Been busy of late, so a lack of updates. Ive managed to fit the carpets and ICE. First I ran all the cables (RCA down the inner sills from back to front; speaker cables down opposite side in some mesh conduit).
Newton carpets went in next:
But the rear didn't go in until I'd fitted 4 JL 3W6 subs under the rear bench.
Edit: steps added:
A few people have been asking how I installed the rear subs. So here's how I did it (not got photos for every step)
First I set about creating the board that would hold the subs. I opted for 18mm MDF, which I cut and doubled up to create a thickness of just under 1.5 inches. I marked up the holes and cut them out with a jigsaw. These were later refined with a router
:
This was glued together with wood glue and clamped up to dry overnight:
Whilst the baffle was drying I sealed the edges under the rear bench with caulk. Before laying down lots of silent coat:
This was overlaid with closed cell foam:
Once the baffle had dried I set about trial fitting it in the car. One thing that becomes apparent is the weight, even without the subs in, because it'd do some hefty damage if it were to fly across the car. To that end I installed some aluminium angle down either side and across the bottom. I stuck some draft excluding foam to the inner edge of this angle before bolting it solidly to the car (the bottom pieces where glued in with gorilla glue).
I then marked up a further 6 holes along to top edge of the rear bench. A wedged piece of wood was added to the middle support of the bench, ready for final fitting. Basically the whole thing is held in 14 nuts and bolts, plus two screws for good measure. It's not going anywhere and the seal is good (more on this later).
Next I drilled the holes for mounting and test fitted it. I was then ready to drill the speaker mounting holes and covered the whole thing with some acoustic carpet. The trick here is to allow the glue to dry back to a tacky state before covering. The holes where then carefully burnt through with a soldering iron to make fitting neat and easy:
I used flush T nuts on the back and some quality bolts to hold the speakers in place:
I then had to wire the whole thing up in parallel, I used some quality oxygen free cable and wrapped it in some mesh conduit. I ran all the cable along the top (held in place with cable fasteners) to the pre-drilled hole that routed the cables to the boot. Note the draft excluding tape in this picture too.
Underlay and carpet came next, before the new board and subs where bolted into place. I added closed cell draft tape to every edge, which squashed down to make a good seal. At this stage it weighed a fair bit and required two people to hold the thing in place to ensure a good fit:
And that was basically it.
The key thing to remember is that the baffle needs to be thick enough, secured well and be as air tight as possible.
Edited by Richie83, 18 February 2016 - 07:05 PM.