Hey guys. Just finished my install in my 1996 328i convertible.
Here are the pictures. Enjoy!
My system sounds CLEAN. Fairly loud for what it is. Best of all, the final cost was $500
Purchased in Conn. when I was working in NYC on 7/27/2010. I wanted to do an install since day one.
I came across these subs by chance. I always wanted these subs back in the day. "All the bass, half the space" I recall
Kicker's advertisement!
Reading the Ohms, the meter said "4.3 Ohm". I could not believe it. This meant the voice coils were perfect.
One sub had a small tear in the surround. These things were FILTHY. After some haggling I paid $70.00 OTD!
I took the subs home and gave them a good cleaning. I was able to fix the surround with black silicone.
I removed the back seat and placed the box there. My gf loved the sound, but hated loosing the rear seats.
I had 2 Rockford Fosgate HX2 10's in a HUGE 2 CF box. I had no trunk space.
So I decided to just do a recessed trunk install. Now off to my favorite place.
The deconstruction began. What the heck is this??? Clearly cutting into my usable space!
I had to work around the vacuum device. I used priority mail boxes as templates to speed up the process.
The box is slowly coming together!
Fast forward, and the box is built. 1.80 cf is the closest I could get to 0.88 each.
I found the stainless steel grill to be a tad small. So I opted for grill cloth and a protective cover incase I use the trunk to go to the grocery store.
These priority boxed came in handy to build the side panels.
Always look for this cart when building stuff. You can save a ton! Perect for speaker grills!
Now that was easy peasy! It was easier to cut the circles with a blade to save the router bit from dulling out when it hit the concrete.
Painted black, than wrapped in grill cloth.
Here she is. Side panels completed. Amp rack completed.
Now to make the flush mount amp cover. This should have been done while I had the box out to center the amps. Messing this step up, I took me about
an hour of constantly removing and replacing the cover to ensure proper fit. I used more priority mail boxes!
The amp cover is carpeted.
Except for the amps, if you were to walk by me in the parking lot, it's hard to tell I have a system/subwoofers in the trunk!!!
Making the door pods to house the oversized Eclipse 8264's 6.75" woofers. The tweeters were glued into the O.E.M. tweeter location
I doubled up on the brackets due to the shear size of these magnets!
The lower ring was actually my first flawed set or rings. They came in nicely as additional spacing needed for the woofers.
Coming out nicely!
They do stick out a bit, but the midbass produced is amazing!
Using these old school Kickers presented a problem....I needed a 4 Ohm high Watt load. As you know amps now-a-days run at 1 or 2 Ohm mono for
the watts I needed. The search for a used old school amp began! I was able to find this Old school Crossfire VR602 for $130.00
For the front stage, I was originally using a JL J2 360.4 amp I paid $100.00 for. Here I found this tiny power plant. Old school PPI 2200ix. Picked her
up for $20.00! This thing is sawesome. It comes with a small SIP crossover card. My mids/highs receive about 75-80W @ 4 Ohms with a 90 Hz high-pass
cuttoff. When I use the RCA outputs to daisy chain to another amp, the RCA outputs cutoff inverts to become 90Hz lowpass. That's ingenious! Takes the guess
work out of dailing in the frequency cutoff by ear.
Last edited by maggioracing; 04-16-2014 at 08:57 AM.
You are god. Did you ever build the box for trunk for others ?
That looks great, good work! I'm working on a similar project on a '98 M3, it's good to see what others have done! Any tips on your cable/RCA/speaker wire routing?
Sweet Jebuz that looks great! make a video showing it in action
So how much low end makes it into the car with the roof down?
BTW, use a piece of scrap wood with double sided tape holding the piece you are working on on top to prevent bit damage.
Last edited by Mless5; 08-21-2018 at 01:27 PM.
Damn, looks like you've done this before! Is this your day job? Because those front door mounts and the sub box are impressive! I wanted to replace the front 5.25s with some 6.5s, but it seemed like too much trouble. I'm in the middle of redoing the stereo in my 98 M3 and am running the RCA and speaker wires up with the factory wiring under the driver's seat. It's tough getting the wires to come up in the correct spot on the trans tunnel by the dash since they install the carpet so damn tight, but with a little cutting I was able to make it work. How does it all sound?
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