I'm not wanting alot of rattle out of my trunk so i am wanting to mount the sub directly behind the rear seat and walled off in the trunk so u wont be able to see nothing but a wall covered in carpet. I am using a MB Quart RWE 12" and wondering how hard would this enclosure be to make? cause i am also wanting to hide my amps below the floor of the trunk in the spare tire compartment. Should i use fiberglass or wood?

 

ya I'd say this could be accomplished as long as a few things are accounted for during the planning phase

1. You may want to consider investing in sound deadening.....I think there could still be issues even if your sub is firing into the cabin of your car in regards to rattles. I'm putting a system in my truck and bought a bulk-pack of Dynamat Extreme for 125 bucks off the internet

2. Get a rough idea of the distance this wall will need to cover (let's say using the beginning of your rear quarter panel as a starting point and then measure distance from left to right). You'll of course have a fair amount of spare room since the enclosure necessary for your 12" won't need an enclosure this big. So, then you'll have to figure out what's the best way to allow for a stealth install. You could build an enclosure that has "wings" so to speak that are contoured so they fit the curvature of the space they must enclose in order to achieve a "wall" look. I'd say now you'd probably want to have a reasonable idea of your woodworking skills and if you have access to either a jig or band saw.

3. This might be considered as the easy-way-out and for some less-than-desirable but what about just building a box as one normally would and creating the illusion of a wall with tight-woven fabric that matches the color of your trunk? I suppose you could build a frame using some type of flexible wood/plastic/etc, staple or use velcro to affix the fabric to your frame and then finally affix this entire contraption to the underside of rear deck, sides of trunk and the floor. If this contraption is very light in weight I think you wouldn't have to worry about dealing with the issue of this fake "wall" rattling....pick materials whose ability to audibly resonate is borders on 0.

4. Countersinking amps into floor shouldn't be too difficult. The one thing to consider is how you plan to keep your amps cool though. My false floor to which sub is mounted has a 2x2' cutout in the middle that not only shows off the amps but provides adequate breathing room. I've got a couple of 1' x 2" fluorescent lights mounted on the underside of this opening to light up the amps. Cheap to buy/install but looks pretty cool.

5. Building an enclosure.....I'd say if you're decent at using a saw you'll be just fine. Plan to cover your enclosure with carpet and this will also allow to hide potential imperfections resulting from screwing and gluing your enclosure, slight mis-cuts, etc. You'll want to get your hands on a table saw though if at all possible. You'll end up with cleaner cuts than if you were to use a hand-held saw. At least this is the case for me. If you're comfortable with using fiberglass I'd personally go with this material mainly because of weight.

6. More than likely you'll find the exact specs for enclosure dimensions from MB but if you can't find any get a hold of the tech sheet for your speakers where you'll find parameters such as Vas, Fs and a few others. Download a freeware program to calculate enclosure size or a website that provides this ability, input the necessary parameters for this speaker and you'll get the exact dimensions needed for the sub to perform properly. Not sure if this sub can work well in both ported and sealed enclosures but I'd probably go with a sealed enclosure rather than also having to deal with figuring out where the port should be located, length of the port, buying the material to create the port.....blah blah blah. Once your realize how big your box needs to be and think to yourself "dam*.....I wish this enclosure was just a little smaller you can also look into adding Dacron/Lambs wool/etc. to fool the speaker into thinking it's in a bigger enclosure that it's actually in. There's some standard specs that will give you an idea how much enclosure size can be increased based on the amount of fill you add to the inside of your box.

I made a post this afternoon and threw up some pics of my hatch rebuild I just finished.....might be helpful to see what I did.....we have some different goals but at least it provides one perspective on what it took for me to finish my little project.

Take a look at my install just to get an idea of your options and what this effort may entail.

 

naw as far as the amps go i was putting a slot in the false floor and mounting fans to help the cooling off and get air to the amps. i'm not good at the woodworking but my buddy is amazing at it. Cause I am going to use the trunk carpet in it now for the areas behind the tails and quarter that wont be covered up and prolly dye it black. Cuase I really dont wanna fiberglass a mold and try to wrap it in carpet. But this shouldnt be hard to accomplish without looking to over the top and crazy.

 

oh yea as for the sound deadening, i know i plan to use it on the package tray but not on the trunk lid unless it comes down to it and i have too. but i am definately using it on the doors, and floor of the car.

 

Just for a reference it has taken

2 full-size rolls of Accumat
2 Dynamat trunk kits
4 Dynamat door kits

to get rid of all the rattles in my car and I STILL have one last rattle to take care of. The only way I'm gonna fix this last issue is figure out how to dampen the location where ITR wings are connected to hatch because this is what's rattling....my wing. I've got (2) 10's powered by an amp putting around 250 watts to each sub.

I bought 72 square feel of Dynamat for the truck install I'm starting tomorrow....I figured that a 13w7 powered by my old Xtant x1001 would require some serious serious deadening so the entire truck doesn't turn into one big rattle trap. It's kinda surprised me over the past year or so just how much deadening I've needed to try and eliminate all rattles. Definitely more than I thought would be needed. I never figured it'd take this much time and money to deaden the car....jeez.

What can be a real pain is trying to apply deadening to areas that are so small you can barely get your hand in.....there's so many parts of my hatch that are covered with 4"x4" pieces simply because that was the biggest piece I could use while attempting to fit my hand through some super tiny hole in order to even stick the deadener to the surface I was trying to deaden.


Modified by thekid03 at 10:42 PM 4/27/2008

 

oh yea i know that will be a pain. but my car dont have a spoiler so my main focus is the doors and trunk for sound deadening. i hope to start the install soon to find all the rattles so i can fix them or should i just deaden everything then install it? cause if i do a install first it will be a test fit type and not the final install.

 

I guess my opinion is that you may want to consider installing enough deadening until you at least hear a solid 'thud' when you 'knock' on various body panels. Go around the car and also slam/shut trunk, doors and hood and if this passes at least you have some amount of confidence. Once you get to this level then install your equipment and run some more tests and then see where any ratting issues exist.

I say this because I was shocked at the amount of energy that is transferred from door through frame to rear of my truck. I put in (18) 30" x 18" pieces of Dynamat in cab and was saving the doors for later. Shut the door late in the day and about fell over.....back half of truck bed rattled like there was no tomorrow. Immediately got on ground and started looking at how cab and bed were connected, etc.

 

well in a truck you gotta realize its a body over frame and the body is only seperated with bushings to the body and they will shift and rattle, whereas unibodies are solid structures. but they still displace energy like crazy. i just dont want any dynomat or sound deadener on my trunk lid i know cause u will see it and it looks horrible. picky i know but i love clean cars with nothing but what is suppose to show out in the open lol. thanks for the info tho i appreciate it