Yes another sound system install.

Since I purchased a new car and realized that I will have it for a very long time, I decided to spice things up a bit.

I didn't want to go overboard, but did feel that an upgrage to the audio system will enhance enjoyment.

Doors:
For the front doors, I picked up a pair of American Bass midrange drivers. Althought tweeter were included I didn't replace the tweeters inthe dash because I felt they are suffcient.

Here, I've torn off the door skin:



I then covered the door in raammat....



...and then ensolite



I quickly noticed that the new speakers were too deep, so I had to build out a ring to hold them out a bit. This is a messy photo, but I did screw the wooden ring into the door with self tapping screws driven into countersunk holes in the ring.




I rinsed and repeated for the rear doors with a couple of old Alpine speakers that I had sitting around. Thankfully, the Alpines didn't need the fabrication to make them fit.

I had a Polk audio 10" subwoofer from an old project sitting around for over a decade and finally put it to use. The subwoofer required a sealed box approximately 1 cubic foot in volume. I wasn't even sure if the subwoofer was still functioning, so I cut a hole in a styrofoam cooler and screwed it in - this was just a test and the internal volume of the cooler is right about 1 cubic foot. It worked, so I decided to create an extremely tight box for the styrofoam. The box was so tight that I had to remove 1 side and cram the styrofoam into the box and place my body weight on the side that I removed while I screwed it back on. As silly as this looks, the subwoofer actually sounds really well. After all, the styrofoam cooler provides a seal and reduces rattle. I'm not a bass head and I enjoy just enough bass to fill in the lows so this isn't an issue. I doubt I'll keep it this way, but it will fill in the lows in the meanwhile.



I have a couple of amplifiers laying around and I really wanted to use them but I wanted to install only one 5 channel amplifier that would power the front door speakers, the rear door speakers, and the subwoofer instead of 1 or 2 discreet amplifiers.

I found a Soundstream PN5.640D Picasso Nano 640 W 5-Channel Class D digital Car Audio Amplifier on Amazon for a reasonable price. I was suprised how small this fellow is!

Now I needed a place to mount the AMP and the useless rear umbrella cubby seemed to be an ideal place. I ripped out the kickplates, the door jamb covers and other various plastic channels to route the wires under.

Since I had leftover raammat and ensolite, I ripped out the rear seats and added material there as well. I don't have a photo of what it looked like after I installed the sound dampener.



I then popped a hole into the side of the cubby and routed all of the cabled to the cubby and through the hole. I do not yet have the amplified screwed to the plastic but it seems to be doing fine just sitting in the cubby.



You can see that with my speakers, I didn't conform to anything already recommended. Hopefully this will demonstrate how easy it is to fabricate parts to make a system work and will inspire others to think out of the proverbial box!

 

You can live without the insulating material, but you might imagine, something is better than nothing and it's hard for me to compare because I wasn't in the car long without it.
I'd urge a sub. It sounds like you and I prefer the same amount of bass - just enough to fill in. I made the mistake of introducing a bit too much bass while demonstrating the different with and without to a friend. The sub control is an external knob that one can use to adjust the amplitude of bass. I ended up blowing the sub out of the styrofoam - not a problem since I wanted to make a real face for it anyway.
I hear ya about the sub being in the way. That's the drawback and I really need to get a disconnect in line.