Had a long couple of sessions installing my custom fiberglass sub box and wiring in a dedicated sub amp the was spliced into the stock headunits pre amplified sub signal (hardest part). As what always ends up happeneing i never take enough photos but i will show the few i did take.
My previous post has a pic of the sub box half complete. The process was similar to many other tutorials already up.
- Use 3m blue painters tape (work way better then standard cream masking tape) and tape a few layers over the entire area to be glassed. If youve never used fiber glass before, read a tutorial dedicated to that, as its a tricky process if you havnt done it before (even i have done LOTS of fiberglassing and this still had room for improvement.)
-Lay down a few layers of matt glass into this taped off area...extra carefull not to spill resin on your interior.
-let it dry/add more layers untill your happy. the thicker it is the cleaner your subs sound will turn out. too thin and the high pressure changed could crack it. I just reinforced the corners and seam between front half and back half.
- Cut out an mdf ring to screw the sub into and use mdf off cuts to secure that where you want it as seen in my previous pics.
-Then i used a big sheet of similar stuff to the microfiber cloths, got it for $5 at spot light. It soaked up LOTS of resin so dried very stiff. Others have used fleece or flanny.
- reinforce front to back edge seams. (Sorry for not many photos but heaps of other tutes around).
- cover in audio carpet.
- install sub and terminals.
POWER WIRES:
For the car wiring, i ran the main amp power cable fused from the battery through the big rubber grommet just right of the rear side of the enginer. stabbed a hole in it, pulled the grommet out, ran the wire through. To find the wire on the other side, i found it easiest to pull the glove box out, then to the right of the pollen filters housing you can justttt see further back. Having pushed the cable through from the engine a fair bit i could just get my hand in there to run it through to behind the stereo --> down under the center console, and out the side to under the drivers side seat where my sub amp is. The ground wire i ran from the amp to a bolt under the center aswell and the amps remote on wire i spliced into the center consoles yellow positive cigarette lighter 12v line.
These describe this part pretty well:
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=31517viewtopic.php?f=12&t=8395
SIGNAL WIRING:
This was the tricky bit. As other posts have suggested, you can either use a speaker level to line level converter from one of the current speakers or you can get an amp with speaker level inputs. I didnt want to do either of these as i was using my amp from my last car and didnt want to add an extra sources of interference in the signal line. SO i set out to find a useable signal wire running into the stock mcintosh amp. Thnks to "ill find his post later" for figuring out the pin outs on the big black wire that goes from the stock HU to amp that has hall the signal wire. This part was hard but at the amp ends plug, i removed the plastic cover, cut back the insulation a bit, and spliced wires into two of the 3 top pins wires. The ones you want are in the top row of three and are blue and green. These are the preamplified subwoofer singals +/-.
In my picture, the 3 pins im talking about are on the right. You can see my two wires coming out of this plug now, i just put a female rca connectore on it so its easy to disconnect:
SPEAKER WIRES:
To run the speaker wire from my amp to the rear sub (which sits infront of the stock one, which i unplugged), i removed the rear seats, the right sholuder part of the seat that the seat belt comes through, the plastic edging along the bottom of the back right door and finally wedged open the plastic trim above the stock sub and just ran speaker cable from the sub to under the drivers seat.
SUB CONTROLER:
Havnt got a photo but ive also got a small sub gain dial sitting in the drop down fuse cover next to the drivers right knee. THis comes in handy and came with my amp.
I still need to tidy up the wires a bit but this is the amp when i slide the seat forward and pull it out. with the seat in driving position, you cant see any of the wires. (the blue one carries the signal between amps, this is too long so is temporarilly there but when i get a short one i will run it under the carpet).
