Over the years I have done many car stereo installs for myself and helped friends but I haven't taken pictures or detailed anything in writing before. So this time I'm going to give it a shot.

Seeing as how my Cobalt literally has the quietest interior as far as road noise I am anxious to see how the outcome will be.

I am going for the best SQ possible using what I have while adding as little weight as possible so there won't be any exquisite sound deadening adding a whole bunch of weight. Only places I plan to focus on are the doors to get the best midbass response from my components as possible.

My source unit is a Kenwood eXcelon KDC-X693 h/u, my front stage is going to be an older set of CDT-ES610 2 way components. For power I have an Arc Audio KS300.4 for the front stage and quite possibly turning the rear 6x9's into dedicated midbass speakers quite possibly . For a subwoofer I am going to use the factory pioneer subwoofer powered by a Sundown Audio SAE1200D-V.2. I also have two Sundown Audio SA-12 subwoofers that I won't be using since I don't want the extra weight and I don't need that much bass. If I do use them it will only be one of them in a custom built ported box tuned very low to get as much low end extension as possible.

Here is a picture of some of the things I have in my arsenal.




I have already installed my h/u and ran my remote turn on wire and my rca's to the trunk. Not sure exactly yet if I am going to tap into the factory wiring at the stock amplifier or try to run my own wire into the doors. I would prefer to leave all the factory wiring in place so that if the need arises I can just swap components out and return everything back to stock with minimal effort so I am most likely going to pursue a method of running my own wire into the doors themselves.

Another problem I am having is trying to decide where to mount my amplifiers and the crossovers. In the past I have mounted the passive crossovers directly adjacent to their corresponding amplifier and ran two seperate runs of wire into the doors, one for the woofer and another for the tweeter. This time however I think I am going to run a single run to the doors or footwell and mount the crossovers there, I just don't really know where. These crossovers have tweeter adjustments so I want to be able to easily access them.

For the amplifier I thought about mounting the larger and heavier Sundown Audio SAE-1200D underneath the rear deck with a custom mounting plate of some sort and placing the smaller Arc Audio amp under the front drivers seat possibly for easy access plus it seems like a perfect fit.

But that's what I got so far, i'll get pictures of the amps up when I get the chance.

Not pictured and what I didn't mention is the other wiring I have which is about 25 feet of 2/0 welding cable that I still am not sure if I want to use or just spend some money to get some 4 gauge from knukonceptz to go from the battery to the distribution blocks and 8 guage to the amplifiers. I know some of you are going to say both are way too small but honestly I won't be running anywhere near the capabilities of these amplifiers so huge thick wire won't be necessary.

So that is my novel of a post and I am done now, feel free to comment. This is going to take place slowly since this is my daily driver vehicle so time to work on it is limited to weekends only and then only on fridays for the most part.

 

As I said here are my amplifiers. Also shown is my old school Pioneer Premier PRS-X220. Wish like hell I still had the birth sheet that came with this amplifier. It's not a power house by no means buts only rated for 30 watts into 4 ohms but my sheet came in at 68 at 4 ohms. Bridged it is rated only for 120 and it did 242. I remember when I bought that amp back in I believe it was 03, maybe 04. I had it hooked up to a set of MB Quart Discus series components in a 92 Pontiac Grand Am.....Ah high school memories. It still works great just really have no use for it and I won't get rid of it.



EDIT - Oh yea don't mind the gold color on the sundown amp, its faded from being in sunlight in a previous install.

 

nice i would run the rears as dedicated midbass. something like 400 hz down or so play with it...

i have a feeling you are going to be mind blown by this. When i ran just my ES-07 in the stock location with the door deadened it was damn near heaven.

 

I am hoping it sounds as good as I think it will. I plan to deaded my doors and do something with the rear deck as well since I can hear a slight rattle coming from that area if I turn my head whenever I play something with moderate bass levels. I can't recall where I had my rear speakers crossed at in my previous install in an 03 eclipse but since I have a four channel amp I use them on the rear output of my H/U so I can fade towards the front and tune the amount of midbass I desire on the fly.

 

Arc Audio amplifier mounting option A.

This could be a possible mounting location for my front stage and midbass amplifier. Subwoofer amplifier would in trunk somewhere. Thinking of suspending a 1/8" plate from the rear deck with long machine screws and mounting the amplifier to that. Might install both amps this way....just depends on what I feel like doing once I get started wiring everything. Next item on the checklist is where to mount passive crossover somewhere near doors yet still accessible.

 

Looky what the mailman brought me today!



Some Knukonceptz 4 gauge wire to go with my 8 gauge wire that I already had. Only thing I am missing now is speaker wire.

Also went ahead and sprung for a nice set of 4 channel karma ss RCA cables. Just couldn't beat them for only 19 dollars. Sadly I paid almost that much for some cheapo scosche 25" rcas which are just waaaay too long so I decided to change them. I will still use one set of them for my sub but that isn't as critical to me.

Also talked to my supervisors at work about grabbing some materials from work that we won't be using in the foreseeable future and they said take all you want.....this is what I came home with today.....






All of this is premium polyurethane foam from mcmaster carr of various thicknesses.

I got this much....



There is still a ton of the 1/2" stuff in the plastic still at work. I grabbed basically what I could carry and hauled ass with it. Most of this stuff is open cell foam but I have quite a bit of closed cell foam for sure that I can use in my doors and water won't affect it.

Does anyone know of a good way to treat open cell foam to prevent mold from occuring?

 

i would refrain from using the open cell foam in the doors.

one good option for the closed cell is making a lux liner sandwich. deaden the outerskin of the door with a CLD mat like second skin damplifier/pro then add the closed cell foam over it Lux liner (not pro) over that and a final layer of closed cell foam on top

 

I looked it up and most of what I got was open cell but what's not in plastic is closed cell foam. I can't blow air through it. I wish I knew of a way to treat the open cell foam to be used in damp environments but I can't find anything on Google.

I think today I'm going to look into making panels to seal the holes in the doors and then try and locate some decent 4 gauge ring terminals locally.

 

This is most likely the greatest sin of all among true car audio enthusiasts who swear by more effective deadening products but I have decided that even with all the mixed reviews I am going to go with some peel & seal material to put on the outer door skin and inner door panel just to see if it makes a difference. I grabbed some the other day after thinking about it for quite awhile. Some people say the smell is horrible...I guess the roll I got the other day had been sitting on the shelf long enough that any strong smell it had has dissipated because I can only smell it if I put my nose right up to it and even then its not that bad of a smell. I have to smell worse all day usually anyway since my work has a some sort of road crew facility next door and their trucks are running constantly keeping the tar hot.

 

Vibration test results - P&S or not to P&S, that is the question... - Car Audio Classifieds

 

Yea I read that thread over and over, and it did prove its better than nothing even if you have to use a ton of it. But honestly I'm not going for crazy damped here, just a little bit. I'm going to focus more on trying to seal my doors to isolate front of the drivers.

 

UPDATE

I got started running wires over the weekend except for the speaker wires into the doors. I didn't get a lot accomplished there but my biggest feat over the last few days was sealing up my doors as best as I could. I used 1/4" mdf and made cardboard templates of the two larger holes in doors.

Also went ahead and committed the sin of using peel & seal on the doors. I know I will catch hell for that from some people but oh well I won't be competing with this anyway and I won't have any huge subwoofers to make every body part rattle itself to pieces. Just going for clean and clear sound as cheap as possible.

Now for the pics.

This is the passenger side door with my panels installed. I am using sheetmetal screws and 1 x 1/4" self adhesive foam rubber weatherstripping to seal the panels against the doors and eliminate and rattles that could come about. The panel on the right has the weatherstripping on the door and the one on the left has two layers applied to the panel. This was the first side I did so it was trial and error. The drivers side went smoother. Also don't laugh about the peel & seal placement, I know its sporadic and random but I didn't care I just went to town with pieces The inside of the door is at least 50% coverage of the outer skin with a single layer and there is 2-3 layers directly behind the speaker.



Drivers side....


I wasn't too sure what to do about the large loom of wires coming from inside the door for the power accessories so I just left it open at the top. I may revisit this one day in an attempt to further seal this if I feel it might be worth the gain.


On to the wiring.

This is the main 150A disconnect breaker and 4 gauge wire to the battery.



Overall shot of wire connected to breaker going to distribution block.


Top down view, what wire connected to the battery?


I also mentioned in a previous post that I was thinking about mounting my amplifiers to a plate suspended from the rear deck using long screws, all thread rod, etc not sure yet. Got the basic measurement for that and amp placement as well and this is what I have.


This plate will be mounted a few inches below the deck with amps facing down towards the floor of the trunk and it will fit between where the carpet is in the foreground at the gasket for the lid here...



That's it for now, I didn't get my new RCA's ran because I chose a different path for them but I need to remove the backseat trim and rear deck lid trim to successfully do that and I do not have the required torx bits to remove the seat belt bolts. I used to have a set but I believe I left them in a vehicle I sold a few months back because at the time I had no use for them and I only used them in that car. A trip to harbor freight is in order sometime this week or weekend so I can continue.

I plan on stuffing the rear fenderwells also when I get all that removed and maybe get the main speaker wire run from the trunk to at least the front floorboards when I decide where to mount the crossovers and figure out how I am going to run wire into the doors.

 

how do the doors sound so far? did u use any foam?

 

It made a huge difference even in the factory speakers. I'm anxious to get my components installed now. I used a little bit of the closed cell foam directly behind the speakers but nowhere else. Plan on using allot of that on the rear deck itself cuz u have a feeling I'll need it there to cousin rattles that I have now.

 

Friday Update:

Didn't get near as much accomplished today as I had hoped. The high heat and terrible humidity kept me in the house most of the afternoon till around 3 when I decided to sweat to death and try to work a little bit more.

So I got the new rca's ran, and wouldn't you know it, a 4 meter cable is just about 1 foot shy of where I want them to be and the next length up adds six feet . I did however find a place to mount my passive crossovers for my components but I won't reveal that till its final and I got my speaker wire ran to the front of the car. I used 12 gauge CCA wire to the crossovers and I will use 16 and 18 gauge from the crossovers into the doors.

Beyond that I got a ton...and I mean a ton of carpet padding into the wheel areas beside the rear seats.


Between the drivers and passengers sides there is at least 50 sq ft stuffed into those holes and towards the back. I just started cutting squares and folding them and pushing them towards the trunk as hard as I could stacking it over and over till I couldn't stuff anymore. Now all the sheetmetal behind the doors has a thud to it when you hit them with your knuckles instead of sounding hollow.

Got the back deck removed so I could start working on some things back here like figuring out how to mount the sheetmetal plate that my amps will be attached to. It's looking like it will be a combination of sheetmetal screws and all thread rod through the back deck to hang it with. Can't really describe it, just gonna have to wait for the final product to see it .


Also have a question if anyone reads this, I might make a new thread about it but does anyone happen to know if removing the onstar module will affect anything in the car? I am not quite sure how or if its tied into any of the vital electronics components of these cars to the point where removing it will cause problems and since its not being used and just taking up space, I would like to remove it.


I removed the XM module since I no longer am using the factory radio and it's just taking up space.

That's it for now maybe I will get


EDIT- never mind, did a search and found another member who disconnected his and car wouldn't start. Oh well.

 

are u sure it was the XM module? onstar maybe but xm module shouldnt make a difference

 

I meant I found a thread saying someone had problems when removing the onstar module, not xm. I'm just going to disconnect the antenna and leave it plugged in.

 

Got a few things done yesterday and today. Got the amplifier rack plate mounted and hung in the trunk along with some wiring. I did not have a chance to really get into deadening the rear deck because it has literally taken me two days to do just the amp rack itself and with the work week starting early tomorrow I had to hurry and reassemble the interior of my car so I could drive to and from work for the next four days.

So as I mentioned I got the amps mounted and if I do say so myself I love the outcome.





I used two 2 inch by 3 inch pieces of aluminum to hold the rear of the plate into the sheet metal of the car. I drilled and tapped the sheet metal of the car to accept 8-32 screws. There are two of these plates one on each end with a total of 6 8-32 screws holding it to the body work of the car, hopefully it won't go anywhere.


This the mounting mechanism for the front of the amp rack closest to the trunk lid. Two 1/4-20 all thread rods through drilled holes and held in place with nuts and washers. The top of the rod on the other side of the sheet metal has a nylock nut to prevent loosening and the bottom is just simple nuts that are just snugged up.


I am not done with the wiring hence why the 4 gauge is hanging still but I ran out of steam on the amp rack and moved on to other projects.

 

Now for the reveal as to where I decided to mount the passive crossovers. I spend literally two hours just craning my head underneath the dash and thinking and looking everywhere and then it dawned on me.

I am sure most of you are familiar with the knee panel directly underneath the steering column. There is alot of unused space in there and GM was kind enough to place what appears to be a support brace directly across this area with two screws. It's thin but sturdy enough to mount something to with the right hardware. So out came the jigsaw and .090 aluminum sheet and I started measuring. 7 1/2 inches wide space to work with and around 5 inches high so I cut a peice 7 1/4 by 5 inches screwed that to the steel support bar and mocked up my crossovers and this is what I came up with;


This mounted into that space perfectly.


I will most likely wind up tweaking the position of the plate on the bar since it hangs low enough that by the time I get the wires into the crossovers they might protrude slight out from under the dash and I can't have that so I will try to move it up another inch or so later this week to give me more room to hide wires.

That's it for now folks. This coming weekend it's going to be run wires into the doors, determining the best method of mounting my components woofers, and finishing up some wiring of the amplifiers.

I am going to hold off on mounting the tweeters till the last thing since I am already unhappy about having to cut up my doors tweeter pods to make them fit. I swear I wish GM would have made them a separate piece instead of attaching them to the door panels. Ideally I would like to get a spare set of tweeter pods to hack up and then maybe I wouldn't be so upset about having to cut into them as long as I could reattach them to the door panels successfully. I think my next trip to harbor freight is going to include picking up a hot air plastic welder and some PVC plastic weld material. It seems like I have to do so much plastic repair and various things that it would be a good investment.

 

Lol those are some huge crossovers. Looks good.

Is that 8ga for the Sundown 1200 though?

 

Yea it is only 8 gauge. I will be running it at 4 ohms and on the factory sub so I will have it turned way down low. At 4 ohms its good for around 800 rms but I am only going to set it till I get a good blend between the front stage and the sub. Honestly I doubt ill even get it close to putting out 300 watts on larger musical peaks. I just don;t demand as much from my sub stage anymore like I used to. If I ever get to craving insane lows again I have two Sundown Audio SA-12's just collecting dust on the shelf right now.

In my last vehicle they were just too big, too loud, and too heavy but man were they a monstrosity in the box I custom made to fit tightly into the hatch area of my eclipse. It was a 3 cu ft box with a large slot port tuned after sub displacement to either 30 or 32hz I believe it was. It would take your breath away on alot of deep tracks and I still only had those wired at 4 ohms. I never even tried them down to 1 ohm on the sundown since 4 ohms was crazy enough.

 

wait i just realized. what controls do those crossovers have? isnt it just one jumper for the tweeter

 

Yea it is just one switch for tweeter level control.

 

It's done! Well almost, still got some tweaking to do and not too sure of final tweeter placement. I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Wire ran into the doors and crossovers wired.



CDT ES-6's mounted into the factory door speaker bracket. Took a good hour with a course file and dremel with sanding drum to make these fit but their in. Might make MDF rings to mount these too later in the future for more mass, even thought about if I could get away with it, using 1/2" thick stainless steel from work. Just have to get a design down for the waterjet guys to cut out.


Now for a neat trick. When mounting tweeters to door panels that are often removed its best to put some sort of plug on the tweeter wiring so the can be unplugged when the time comes. One of my other hobbies includes radio control vehicles so I used a pair of my high power deans connectors for the tweeters. Deans claim the connectors have less resistance than the wire they connect, whether thats true or not they serve their purpose well.


Now for the alternate tweeter mounting option decision. I know that keeping the tweeter as close to the mids as possible is usually desired so I am thinking about placing my tweeters down here on this spot circled.


So far though my mind is blown sounds alot better than I hoped for and I haven't even started tweaking anything yet. Rear deck 6x9's are being used as dedicated midbass lowpass xo'ed around 330hz and then faded well to the front so their presence is just known but doesn't take away from the front stage.

The factory sub I am afraid to report however did not like my tuning session last night and in the process of adjusting x/o points and phasing on the H/U I switched to a fairly heavy dubstep song and upon trying to get a good balance between the sub and the front stage at high volumes it cut out. Checked it out and amp was in protect mode, powered down and restarted everything and upon inspecting things with the volume turned down I can hear the factory subs VC wire rattling away inside the magnetic field and I could smell the lovely smell of burnt voice coil.

Not a real big loss anyway and to be honest when I smelled it and heard the wires rattling around I actually busted out laughing. This is officially my first car audio casualty, never before have I blown an amp, a speaker or anything of the sort. I have run some subs to the point of mechanical distress and thermal distress by starting to smell but never to the point of something actually failing to play anymore.

Later down the road it looks like ill be designing a nice medium sized ported box for one of my single SA-12's. I still want to be able to use my trunk to carry stuff so I can't sacrifice too much space to subs like I have in the past.

 

ya the stock sub is super small and cant handle **** for power. Im surprised you spent so much time trying to make the ES-6 fit... my ES-07 fit without any modification when i was using the stock mount... only 2 holes lined up but it fit