered on-line from Parts Express, Will have measured drawings posted soon. Check back... |
Here you can see the amps in the left hand side of the trunk. I outlined the "amp board" with pink because it was hard to see in this one. (It's covered with gray carpet).
Note fairly neat wiring, use of wire loom and lots of cable hold downs.
Here's the "wire end" of the box. This is the Left side in the photos above. Note how the cross section is a Trapeziod.
This is the "Front view" of the boxThis is the "Front view" of the box. Please ignore the cheezy carpet job. It is a prototype after all...
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Unless otherwise noted, all pages and images copyright (c) 1998-1999 Jeff Brinkerhoff, all rights reserved. Email Jeff Brinkerhoff |