Sooner or later we all decide that the stereo in our cars are just not enough. Whether its due to the car getting louder with every performance add-on, or just plain old getting used to it we decide to beef up the tunes!

When I got my RX-7 the previous owner thought it didn't have enough bass either. She decided to have a Bazooka Tube installed. She choose a 6.5 inch model. I must say I was impressed with its performance, but it still wasn't enough for my tastes. you see I've been installing Stereo System's for years to pay my bills and have grown quite accustomed to a big system sound.

Well this is what I decided to do to my car.

First I removed the previously installed Bazooka tube. Then I measured to see what kind of space I had available to work with. I decide to use a JL Audio sub woofer. It was time to figure out which one though. Things I had to considered in my decision were weight and space consumption. I had plenty of room for a 10w3 but I was worried about the weight of an amplifier to push this speaker. So I had to decide which amplifier I would use. The amplifier must be able to fit in the car easily an be able to accommodate the roll cage when it gets installed. So I decided to run the Alpine MRV-F357. This amplifier is a 5 channel that puts out 50 watts x 4 + 150 watts for a sub woofer. With this amplifier I could run my whole system. It even has built in crossovers to control the output of the amplifier. This simplifies installation time uses less space and keeps the weight to a minimum. Well with the amplifier choice fulfilled it was back to deciding on a sub woofer. Well with only 150 watts for the sub woofer I needed an efficient choice. I wanted to run a 10w3 series but with the power requirements I choose to go with the 10w0. The 10w0 is also a lighter and resolves the weight issues.

While looking thru all the examples of boxes available to build, I decided that I wanted to go with a ported enclosure. This would allow my sub woofer to be more efficient. With the port its like having 2 sub woofers rather than one. Of course the drawback is that the box has to be larger for the port to work properly. A bonus with this design is that I can upgrade to a 10w3 later if I desire. I was sold! With that in mind it was time to start the box. Well that would be hard since my car was at home in the garage on jack stands and my wood shop was on the other side of town. Luckily another RX-7 owner from the Dallas Fort Worth club was willing to lend me a hand. He dropped of his 3rd Gen so I could use it to template out my box. Thank Brian! Well you can see the rough shape of my box in this photo. I used 1/2 inch MDF wood to build a frame. I secured the shapes in place on the front of the box with Plumbers Strapping so that they will stay in place when I Fiberglass the front of the box.

With the shape finished its time to stretch some grill cloth over the areas that will get Fiberglassed. You can already see the box taking shape. Now its time for me to dawn the surgical gloves and begin mixing up some fiberglass resin. The grill cloth will get soaked in the resin an allowed to dry. This thin layer will give me a basis to start layering more fiberglass matt so to increase the strength of the box. I choose not to completely make the box from fiberglass. I really didn't need to shave that much weight from it, nor did I want to spend more than two to three days building it.

Well with the first layer of resin dried, the box really takes shape. In this photo you can see the bottom of the box. By now I think I have about 6 hours of building time into the box. The fiberglassing phase of the box will take the most time. I just wish there was a faster way to get the resin to cure. I tend to get impatient between resin coats. Maybe its just the fumes I'm breathing. Well its time to apply another coat of matt and resin to the inside of the box.

Daryl, one of my coworkers and best friends decided that he too needs to enjoy some of the fruits of fume sniffing so he too dawns his surgical garb and joins in on the resins spreading fun. You can see in the photo on the right that the plumbers strapping has been removed. The fiberglass was strong enough to support itself after the first two matt layerings. I choose to apply 5 layers of matt in total. This was really over kill but I wanted to make sure the box would hold up to lots of abuse.

Well with all the fiberglassing out of the way its time to trim out for the sub woofer and port. I will also grind off the edges of hardened grill cloth to expose the edges of the box. I now need to make some brackets to support my port tubing inside the box.
Now with the box cleaned up its now time to decide how I want to cover the box. I could paint it, carpet it or, vinyl wrap it. I decided that I wanted to use some faux leather to cover the box so that it would match the rest of my interior.

Because I used 1/2 inch MDF I wanted to add an additional layer of density to the wood to help eliminate vibration. For this I choose to paint the inside of the box with Spray in Dynamat. This will add an amazing amount of vibration dampening ability to the wood.
Since I choose to wrap the box in vinyl I need to bondo up my imperfections. You need to have the box as smooth as you would have a cars body for painting. This takes several hours as well. After awhile your arms get real tired of sanding. However the end result is well worth all the time you spend. With the box sanded to perfection its time to cut the hole for the wire terminal cup. I choose to use a terminal cup that will except a banana plug. I will seal the terminal cup with some clear silicon and attach the 10 awg speaker wire to the inside of the box. Its also time to secure the port mounting brackets I made earlier. I will paint the mounting brackets with a coat of the Spray Dynamat to help eliminate and smooth surfaces and also to help eliminate vibrations inside the box.

At this point its time for me to stand back and let Rob take over. Rob with Daryl's help start to align the vinyl to fit the contours of the box. Rob knows that he has to secure the vinyl to the port first before he can stretch the vinyl over the outside of the box. Daryl keeps the heat gun ready. I stand back biting my nails waiting to find out whetter its a boy or girl. I imagine that if I took the box to an upholstery shop they could have seemed several pieces of the vinyl together to make a cover, but I didn't want any seems to be seen.

When its all said and done I find out from Rob that I have a new Shiny, Boucing, Baby Sub woofer box! Purple Bubble gum cigars for everyone!
With all the vinyl wrapping done I can cover the other exposed sides with black carpet. With the box finished we take a moment to test her out in the sound room. Wow! its amazing the amount of sound I get out of this baby. I can't wait to her her in the car.

Wha-la, there you have it. Twenty hours or so of sweat and you too can have a sweat looking box. When designing the box I wanted it to appear stock looking or at least something that looks like it should have been part of the car. I will have to put a grill on the speaker later when I get one in stock. But for now that will have to do. Amazingly enough the package tray still works. It just required a little trimming of the back edge to work.

Now its time to tackle the rest of the speakers in the car. Since I was shooting for quality sound rather than volume, I decided to go with MB Quart's. I installed a pair of PSC 216's in the rear quarter's. To perform this I needed to make a mounting panel. The factory rear speakers are 6 X 8 inch. These are very common in Mazda and Ford applications. You can purchase 6 X 8 to 6 1/2inch adapter from Metra, however I choose to save money and use some scrap Mylar board and make my own. With the rears taken care of it was time to tackle the doors. A lot of people think that you can shove a 6 1/2 inch speaker into the doors but its just not possible, or at least not with any of the speakers i'm used to. The factory size is actually 6 inch. 6 inch speakers are actually quite uncommon now days. You also have to deal with the depth constraints as well. I chose to use a set PSC 213's. These are a 5 1/4 inch separates. I secured the tweeters to the grills on both the front and rear speakers. I then mounted the crossovers to the doors. I took a piece of MDF to make a templet to mount the speaker in. I assembled the door to check for tolerance's. The bracket forces the door forward slightly but not enough to annoy me. After disassembling the door again I take my templet and cut more Mylar panels. The Mylar will not warp from moisture like the MDF will. This is important in a door environment. If any of you are interested in my bracket let me know and I will be happy to make you a set (of course for a minor fee).

During the Stereo installation I needed to move my battery over from the driver's side rear been to the passenger's side. The reason for this is due to weight distribution. I also needed to mount the battery in a Battery Box. I choose a box made by Taylor. I think I paid $100.00 for the setup. Its quite nice, very light and easy to use. For wiring in the car I ran Lightning Audio's Strike Blue series. The blue is for power and the silver is ground. I ran 1 awg and 4 awg wire thru the car. I also took the time to run a kill switch for racing applications and rewire my charging system to allow for the kill switch to work properly. When it came time to choose a power source I choose a yellow top Optima battery.

Now that all the speakers are in taken car of its time to mount the amplifier. I originally wanted to stick it in the bins where I had the battery on the driver's side. However that wasn't going to happen. I wanted to still have the ease of removing the spare tire. This eliminated the idea of mounting on the floor in the rear of the car. So the next logical choice was to mount it on the panel separating the interior space from the trunk space. Removing the panel form the car I disassembled it so I could locate a mounting point.

The top panel gets marked and cut. The panels will still sandwich together when i'm finished. I want to still try to keep as much of a stock look as possible. I realize that the amplifier and a battery box will stick out like a soar thumb, but we all know how many people have never seen a 3rd gen or even how many confuse it with another car. This should be fairly easy to keep a factory look when most people have no idea what factory is.

I test fit the cut panel. Now its time to fabricate a cover to hide the edges. With to many edges to play with and no real good way of securing the cover panel I decide to take a simple but effective way to trim it up. Its functional and still looks good. The color match is off a little, maybe I will dye the material later to match. However I will wait until after the roll cage gets installed before I make another panel. I figure this will have to move with the installation of my cage anyway.

The finished amplifier install for the moment.

Currently i'm waiting on my head unit an Alpine 7878 MP3 player. I'm also deciding on whetter or not to use the center channel speaker in the dash. I imagine that with the MB Quarts my imaging will be fine without the help of the center channel. As far as those of you looking to replace the center channel speaker I know that Alpine makes one that fits nicely. You can also get the original Bose speaker from Bose for about $60.00. I also believe that the New GM surburbans 2001 models use the same speaker in their consoles for a center channel as the 3rd gen. If not it should be easily adaptable. I have one I might play with later and see.

Check back later on and I will update my system as it unfolds!