I finally got my sound system installed and it sounds pretty good, imo. I put in a Pioneer P7000BT head unit with blue tooth built in, Infinity Kappa 6.5" door components with tweeters, Infinity Reference 5761a 6-channel amp, Rockford Fosgate 1-Farad cap, and a 10" JL Audio 10w3v3 4 ohm model in a sealed build-it-yourself box that had the right volume for the sub.

I wanted to hide my amp from prowling eyes so I built a false floor out of 1/4" thick birch plywood with 3" long dowels for legs. The factory trunk mat sits neatly on top of the new floor.

Total cost was about $800 but I already had the amp and cap.



You can see that the tweeter fit perfectly in the stock location after dremeling out the factory tweeter.


Head unit has AUX in for mp3 player, blue tooth audio player compatibility, blue tooth phone compatibility (how pimp is it to roll up to a stop light, press a button, say "Dominos", and it automatically dials Dominos so you can order dinner, then it goes right back to playing mp3s when you hang up).


The sub box is .7 cubic feet. It is much smaller than my old ported enclosure. It still leaves some space for groceries, etc.

 

This is what the floor looks like with the carpet on top. I'm going to re-carpet it because I foolishly tried to take the carpet off of the board that the factory glued it to.... don't try that. It just ended up ripping the carpet in placed.


This is what the floor looks like with the carpet up.


This shows the underside of the floor. Really basic but seems to work fine. I used the factory trunk carpet to trace an outline on the wood, then my neighbor used a jigsaw and cut it out. Used a dremel to sand the edges and it fits pretty well.

 

Amp mounted to the floor of the trunk. Industrial velcro holding the top mounting points, bottom mounting points have a nail going into the styrofoam.


Cap set in the indent on the right.

So that's it. I ran the bass controller, aux input, and USB port, through the center console, drilled a small hole in the rear compartment, and mounted that stuff in there so you can hide an mp3 player, etc. Ran the microphone for the phone up to the sunvisor.

I welcome questions, comments, and nicely worded critiques/suggestions.

 

I found that the admittedly cheap rolls of interior carpet material sold at Wal*Mart (3x6 foot) were a very good match for the rear hatch area. I used it to cover my false floor . I just cut it with enough extra that I could staple it to the exposed side from underneath and then staple another piece on the underside for a finished look. It was quite inexpensive - in rolls standing on end in a display box in the car junk section of Wal*Mart. I expect it will fade faster than the factory carpet so I bought two rolls to be prepared for that day.

That would enable you to glue the factory piece back to the factory panel - perhaps carefully enough that the rip won't show much if you remove the false floor. I guess I was lucky - my carpet wasn't glued to the panel - it was velcro'd.

I wonder if the speaker is protected well enough from any cargo you might put in there?

The panel you made is nice though you do have a large unsupported span that might start to warp or develop a low spot over time. Does it vibrate when you crank the sub or give a hollow sound when the bass is turned up?

It's nice to see other people's approach to this!




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Thanks for the heads up on the carpet, I'll definitely look into that.

So far the hollow spot without legs has not been a problem. Even if it sinks a bit, the amp is right under it so there is only about a quarter inch it can go down before it lands on the amp. I very rarely carry anything in the trunk so that's why I'm not too worried about it warping or anything hitting the sub.

Of course, if I do need to carry anything heavy, we'll see how it goes. Lol.

 

Grrrrr.... I am not happy with the way things are going. I've only had the sound system for approximately two weeks and already one of the Kappa woofers has apparently blown. I noticed that there is this weird scratchy sound whenever bass would hit and I narrowed it down to the Kappa woofer in the passenger door. Just got this put in two weeks ago...

*sigh*. Power is 80w rms at 2 ohms, speakers are rated for 90w at 2 ohms. Used a multimeter when setting the gains; the gain on the Kappas are set at about 4 volts LOWER than the maximum safe non-clipping level. I never exceeeded 3/4 max volume on my head unit, which was the highest level I set the gains for.

I checked the amp connection and crossover connection. Only thing left is to make sure the wires are firmly connected to the back of the woofer, and if so, it's back to Best Buy.

Anybody else ever had any problem with Infinity products?

 

Lots of Infinity products - no problems. Best Buy is good about taking stuff back as long as you're within the 30 days, and it always helps to have your box and receipt.

 

Seeing as this is the second Infinity speaker I've blown despite proper amp settings in the past two years, I have decided to take the Kappas back and go with JL Audio C5s. Which also requires a new amp. And I found a very nice fiberglass HOK Kameleon painted box. So I am basically re-doing my system all over again.

NEW pics to come next week. lol.

 

I like the umbrella holder; how did you rig it up?

 

You can buy velcro ties - they adhere to the carpet. So I just wrap them around the umbrella and then set it down on the carpet - it stays there until I remove it. Pretty easy. The velcro ties come in rolls - I think they were in the camping section at Wal*Mart...

 

PPRO,

How is that Infinity Basslink working for you?? Ive been thinking about getting one to add to upcoming audio install.